The A.D.A.'s Ninth Step: he drops the assault charge and comes to ask Gately's forgiveness

pivotal · ~20 Nov YDAU (2009)

• When: ~20 Nov YDAU (2009), during his three days off and on at St. Elizabeth's
• What: The fortnight's legal thread resolved by the program's own logic. The remorseless A.D.A. who has hunted Gately for years — the man of the toothbrush-Polaroid revenge story (See the Gately timeline; the tale itself lies outside this roster, raws 016/060) — sits in Pat Montesian's office, rotating his good dress Stetson, and confesses he is himself in a 12-Step fellowship (Phob-Comp-Anon, via Choices) working the Ninth Step over his hatred of Gately and his enmeshment with his wife Tooty's oral-dental-hygienic torment. He has already secretly tossed the file on the Canadian assault case — Gately will "two-step out of" at the very least a probation-violation and prosecution, which Pat can tell no one — but the harder half remains: to walk into the hospital room, extend his hand, and ask forgiveness of the man he believes evil. He has sat outside the room saying the Serenity Prayer and cannot go in. He hasn't been willing. "Yet." Pat receives it all in counselor's formulas; the mismatched socks under his hiked pantcuffs speak to her heart most. The institution's gravest exposure closes not by its own efforts but by the enemy's conversion to the recovery logic the House is built on.