the grace-arithmetic: there but for the grace of God
Gately’s individual counselor Gene M. brought Gately the news and invited him to see the methedrine addict’s demise as a clear case of There But For the Grace of God Goeth D. W. Gately.
Context
The counselor's arithmetic of survival, applied to a death: the New Bedford addict Gately once broke curfew with picks up the needle, gets discharged, and is dead in a Framingham bunk within weeks — and Gene M. hands Gately the news as a lesson in how thin the line is that keeps him on the sober side of the same fate. Recovery taught through the corpse of the person you might have been.