Chapter Sixteen - The Cost

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Cost

TRY TO COUNT the dead.

You won’t.

Because they don’t all die in ways that make headlines.

Some go out with needles. Others with bottles. Some slip under quietly. From respiratory failure, from collapsed veins, from lonely rooms where no one checks anymore.

But that’s not the full number.

The cost includes the mother who pawned everything for a fix. The father who never came back from a surgery. The baby born screaming in withdrawal. The student who overdosed at a party and turned into a warning. The county morgue that ran out of refrigeration space. The cop who carries Narcan instead of a gun. The pharmacist who stopped asking questions. The judge who keeps seeing the same faces, over and over.

You don’t count this in dollars.
You don’t count it in settlements.

You count it in years lost, families broken, and futures erased.

You count it in the silence that followed.

Because no one went to prison.

No Sackler stood trial.
No Purdue executive was cuffed.
No apology, no admission, no reckoning.

Just billions in profit.
And a country hollowed out.

We were told it was medicine.
We were told it was safe.
We were told it was progress.

What we got was chemical dependence. Industrialized, legalized, and incentivized.

This wasn’t a mistake.
It was a decision.

And the cost is still climbing.