Tied Together By a Tragic Bond

Six days earlier, Bill had bought Nick his truck, then issued a warning: If he caught Nick drinking, he would take away the keys. Before Nick left for work, Bill reminded him. "You just can't drink, because you won't get away with it," Bill told him. "Billy didn't get away with it. Some kids will. I don't know why, but you won't. You're messing with God."

* * *

An Unfortunately Familiar Scene

Early the next morning, for the second time, Bill walked into a hospital room occupied by one of his sons, fearing he could die.

Nick had a broken back and a mangled shoulder. His head had swelled to nearly double its normal size and he was covered in cuts. But he was breathing and talking.

Still, Bill felt an eerie familiarity. Billy's friends and Augustine, still close to the Gaineses, huddled outside in the hallway. A breathing tube snaked inside Nick's mouth. With his eyes shut and head resting on a pillow, Nick's face resembled Billy's.

"He wanted to be so much like his brother," Bill thought, "that he's in here like him."

Head trauma erased every detail of the party for Nick. He didn't know why he was in the hospital. He didn't know how much alcohol he'd consumed. He didn't know his truck jackknifed into a tree. He didn't know that Murray had been sitting next to him when it did.

He didn't know Murray was dead.

Doctors said Nick was semi-comatose. A doctor asked him if he knew what year it was. Nick answered instantly, "2003." The year Billy died.

The next day, he pulled on Gibbons's arm, demanding she help him escape. She explained he needed to stay in the hospital.

"June," Nick said, "you need to go die."

"Why?" Gibbons asked.

"Because we need to die together."

"Nick, we don't need to die together."

"Why not? Everyone else is dead."

"Who's dead?"

"Billy. Tyler."

* * *

'I Lost the Will to Fight'

Nick returned home from the hospital 15 days after the crash. Doctors had inserted rods into his right shoulder and stapled his back together. When Kim and Gibbons looked at him, they said they peered into vacant eyes.

His therapy called for daily walks, and he ambled past Murray's home each day for nearly a week. One day, he resolved he would go inside.

Nick planned exactly what he would say on the walk there. He paced up the driveway and knocked on the door. Renee Murray, Tyler's mother, answered. She hugged him. They cried. Nick forgot what he was going to say. They spoke for 20 minutes. Renee told Nick she forgave him. "It meant a lot," he said.

Nick signed up for classes at Frederick Community College in spring 2007. Never an attentive student, Nick focused like he never had before. After Nick had the staples removed from his back, Gibbons rushed him to FCC so he wouldn't be late for class. When they arrived, it had been canceled. Gibbons turned her car around.

"Go north on 15," Nick told her.

"We're going the wrong way," Gibbons replied.

Nick gave more directions until Gibbons realized where they were going: She was driving to the cemetery where Billy was buried. They stood at Billy's grave. Nick held Gibbons's hand and told her for the first time the complete story about Billy's death. His eyes grew watery.

Gibbons walked back to the car and left Nick alone.

Nick originally had been charged with manslaughter by automobile, homicide while under the influence, homicide while impaired and driving under the influence. Police had estimated Nick's blood-alcohol content at .09 percent at the time of his crash. If found guilty, he faced 10 years in prison. A month before his hearing, he accepted a plea bargain.

His parents and girlfriend gathered around Nick the night before his hearing. Bill, Kim and Gibbons told him he could lean on faith. His response frightened them.

"Why should I believe in God?" he asked. "What's God done for me?"

Nick's hearing, on Feb. 7, lasted one hour. The judge accepted Nick's guilty plea to negligent homicide and sentenced him to 18 months in a work-release program. Bailiffs took Nick's tie and shoes and escorted him to the Frederick County Adult Detention Center. His parents watched him cry as he walked out of the courtroom. It was the first time Gibbons had seen Nick cry.

Nick made one final request before he entered his jail cell. He asked for a Bible. He said he has read it every day, underlining passages with a pen.

He is allowed to leave jail to take classes at FCC and work at the movie theater, where he recently was promoted to supervisor.

At the jail, he attends anger management and Project 103, an alcohol and drug abuse class.

He cherishes the freedom his work-release program allows. He tells Kim he loves her; he never said it before.

In a few weeks, Nick will receive his first parole hearing. He has read Gibbons a list of plans for the period after his release: He wants to take her grocery shopping, walk his dog Zeus, eat at the Melting Pot for their anniversary dinner, visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and go bowling.

"I'm going to be 19, but I feel like I'm 50," said Nick, who was interviewed for this story at the jail's work-release center. "I feel like I'm way too old to fight. I lost the will to fight. It's a relief. I don't have to be tough all the time. I don't feel like I have to prove myself."

Nick no longer allows his mind to wander into the hypothetical -- What if Billy had gone to the University of Virginia? What if he and Murray never left the party? -- or the anger to return.

"I deal with all of those thoughts just by staying in reality," Nick said. "I can't live my life thinking 'What if? What if?' all the time. I just can't. Look where I'm at. It happened. I've been here five months. Tyler Murray's been dead over a year, Billy five years. I can't be fantasizing about what could be. It's me and the world.

"I do feel like God has a plan for everybody. And even though mine has sucked so far, He has a plan. Something good is going to come out of it."