Joelle van Dyne enters the House post-overdose; the White Flag AA meeting

pivotal · Sun 8 Nov YDAU (2009), Interdependence Day

• When: Sunday 8 Nov YDAU (2009), Interdependence Day; Joelle's intake 8 Nov A.M. (n.134), the meeting from ~2000h
• What: Two thread beats in one scene. (1) Brand-new veiled resident Joelle van Dyne is delivered into the House two days after her near-fatal freebase overdose — leap-frogged onto the waiting list by the B&W E.R. physician who had treated Pat Montesian's own stroke and sits on Ennet House's board (event 5); on her first three days she is on mandatory nonpunitive House Restriction (n.134). See the Joelle timeline for her biography. (2) The book's great anatomy of Boston AA, staged at the White Flag Group's Sunday speaker meeting — the institutional spine the residency runs on, since a resident must be seen at a designated AA or NA meeting every single night or be discharged (074), Staff-escorted and coached to sit up front and Identify rather than Compare. The scene lays in the whole machinery — Commitments, "Giving It Away," the second-person Substance-career terminating at the cliff-edge "Bottom," the Crocodiles, Gately's smily-faced-Sergeant-at-Arms dream. At the raffle-break Joelle's eerily familiar voice dismantles "Here But For the Grace of God," and Gately, with nothing in his head to reply, feels the old cage-panic.