As I sit here writing this, it is one in the morning. It’s raining and I’ve turned out all the lights so that I can stare out the bedroom window at the falling water. Ever since I was a child, that’s something that I’ve always done whenever it’s rained. I used to hope that, on a cold night, I would somehow observe the exact moment that rain turned into snow. It’s supposed to get below freezing tonight, so maybe I’ll get lucky.

I’m also thinking about my friend John and wondering if he can hear the rain falling tonight. John is starting a two and a half year federal prison sentence. He was sentenced on November 1^st. I still can’t bring myself to accept the idea of John in prison and, if you knew him like I knew him, you wouldn’t be able to accept it either. Up until earlier this year, John had never even gotten a speeding ticket. John’s not a criminal. Instead, he’s just someone who fell in love.

I was twenty when I first met John. He was 42 and a doctor. He was the father of my friend, Joey. (That was short for Joanne, a name that she often claimed to hate. She would always introduce herself by telling people that her name was Joey and that they could call her Joey.) Joey and I were both students at UNT and, the first few times that I met John, it would just be on one of the weekends when he would up to the school to visit his daughter. John was the type who would not only take his daughter out to dinner but who would usually insist on taking along all of her friends too.

My first impression of John was that he was the type of Dad who you would expect to find in a family sitcom. He was always friendly and just a little bit dorky. He had an endless supply of “dad jokes.” Joey always rolled her eyes whenever he would make one of his bad jokes but, at the same time, they obviously had a close relationship. As someone who basically grew up without a father (he was around but rarely sober and never supportive), I was always a little jealous of Joey and her dad. I looked at them and I saw the type of relationship that I always wished I could have with my father.

Despite the fact that John was 22 years older than me, we discovered that we both had quite a bit in common. We both loved history. Politically, we were both independents who disliked the government. Perhaps even more importantly, we both loved movies. I forget why exactly John and I first exchanged email addresses but soon, he was regularly emailing me at 1 in the morning, telling me about an idea that he had just had for a movie or occasionally just raving about something he had seen on TV. Sometimes, he would just send me little notes to encourage me to keep writing and to believe in myself.

Some of my friends thought that it was weird that John was emailing me but I always understood that there weren’t any sinister or ulterior motives behind his emails. That’s just who John was. He liked to express his thoughts and he knew that I was a willing and nonjudgmental audience. He also knew that, emotionally, I was a lot more fragile that I let most people see. Often times, his emails were just his way of letting me know that I would always have someone I could lean on when things got tough. Sometimes, with Joey being as mature as she was, I felt like John was giving me the fatherly advice that he otherwise would have given her.

Over the years, we stayed in contact. Even after I graduated college and Joey moved out of Texas, John and I remained friends. When my mom passed, he was there for me. He could always tell whether or not I was being responsible with my meds or if I was having a manic episode. It helped that, even though he was a doctor, he wasn’t my doctor. He understood what I was going through but, at the same time, I didn’t have to worry about him experimenting with my meds or anything like that.

Sometimes, John and I would go weeks or even months without talking. When he was going through a nasty divorce, we stopped talking because we knew his wife would probably try to insinuate that there was more to our relationship than just a simple friendship. Other times, he would simply tell me that he was going to be gone for a while but he would always reassure me that I would be in his thoughts. Inevitably, John would always return with hundreds of new insights and ideas. After every school shooting, he would write about how the medical establishment didn’t understand how to deal with behavioral disorders and how innocent lives were being lost as a result.

When I started reviewing movies, John was there from the beginning, encouraging me and leaving comments under my reviews. That was the way John was. He was generous and he genuinely wanted everyone he knew to be happy. He knew that I enjoyed writing film reviews so, naturally, he was going to do everything he could to encourage me. “Keep up the good work!” he would say and it would bring tears to my eyes whenever I read those words because I knew he meant them.

I discovered that the most dangerous thing that I could do with John was to say that I wanted something. In college, he once overhead me tell Joey that I liked a dress that cost $380 and he immediately got out his credit card and purchased it for me. Later, when I posted a list of 25 obscure films that I hoped to see someday, John immediately went on Amazon and purchased every single one of them for me. He would send me CDs of bands that he had listened to when he was my age. Every birthday and every Christmas, he would purchase every latest film book and send them to me. He would send me $500 Amazon Gift Cards and every time I told him that he didn’t have to do, he would tell me to buy something nice. John never asked for anything in return. For him, making other people happy was reward enough.

Four years ago, John hired an office manager named Misty. Misty was only a year older than me. We were both Texas girls. As I discovered later, we were both also bipolar. With so much in common, I guess it shouldn’t have come as any surprise that Misty and I disliked each other from the first moment we met. Misty never smiled when I came in the office and, as an administrative professional myself, I could never overlook just how disorganized Misty’s desk always seemed to be. Whenever I asked her if John was free to talk, she would sarcastically reply with something like, “I’m sure he’ll want to talk to you.” A few weeks after she started working for him, John and Misty started dating. I got one of John’s emails in which he announced that he probably wouldn’t be around as much. At the time, I didn’t think much of it. That was just John being John.

Several months passed and I didn’t hear anything from John. When Joey came down to visit her mother, we went to lunch and Joey told me that 1) John was dating Misty and that 2) Joey disliked Misty even more than I disliked Misty. Two months later, when John finally did send me another email, he apologized for not writing sooner but made a vague reference to “drama” and said that the last few months of his life would make a good Lifetime movie. He also said that Misty was no longer working for him. He didn’t go into any details about why Misty wasn’t working for him but I figured I could read behind the lines enough to figure it all out on my own.

Two months later, when I dropped by John’s office (as I now believed it was safe for me to do so), I was stunned to find Misty again working as his office manager. As John explained it, he had rehired her and they were once again a couple.

After that, John and I talked less frequently. He would still email me with his movie ideas. He would still read my reviews and leave supportive comments. Last year, we were both obsessed with Twin Peaks: The Return. But yet things definitely felt different. It was hard to explain. Some of the old spark was missing.

Last June, when I first heard that the police had arrested John as he was leaving his office for the night, I was as shocked as anyone. Apparently, the cops had caught Misty selling thousands of dollars worth of amphetamines. She had told them that John wrote the prescriptions for her and then she sold the medicine on the street. When John was arrested, he confessed to writing the prescriptions but he also said that he never received any money from the drug sales. He did what he did because he was in love.

From the minute I heard his story, I knew he was telling the truth because, again, that was John being John. When he had first learned that Misty was selling her prescription on the street, he had fired her as his office manager and kicked her out of his life. But Misty had come back to him and begged him to forgive her and, of course, John had. John had a deep desire to help everyone he met, regardless of whether they deserved that help or not. I could imagine that, month after month, John had told himself that he had written his final prescription for Misty and I could just as easily imagine Misty begging him to write her just one last prescription and promising that she would get help.

In September, John pled guilty. When the state medical board met to decide whether to revoke his license, John didn’t even go to the hearing. He lost his license to practice medicine. Despite the fact that even the prosecution admitted that John hadn’t profited from Misty’s actions in any way, he lost his freedom as well. Up until John was sentenced on November 1^st, both John and his attorney felt that he would get probation. After all, he had no previous criminal record. He had made a terrible mistake but he would never again be able to practice medicine. As he told the judge at sentencing, “I’ve lost everything that I ever worked for.”

Instead, the judge sentenced John to spend the next 30 months in a federal prison. The judge said that he understood John didn’t act out of malice but he said that, because of the opioid crisis, he couldn’t allow John to leave with a mere slap on the wrist. John was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs.

I sit here, listening to rain, and all I can think about is that John is going to spend two birthdays in prison. He’s going to miss two holiday seasons. He’ll spend Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s in a cell. When John is released, he’ll have a criminal record and apparently, some of his former patients are already talking about filing a lawsuit against him. John dedicated his life to his patients but, for many people, money will always be favored over gratitude.

But what’s really messed up isn’t that John was charged but that Misty wasn’t. Because Misty identified her supplier, she escaped prosecution. Last night, I checked into Facebook and I found a message from Misty, wanting to know if I could pass on a message and her address to John. I blocked her and logged out.

For all the talk of fighting the opioid crisis, I’m not sure that sending a foolish but kind-hearted man to prison is the solution. I’m going to miss my friend. As I sit here finishing this up, I take comfort only in hope that, no matter where we are tonight, we both still hear the same rain.