#57 The Budget Motel AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast Heavyweight

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Episode: #57 The Budget Motel

Author: Spotify Studios
Duration: 00:40:16

Episode Shownotes

In 1993, Nick was shot in an Idaho motel room. One stranger came to his aid. Nick wants to find him. CREDITS If you're feeling unsafe in your relationship, call 1.800.799.7233, or text "START" to 88788. You can also visit www.loveisrespect.org. Heavyweight is hosted and produced by Jonathan Goldstein. This

episode was produced by senior producer Kalila Holt, along with Phoebe Flanigan. The supervising producer is Stevie Lane. Production assistance by Mohini Madgavkar. Editorial guidance from Emily Condon. Special thanks to Annie Minoff, Laura Morris, Lauren Silverman, and Jackie Cohen. The show was mixed by Bobby Lord. Music by Christine Fellows, John K Samson, Blue Dot Sessions, Michael Hearst, Katie Condon, Ehren Ebbage, and Bobby Lord. Our theme song is by The Weakerthans courtesy of Epitaph Records. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Summary

In episode #57 of "Heavyweight," hosted by Jonathan Goldstein, we delve into Nick's traumatic experience from 1993 when he was shot in a motel room. Reflecting on the impact of the incident, Nick recounts the neglect he felt from others and the kindness of a young stranger during that critical moment. His journey to reconnect with this stranger, Jared, and his ex-girlfriend Maggie opens discussions on the long-term effects of trauma on all involved. The episode emphasizes themes of gratitude, emotional strain, and the complexities of human relationships shaped by shared traumatic events.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (#57 The Budget Motel) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_07
A word of warning that today's episode contains descriptions of violence. Please take care when listening.

00:00:06 Speaker_03
Hi, how are you doing?

00:00:11 Speaker_07
Good. I left you like four or five messages.

00:00:14 Speaker_03
Busy day. Busy day.

00:00:16 Speaker_07
Do you remember on the Dukes of Hazzard, there was the sheriff. Do you remember what his name was? No. Roscoe P. Coltrane. Oh, I remember it was Roscoe. Do you remember what the P stood for?

00:00:26 Speaker_03
No.

00:00:26 Speaker_07
Was it Phillip? Yoakter?

00:00:28 Speaker_03
Oh my God. Oh my God. Perry? My friend Suzanne's calling me back. I gotta pick this up.

00:00:31 Speaker_07
No, she's not.

00:00:35 Speaker_03
How did you know I was lying? How did you know I was lying?

00:00:38 Speaker_07
You sounded too loving. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and this is Heavyweight. Today's episode, The Budget Motel. right after the break.

00:01:08 Speaker_01
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00:01:40 Speaker_00
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00:02:09 Speaker_07
Nick tells me he doesn't consider himself to be a writer. He works as a landscaper. But several years ago, he felt compelled to write about an event that derailed his life. The story's title? What it's like to be shot.

00:02:26 Speaker_07
30 years ago, Nick was shot in the stomach by a coworker, a guy named Andy. Nick was 21 years old. And ever since that day, he's continued to tell versions of what happened. In his 20s, it was a good story to tell in a bar.

00:02:41 Speaker_08
Packaged in a way to impress girls.

00:02:45 Speaker_07
In his 30s, it became a kind of flex, something to give him that tough guy quality he lacked compared to the hunters and brawlers he grew up with in Idaho. In his 40s, he honed the story to the written version.

00:02:58 Speaker_07
I like Nick's writing so much, I asked him if he'd read the story aloud to me. Would you mind reading it? You want me to just start from the beginning? Could you? Yeah. It all begins with Nick and his co-worker Andy in Burley, Idaho.

00:03:11 Speaker_07
They were there for an out-of-town irrigation contract. Andy was originally from Burley, and so he invited some high school friends over to drink beer in the room he and Nick were sharing at the Budget Motel. I'll let Nick take it from here.

00:03:26 Speaker_08
The guys had brought in a 9mm automatic for show and tell. I wouldn't have been surprised if it was in fact stolen or purchased illegally. I wasn't particularly curious about the weapon, having had my share of firearms fun growing up in Pocatello.

00:03:40 Speaker_08
We littered the sagebrush hills with spent casings. I remember sitting on the edge of the motel bed across from Andy. Andy's eyes were on the gun, but not downrange. I was downrange. Andy dropped the magazine, charged the slider.

00:03:55 Speaker_08
It's cool to charge a handgun. It makes a cool sound. It feels good. Andy was about to dry fire, but had not checked the chamber. I leaned to the left about to say, dude, don't point that thing at me. Dude. Damn. My first thought was, damn it.

00:04:16 Speaker_08
We were so fired. The gun has gone off in our room. I looked down toward my lap and noticed a wisp of smoke coming from the torn hole in the beltline of my pants. I reached around with my left hand and felt a wet spot in the small of my back.

00:04:30 Speaker_08
Holy fucking shit. I've just been shot in and out right fucking through me. Holy shit. Noting the proximity of the wet spot to my spine, I quickly stood up to see if my legs worked. They did. Andy rushed the gun over to Israel who had brought it.

00:04:45 Speaker_08
Say you did it, man. Israel quickly took a knee in front of me, trying to get me to hold the weapon. Dude, say you shot yourself. Fucking call 911.

00:05:02 Speaker_08
The police report, written by one of what Burleigh consider their finest, says that I reported the wound accidentally self-inflicted upon his arrival.

00:05:10 Speaker_08
I remember saying, I've been shot, it was an accident, as the cop casually strolled in with a stupid bored look on his face. A lot of the actual agony is beyond memory. I can remember what the pain led me to think.

00:05:23 Speaker_08
Okay, if this is the end, let's get it over already. Bring on the dark fade or the bright light. There was no fear of death, only the impatient anticipation of relief. I was bawling and blubbering like a toddler that had fallen off a swing.

00:05:39 Speaker_08
Every story I'd read of soldiers slowly dying on battlefields crying out for their mothers made sense. There is a very real need for mommy that supersedes any macho imprinting at this level of helplessness. My pleas for morphine were denied.

00:05:57 Speaker_08
Instead I was impaled with a catheter in my urethra and an NG tube into my nose and down my throat. Somewhere I found in myself a cooperative attitude toward these brutes.

00:06:07 Speaker_08
I even reported the fact I was wearing contact lenses as they rubbed the orange goo on my belly and shaved my pubic hair. They plucked out the lenses before I got wheeled into the OR. Everything suddenly got calmer there.

00:06:20 Speaker_08
My only company was a gentle-voiced man who said, I'm Dr. Lowell Feinstein. I'll be your anesthesiologist. Just breathe into this. The nurses in ICU took an icy tone with me.

00:06:38 Speaker_08
They weren't going to mommy some young man in with gunshot wounds who probably had it coming. I did get a sarcastic, ah, poor baby, when I cried during my first wound debridement.

00:06:49 Speaker_08
That was the daily routine of stuffing ribbons of cotton gauze into the bullet holes with a long swab. Twice a day, they'd pull out the gauze lung with all the dead tissue dried to it, then stuff new gauze in.

00:07:01 Speaker_08
I got used to it, and it became less painful. As with most gross things about your body, you eventually come to enjoy it, kind of like picking your nose.

00:07:11 Speaker_08
The first visitor was a blurry image, not because of the meds, but because of the earlier foolishness of having my contacts removed before surgery. It's my dad who is here.

00:07:20 Speaker_08
I make a crack to bring levity to the ICU, something quick from a Western maybe.

00:07:25 Speaker_07
They got me, Pa. There are only tears. And here, with his father's tears, is how Nick has always ended the story, a cut-down hero being wept over by his dad. But now that he's in his fifties, Nick doesn't see himself as the hero of this story at all.

00:07:45 Speaker_07
Instead, he sees someone else as the true hero of that day. It's not Andy or his friend Israel. They mostly seemed concerned with not getting in trouble.

00:07:54 Speaker_08
And I didn't hear a word from them since that day. You know, there was no visit in the hospital. No. If I had accidentally shot somebody, I would have been beside myself with apology and just begging for forgiveness.

00:08:06 Speaker_08
But I didn't hear a thing from those guys.

00:08:10 Speaker_07
I didn't hear a thing from those guys either. I reached out to both Andy and Israel to get their version of the story, but never heard back. The cops were indifferent, the hospital workers coldly efficient. Nick felt alone and angry.

00:08:24 Speaker_07
He'd been blamed for his own injury and then abandoned. No one actually cared about what he was going through at all. With the exception of one person. a friend of Andy's whose name Nick never even caught, but who he refers to as the kid.

00:08:40 Speaker_08
I didn't know this kid. He was just in the periphery of everybody that was hanging out. So all of a sudden I'm shot.

00:08:46 Speaker_08
I can just see this kid's face and he's crying and he's looking down at me and he's asking if there's anything he can do, like get me a towel or something.

00:08:56 Speaker_08
The looks on other people's faces was one of detachment and cold, like they were looking at a squirrel hitting the road or something. And he was the one that you could just tell he was legitimately scared, not about getting in trouble, but for me.

00:09:16 Speaker_07
And you were able to, in that moment, you were able to read all of that?

00:09:22 Speaker_08
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I don't know. I think everything slows down to where, you know, some things are sparkling clear. Yeah. Like if you've ever been in a car accident or whatever, everything seems to go in slow motion.

00:09:36 Speaker_08
And I just, that's the thing that still sticks with me is somebody, you know, just as scared as I was.

00:09:47 Speaker_07
a kind look, a towel, not exactly Superman level of heroism.

00:09:52 Speaker_07
But Nick insists that because the gestures came at one of the scariest moments of his life, and because everyone else was offering nothing, this something, even though it was a small something, felt like a lot.

00:10:04 Speaker_08
And so in that moment, him and I were not strangers. It's a feeling like I don't want to die alone, and here's one person that's not a stranger.

00:10:21 Speaker_07
And so, 30 years later, what Nick wants is to find that kid, that sympathetic kid who cried and offered him a towel, and simply thank him. But where the search takes us is somewhere neither Nick nor I could have anticipated. So we're gonna do it. Okay.

00:10:37 Speaker_07
Wow. Yeah, we're gonna try to find this kid, I think. After the break, we try to find this kid, I think. Hello, can you hear me? I can now. More importantly, can you see me? I can see you. Okay, it's not more important really.

00:11:07 Speaker_07
I asked Nick to check in over a video because I have some news. In order to get the name of the sympathetic kid, I contacted the sheriff's department and got the police report from the day Nick was shot. Oh wow. Yeah, so I wanted to share it with you.

00:11:22 Speaker_07
Nick's not seen the report since the shooting happened 30 years ago. I send it over, and once again, Nick reads an account of the day, but this time from the perspective of the police officer on duty.

00:11:34 Speaker_08
On the above date, I was sent to the Budget Motel room 437 in reference to a subject being shot in the stomach. I asked Nick what had happened. He stated that he had shot himself while looking at a gun.

00:11:45 Speaker_07
When the cops interrogated Andy, he also blamed Nick, but when pressed, came clean. He stated that he didn't intend for it to go off. Then there are the accounts of everyone else who'd been in the room that day. There's Andy's friend Israel.

00:11:58 Speaker_07
Israel heard Andy click the gun but wasn't sure what had happened.

00:12:01 Speaker_08
And two other guys, someone named Jason. He then saw the gun in Andy's hand with an expression like he didn't expect it to go off. And someone named Jared.

00:12:09 Speaker_08
He told me that Nick had a very surprised look on his face and that no one really knew what had happened. We feel with the information that we received that there was no intention on hurting anyone and that the shooting was an accidental shooting.

00:12:26 Speaker_08
The subjects were released after obtaining statements. Wow. Nick had a very surprised look on his face.

00:12:35 Speaker_07
I'm sure I did. The names Jason and Jared are both unfamiliar to Nick. So to our search for the sympathetic kid.

00:12:45 Speaker_08
It's got to be one of those two guys.

00:12:52 Speaker_07
So, so what's going on? Well, um... The following week, Nick and I talk again. This time, though, Nick has reached out to me because he has some news to share. It's been five days or whatever since I contacted Jared.

00:13:08 Speaker_07
After I sent Nick the police report, he spent the rest of the day obsessing. He was so close to finding the person he'd thought about for so long that he decided to take matters into his own hands and do some digging.

00:13:20 Speaker_07
While Jason's last name was incredibly common, Jared's last name was unique. So Nick typed it into Facebook and a Jared popped up who was living in that same part of Idaho.

00:13:31 Speaker_08
And it looks like he's got a teenage son that looks exactly like my memory of what he looked like. I sent him this very generic message to throw the line out there like I was trying to net a butterfly.

00:13:50 Speaker_08
I just, hi, Jared, you may not know me at all, but I'm trying to find someone with your name that lived in Burleigh back in 1993. You might be someone who showed me a great deal of kindness during an accident that happened at the budget.

00:14:05 Speaker_07
Jared's profile didn't seem all that active, so Nick tried sending a message to his wife as well, and... She responded.

00:14:13 Speaker_08
She says, oh wow, I think he's told me that story. I'll let him know and tell him to message you. And a couple days later, Jared did. Yeah, it's me. I have a lot of memories of that day, not all good.

00:14:26 Speaker_08
Then I say, me too, I know this is a lot to hit you with out of the blue. I think you were the one most worried about me. You asked if I needed a towel. Was that you?"

00:14:36 Speaker_08
And he responds, yes, I remember getting a towel for your back, making sure the exit wound was clean. I remember staying there till the EMTs got there. It's like it happened yesterday. Wow.

00:14:49 Speaker_08
And then I said, I've been waiting three decades to thank you for that. In the chaos, your kindness remains with me. You don't know what people are made of until something like that happens. You are a good soul."

00:15:00 Speaker_08
And he says, Thank you, but even though weird shit happens, a life is a life. Your kind words mean a lot. I did have some flashbacks to that day. Honestly, I didn't remember your name because the chaos started 30 seconds after I met you.

00:15:22 Speaker_08
I can still see the fear in your eyes. I only did what I hoped someone would do for me." Then I said, I'm glad to be alive. I'm now 51. Jared says, I'm glad you were doing good. I will message you tomorrow. Just got off work and doing the dinner thing.

00:15:38 Speaker_08
Thank you for your kind words.

00:15:41 Speaker_07
But the next day, when Nick raised the prospect of actually speaking on the phone, Jared stopped answering. Eventually, Nick got another message from Jared's wife. Good morning, Nick.

00:15:53 Speaker_07
Jared knows it was a terrible experience for you and has no doubt you went through hell as a result, but it was traumatic for him as well. Over the last 30 years, he's dealt with it in his own way and he wants it to remain in his past.

00:16:06 Speaker_07
Again, thank you for your kindness and for thanking him after all these years. On the one hand, Nick is glad to have finally found Jared and been able to thank him. But on the other hand, he's a little disappointed. Their exchange was so brief.

00:16:22 Speaker_07
Whatever Nick was looking for, it seems like he hasn't found it. And for the next couple months, that's where it sits.

00:16:35 Speaker_07
But all the while, as it turns out, just as Nick had been wanting to speak with Jared, there's been someone badly wanting to speak with him. Someone who's always hovered just outside the story's frame.

00:16:46 Speaker_07
Her name doesn't appear in Nick's written account, nor does it show up in the police report. This, although she was present at the time of the shooting, if only as a voice on the other end of a phone line.

00:16:57 Speaker_06
The phone rang, and someone answers.

00:17:00 Speaker_07
And what I hear is I hear, At the time Nick was shot, he had a girlfriend, Maggie. Nick had suggested I reach out to Maggie as a way of getting more background on that time.

00:17:25 Speaker_07
But over the course of talking with Maggie, it became clear that she had more to offer than just background. Nick had first met Maggie back when she was 13 and he was 15.

00:17:39 Speaker_07
He noticed her at a friend's house, a spiky haired punk girl hunched over a Ouija board, trying to summon the spirit of Nancy Spungen. Maggie thought Nick was funny and a quote, champion grade dork.

00:17:52 Speaker_07
The two became friends, and several years later, when Maggie was 19, she and Nick started dating. To save money, they moved in together. It wasn't long after that that Nick set off on his ill-fated trip to Burley.

00:18:10 Speaker_07
On the evening of June 3rd, 1993, Maggie picked up the phone and called Nick at his room in the Budget Motel, and she happened to call at the exact moment the shot was fired.

00:18:21 Speaker_06
The phone rang and someone answers and I say, is Nick there? Is Nick available? And what I hear before this person responds is I hear, oh my God, I've been shot. Call 911, I've been shot. By moments I missed the kapow.

00:18:38 Speaker_06
So in my mind's eye, I have no context for this. It doesn't occur to me that someone in the room has actually been shot. I thought, well, maybe someone in the room was recounting a cop show, something like that.

00:18:52 Speaker_06
And they said, he can't come to the phone right now.

00:18:56 Speaker_07
Not only was Maggie there, sort of, at the budget motel, but she was also there beyond the point where Nick ends his story. She was there for his long recovery process and the months afterwards.

00:19:08 Speaker_06
Yes.

00:19:08 Speaker_07
And so you ended up kind of becoming the de facto caregiver?

00:19:14 Speaker_06
Yes, that's correct.

00:19:15 Speaker_07
I mean, you were just 19. That's a lot to take on.

00:19:18 Speaker_06
Um, yeah, that was a really, it was a tumultuous, it was a challenging time. And I, um, Nick had a lot of emotions. He was really, really fucking angry and, um, depressed. He took a lot of it out on me, um, and was not very kind to me at all.

00:19:39 Speaker_06
Um, at all.

00:19:43 Speaker_07
So while Nick was dealing with the trauma of being shot, Maggie was dealing with the trauma of dealing with Nick. She was the one to stand by him in the months to come. If anyone was truly sympathetic, truly a good soul, it was Maggie.

00:19:59 Speaker_07
Maggie and Nick broke up not long after the accident, but they've remained friends for all these years. Even so, over the last three decades, they've never talked about that time. Nick says it's easier not to. He wasn't the best version of himself.

00:20:14 Speaker_07
That makes a conversation with Maggie a harder one to have than the one with Jared, but it potentially makes it a more valuable conversation too. And Maggie says there's a lot she's never said to Nick that she's now finally ready to say.

00:20:32 Speaker_06
Hello, my old friend. Come on in.

00:20:36 Speaker_07
And so, we all meet up one summer afternoon at Maggie's townhouse.

00:20:40 Speaker_06
How are you feeling?

00:20:41 Speaker_07
I'm nervous.

00:20:44 Speaker_06
Yeah, understandably. Understandably.

00:20:46 Speaker_07
We head upstairs to Maggie's living room. Her place feels cozy and inviting. The walls are full of art.

00:20:53 Speaker_06
So I'm going to pour myself a glass of wine because I'm nervous.

00:20:56 Speaker_07
Good for you.

00:20:58 Speaker_06
So, Nick, do you want a beer?

00:20:59 Speaker_08
I would love a beer. I was, like, fantasizing that you would ask me that.

00:21:03 Speaker_07
Maggie and Nick sit beside each other on the couch, and Maggie begins the story of that day from her perspective.

00:21:10 Speaker_06
What I remember was that I called.

00:21:12 Speaker_07
When Maggie called the Budget Motel that day, she heard the chaos in the background. But it wasn't until later that night that she understood what had happened. Nick's boss called to tell her that Nick was in surgery for a gunshot wound.

00:21:25 Speaker_07
Maggie got in the car to drive the several hours to see him in the hospital.

00:21:30 Speaker_06
There was thunder and lightning, storms raging, and the windshield wipers, and the visibility was terrible, and I was blasting social distortion.

00:21:38 Speaker_06
It's the high plains in Idaho, you know, so it's like that sagebrushy, and not knowing, I remember driving, not knowing if you were going to be alive or dead when I got there.

00:21:55 Speaker_07
In the immediate aftermath, there was a rush of family that arrived to visit Nick in the hospital, and Maggie receded into the background.

00:22:02 Speaker_06
In a way, it was like everyone shows up while there's all of this fanfare, and then the day-to-day, everyone fucking dissipates.

00:22:10 Speaker_07
And that's what we're here to talk about. The time after everyone else had dissipated, and it was just Nick and Maggie. For a while, Nick was unable to leave the house.

00:22:20 Speaker_07
His dad was a pretty big stoner, and so he gifted Nick a huge bag of weed to help in his recovery.

00:22:26 Speaker_08
Every morning, I'd roll a doobie and watch the cartoon version of Beetlejuice or whatever, and the rest of the day just kind of had a nice float to it. It was helpful, but I also think I was kind of going stir crazy.

00:22:42 Speaker_07
As a part of his recovery, Nick was forced to wear a colostomy bag, an inflatable sack attached to his stomach. It was uncomfortable and cumbersome and made him feel old before his time. Nick had to lean on Maggie for help. I apologize for that.

00:22:57 Speaker_06
For having a colostomy?

00:22:58 Speaker_07
Yeah.

00:23:00 Speaker_06
Like the colostomy was secondary. On the one hand, yeah, it was really hard to wake up covered in shit sometimes. But like also what made it hard is then that you would be really mad. I'm trying to manage your anger. I'm trying to get me cleaned up.

00:23:14 Speaker_06
I've got to get to, like, I start at 7 a.m.

00:23:18 Speaker_07
It turns out that at the time, Maggie was in nursing school. So aside from the full-time job of taking care of Nick, she also had an internship at the hospital and was taking an overwhelming course load. It was a lot. Thanks for taking care of me.

00:23:33 Speaker_07
I'm sorry it sucked so bad. Although Nick says the words he's supposed to, thank you, I'm sorry, he still doesn't fully understand what he's saying thank you and sorry for. So Maggie tries to tell him.

00:23:46 Speaker_06
It was really shitty. You were really awful to me.

00:23:49 Speaker_08
I believe that.

00:23:55 Speaker_06
I'm feeling a lot of emotion. That was hard, dear.

00:24:02 Speaker_08
I was, you know, in awe of you for being so focused and driven and organized, and also sort of felt like, oh, this person is sort of out of my league because you were just... I couldn't really keep up with it.

00:24:14 Speaker_06
And I think you were mad at me about it.

00:24:16 Speaker_08
Yeah.

00:24:17 Speaker_07
That's probably true. Maggie sits with her legs tucked up on the couch, looking right at Nick. Nick stares ahead at the wall.

00:24:26 Speaker_06
You know, like, you were smoking weed in that back room all day, watching TV. And you, like, you wouldn't even open the blinds. You'd sit there in the dark. Like, it'd be, you know, like, sunny. We weren't compatible, but we were stuck. You were sick.

00:24:46 Speaker_06
You were so fucking depressed and angry at the world.

00:24:52 Speaker_07
Nick was angry at Andy and Israel for abandoning him. He was angry at himself for taking the blame with the cops. He was angry that he was in this situation at all, bedridden and confronting his mortality at 21. He directed all of that at Maggie.

00:25:07 Speaker_08
I wasn't such a great person as far as I think there was a lot of rage.

00:25:14 Speaker_06
Yeah. Do you remember what you would say?

00:25:18 Speaker_08
I don't remember the exact things I would say, but I can just kind of imagine being in blind rage and just saying awful shit.

00:25:29 Speaker_06
I feel really self-conscious even saying it, like out loud.

00:25:32 Speaker_08
Yeah.

00:25:35 Speaker_06
Or sometimes you would talk, I would say, how you fantasized killing me.

00:25:39 Speaker_02
Really?

00:25:39 Speaker_06
Mm-hmm. I don't remember if it was your birthday, or if there was something that was good, and I remember I made you a bunch of cupcakes. And you were so fucking mad I made you goddamn cupcakes. Like, why would you want cupcakes?

00:25:56 Speaker_06
And you fucking smashed them. Really?

00:26:03 Speaker_08
I don't remember that.

00:26:06 Speaker_07
The first time I read Nick's account of that day, I was struck by his ability to recall the minutia. Given that, it's surprising to hear what he doesn't remember.

00:26:15 Speaker_06
I didn't think you would ever do anything on it, but I also lived with just a lot of fucking rage and hate in my direction. And oddly, I understood how and why you were so mad. And so in my own fucked up way, I gave it a pass.

00:26:36 Speaker_07
Nick might've forgotten some of the painful details, but he does remember the moment he crossed the line. Do you remember what that was?

00:26:42 Speaker_04
I do. Oh, tell me about that.

00:26:44 Speaker_08
We were in a fight, and it was a raging moment. I don't know what the fuck it was about, but I pushed you up against the wall, and I had my hand sort of around your throat.

00:26:56 Speaker_06
Oh, yeah.

00:26:56 Speaker_07
You remember this?

00:26:57 Speaker_06
I do now.

00:26:59 Speaker_07
For the first time, Maggie breaks eye contact. She covers her face with her hands.

00:27:05 Speaker_05
Why did I allow this shit?

00:27:07 Speaker_08
Well, you said, get the fuck out right now, I think is what you said. And I agreed with you.

00:27:14 Speaker_06
It reads like domestic violence.

00:27:16 Speaker_08
I know. It dawned on me like, wow, this is really fucked up. What am I doing? And you were looking at me like, yeah, what the fuck are you doing? Do you remember that?

00:27:33 Speaker_04
And I had so much empathy for what you were going through.

00:27:36 Speaker_06
And as I sit here hearing that now, it's like, where was I, my fucking empathy for myself? Who looked out for me and why wasn't I looking out for me? That's this fucking recurring pattern that just like lived out.

00:27:52 Speaker_06
And I think that's why I'm feeling all the things that I'm feeling that it's like, holy fuck, this is just another iteration of something that was a part of this, my own story for, Yours.

00:28:09 Speaker_08
Maggie, I'm sorry. I don't know, I just... I'm honest when I say that, you know, reflecting as much as I cared to over the years, it dawned on me more and more the load of shit that you dealt with. But, that said,

00:28:32 Speaker_08
It wasn't just until a few minutes ago that I realized how fucking heavy that was. So that was hard to hear, but necessary. And I can't, I'm not defensive because it's true. I know, I know that for a fact. It was true.

00:28:53 Speaker_08
I don't want to remember myself that way, of how ugly I became. I really want to flip this story around to where I'm a better person than I was.

00:29:03 Speaker_07
The way Nick has always framed the story around that day at the Budget Motel, he was the victim. A horrible, painful thing happened to him through no fault of his own. He could have been paralyzed. He could have died.

00:29:16 Speaker_07
But when you widen the story's frame beyond the motel room to include Nick's recovery, to include Maggie, it isn't so simple.

00:29:24 Speaker_06
I, on some level, knew I was just in proximity and I was the safest person and I cared about you. I still care about you.

00:29:34 Speaker_08
I care about you. Yeah, yeah.

00:29:40 Speaker_04
You were so angry.

00:29:41 Speaker_08
I still am. It's not just the 1993 gunshot that made me pissed off about everything. It's just everything going back to 1973.

00:30:00 Speaker_06
I remember even before we were in a relationship, you so wanted to connect with your dad.

00:30:08 Speaker_07
Throughout Nick's childhood, his father was a largely absent figure. He looked at Nick as an impediment to the things he really wanted to do. Party, drink, have a good time.

00:30:18 Speaker_06
you would talk about how like your dad would be in the bar and you were a little kid. And so like, and it's your time to be with your dad. And so you'd be sitting in the van for hours.

00:30:30 Speaker_08
Just wait for me in the car. If you see a cop or whatever with a flashlight or something, don't be crying. Don't be crying.

00:30:37 Speaker_08
Okay, Dad, I promise I won't be crying if a cop, like, shines a flashlight in here wondering what I'm doing alone and waiting outside a bar.

00:30:46 Speaker_04
Okay, so fast forward to being shot.

00:30:51 Speaker_06
And not letting the cops know what's, like, just sucking it up.

00:30:55 Speaker_08
That's a lesson I learned early on.

00:31:01 Speaker_07
Nick had been taught early on how to shield others from blame. It makes sense that he, of all people, would have been quick to tell the police he shot himself.

00:31:09 Speaker_08
I was just doing what you told me to, Dad.

00:31:14 Speaker_07
It's hard to get someone who's ignoring you to even notice your anger. Whether it's the guy who shot you in a motel room or the man who was supposed to be raising you.

00:31:22 Speaker_07
And so you vent your anger on the people you think might actually be able to absorb it, even if they're not the ones who deserve it. That's not an excuse, but it's an explanation.

00:31:39 Speaker_07
When Nick first reached out for my help in finding Jared, his dad had died only a few weeks earlier. Hearing all this, that timing starts to feel like more than just a coincidence. Nick's relationship with his dad is tied up with that day.

00:31:53 Speaker_07
Nick brings up that memory of his dad showing up at the hospital right after he was shot.

00:31:58 Speaker_08
I think you had called him or whatever, so he drove... I think I got ahold of him at the bar. Wow. So he drove... Drunk. Drunk, probably two hours, and...

00:32:10 Speaker_08
There's a couple moments in my life with dad where I felt like we were locked in and it wasn't just me waiting around to get his attention. And that was one of those moments when- You got his attention. Yeah. And I could tell he was crying.

00:32:26 Speaker_04
Mm-hmm. He was so upset.

00:32:33 Speaker_08
So that's just like one of those one times where I was the focus of his attention.

00:32:47 Speaker_06
You're one of the very few people from that time in my life where I kept a thread, any kind of thread. If it were somebody else, we wouldn't be sitting here in my living room.

00:32:59 Speaker_08
I'm so honored by that. Thank you. Because I don't know if I deserved it. Like, you are the hero of this story.

00:33:16 Speaker_07
The work of being a person is to recognize patterns in ourselves, to see the things we do over and over, and to try to create new patterns, cast ourselves in new roles, and not just the role of hero.

00:33:28 Speaker_07
Nick, for his part, is working to be more aware of his anger.

00:33:32 Speaker_08
Shielding my loved ones from it, how do I channel it without hurting people near me? What I don't often realize is how much it radiates and fucking penetrates other people.

00:33:44 Speaker_07
As for Maggie, she wants to protect herself, to set up her life so that she's the priority.

00:33:49 Speaker_05
I'm trying to. I'm almost 50. For the first time in my life, I'm trying to. Yeah, yeah.

00:34:00 Speaker_07
This is the story of a man who was shot. I've just told you one version, a different one than if Nick were telling it himself, a different one than if he tried to lay it all out again 20 years down the road. But for now, Nick and Maggie hug.

00:34:16 Speaker_07
And while I pack up to head back to my hotel, the two of them go out to sit on Maggie's balcony to enjoy the rest of the day, to soak in what they can before the sun goes down.

00:34:57 Speaker_02
Now that the furniture's returning to its goodwill home Now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damage deposit Take this moment to decide If we meant it, if we tried from things that accidentally touched.

00:35:33 Speaker_07
This episode of Heavyweight was produced by senior producer Kalilah Holt and me, Jonathan Goldstein, along with Phoebe Flanagan. Our supervising producer is Stevie Lane. Production assistance by Mohini McGowker. Editorial guidance from Emily Condon.

00:35:47 Speaker_07
Special thanks to Annie Minoff, Laura Morris, Lauren Silverman, and Jackie Cohen. Bobby Lord mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K. Samson, Michael Hurst, Katie Condon, Blue Dot Sessions, and Bobby Lord.

00:36:00 Speaker_07
Additional music credits can be found on our website, gimletmedia.com slash heavyweight. Our theme song is by The Weaker Thans, courtesy of Epitaph Records. Heavyweight is a Spotify original podcast.

00:36:12 Speaker_07
I'd also like to give a shout out to another Spotify podcast that we love around here on the show. It's called Science Versus. The host, Wendy Zuckerman, is so much fun to listen to, and I always end up learning so much.

00:36:23 Speaker_07
Each episode, she tackles a different myth or fad like vaping or hypnosis, alternative milks, and she dives into the science to deliver up the facts. Science Versus is available anywhere you listen to podcasts, and you really should check it out.

00:36:38 Speaker_07
You should also follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight, on Instagram at Heavyweight Podcast, or email us at heavyweight at gimletmedia.com. You can also follow our show on Spotify and tap the bell to receive notifications when new episodes drop.

00:36:52 Speaker_07
We'll be right back with a new episode just after Thanksgiving. Happy Toiki Day.