“Would you be quiet already? They’re going to find me!”
I jerked my head around quickly and studied the garage. It was empty and stifling from cigarette smoke. I needed to get her out of there. I lowered my voice and got close enough to smell her breath. Nothing. “Mom,” I began cautiously. “Can we please go inside and talk about this? You’re scaring me.”
“If we go in the house, they’ll see us through the front window.”
“Who will see us?” I asked.
“The three federal agents who’ve been following me and drugging me.” She emphatically held up a ziplock bag filled with bottles of her prescriptions for Paxil and Ambien.
My mother’s daily routine consisted of opening a can of Diet Coke and watching the
Today
show in the morning,
General Hospital
and
Ellen
in the afternoon, and whatever was on CBS in the evening. If she felt adventurous, she might leave the
house and pick up Subway for lunch. On Sundays, she did her weekly trip to the grocery where she’d stock up on enough bread, Muenster cheese, and Diet Coke for the week. The only drugs in the house were her antidepressants, sleep aids, Tums, and Advil. I had years of experience dealing with drunkenness, but insanity was beyond me.
I shook my head in disbelief. She wouldn’t stop moving. She was pacing the floor of the garage and shooing me to go back inside. I stood there for two minutes before running in the house and calling Grace.
“Thank God you’re home,” I said, nearly panting. “My mom has lost it. Something is seriously wrong with her. Can you please come help me?”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
By the time Grace arrived, I’d been able to lure my mom back into the house by promising to close the blinds and lock the doors, and by agreeing not to touch the bag she was cradling. Grace and I spent over an hour trying to reason with her.
“Should we call the paramedics?” Grace asked me.
“I’m afraid she’ll completely self-destruct if strangers come in here and try to take her away. We need to find another way to get her to the hospital,” I said, and then it came to me.
“Mom, I have an idea,” I said, following her as she walked in circles around the house, pausing only to light a cigarette and peek behind the curtains. “We need to get you to the hospital and have you tested so that we can find out what the agents are drugging you with.”
She agreed.
As soon as the three of us walked into Evanston Hospital, my mother started telling anyone who would listen, “They’re trying to drug me.”
It was enough to make the nurse at patient check-in look up from her computer screen. “These two are drugging you?” the nurse asked, pointing at Grace and me.
“No, the federal agents. They came into my house and replaced my pills with drugs. They even stole clothes from me and rearranged my pantry.”
The nurse shifted her gaze to me. I pointed my right index finger toward my head and began turning it in circles.
“Okay, ma’am, let’s get you into a room.”
The three of us were taken to a room and waited forty-five minutes for a doctor to come in and observe her. It took him only fifteen minutes to determine that she was having a nervous breakdown and needed to be admitted to the psych ward for observation. He brought Grace and me into the hallway to talk to us.
“We’d like to admit her and get her off the drugs she’s carrying around, and on some antipsychotic medication as soon as possible,” he said.
“Okay,” I mumbled as Grace wrapped an arm around my shoulder.
“The only thing is that we can’t keep her against her will, so we’re going to need to get her to admit that she’s either a harm to herself or to others.”
I could see her through the narrow window in the door, waving her hands around while talking to one of the nurses. She looked delicate and scared, and my heart broke for her.
“Do you want me to talk to her?” I asked. “I think she’d be more comfortable with me.”
“No, no, our staff will sit down with her. Once she admits she’s in danger of hurting herself or someone else, then they can sign the papers on her behalf.”
I nodded and followed him back into the room.
When I looked into her eyes, I realized she was not going to go down without a fight. The psych team’s questions were very pointed and direct, but she danced around all of them like a prima ballerina.
“Have you had suicidal thoughts?” they’d ask.
“Well, wouldn’t you if you were being drugged against your will?” she answered.
“Are you depressed?”
“Wouldn’t you be depressed if you were being followed and people were breaking into your home?” she’d say.
“Have you thought about killing yourself?”
“I’m a good Christian woman. I would never do something like that.”
Four hours later, they’d won. She was beaten down and exhausted and begging for a cigarette. She eventually caved and admitted she’d had thoughts of suicide, and once she realized they had goaded her into saying it, she was
pissed
. I burst into tears as they took her away to the psych ward, kicking and screaming obscenities at me and everyone around her. To say it was the lowest point of my life would be a grandiose understatement.
Grace took me home and made some coffee while I sat on the couch in silence and watched raindrops race down the window.
“Do you want me to have my mom come over?” she asked.
I shook my head no.
When it came to our families, Grace and I had one thing in common: a nonexistent relationship with our biological fathers. But that’s where the similarities ended. Grace’s mother and her husband, who’d adopted Grace as a baby, were madly in love and functioned admirably as a nuclear family with no bombs. Grace’s family had also become the closest thing I had to loving relatives in this world.
“How did this happen?” Tucked next to me on the couch, she finally had a chance to ask me.
I sniffed. “She was hiding on the floor of the garage like a frightened kitten when I got back from the lake. Who knows how long she’d been there or would’ve been there had I not found her today. She sprung into defensive mode as soon as she realized she wasn’t alone.”
Grace tilted her head to the side. “Had she been drinking?”
“No, I don’t think so. I didn’t smell any alcohol on her. And I did a quick check around the house and can’t find any bottles. That’s the worst part about it. I think she’s sober.”
Grace and I had met in my first week after I moved here from Florida. I’d been jogging past her house one day as she was shooting hoops in her driveway. I introduced myself as the new girl, and she asked me if anyone had ever told me I looked like Julia Roberts. I said yes, but not very often. We bonded over our height and our biological fathers’ absence. Since mom and I had moved to Glenview right after her stint in rehab, Grace was aware of what my mom and I had gone through. I opened up to Grace early on about what most of my childhood had been like, and how I was comfortable talking about it, but not comfortable living with it any longer. On more than one occasion, I had packed a bag for the weekend and taken refuge at Grace’s house. There were always family movie nights on Fridays and family dinners on Sundays. Her parents had what seemed to me to be the perfect relationship; yet, spending time with them didn’t make me jealous, it made me motivated.
“I’m so sorry you had to come home to this.”
“Me too,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “I’m supposed to move into my own apartment tomorrow. How can I possibly leave her alone at a time like this?”
“You will; you have to, Chloe. Your new place isn’t far away, and it’s even closer to the hospital than you are now.”
“I can’t just abandon her.”
“She’d want you to stick to your plans.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t convinced.
“I mean it, you go move your stuff and check on her tomorrow when you’re done. Do you want me to get Patch and his friends to help you? I’ll get my mom to pay him, and he won’t be able to say no. My little brother can’t resist cash.”
“No, thanks, I’m fine. It’s a furnished studio, so I really just have a few boxes and suitcases.”
“Okay, let me know if you change your mind.” Grace leaned in, gave me a squeeze, and then sat back. “So tell me about your summer up at Camp Reed. From the few texts you sent me, it sounds like you had a great time,” she chided me. “I’m dying to hear about everything.”
I had only given Grace a glimpse into what had happened between Tyler and me for two reasons. One, I didn’t want to give her all the details via text, and two, I was worried about getting ahead of myself and making too big a deal about it. Once he came back with Sadie, I was relieved I hadn’t told Grace every sordid detail.
But now, sitting with my best friend, my sister, my family, I wanted her to know. “I think I’m in trouble.”
She leaned back and cocked her head. “Why, what have you done?”
“Fallen for the wrong guy.”
I spent the next half hour picking chipped nail polish off my fingernails and bringing Grace up to speed on what had transpired at the lake. That Tyler and I had been left alone for a few days and that he’d kissed me. Then he disappeared and returned with Sadie,
only to confess that he had feelings for me while she was asleep in the house. Finally, I told Grace how he eventually took Sadie home and came back to surprise me with sex in the yard. More than once. Hell, Grace and I used to joke about the crush I had on him. My one-sided schoolgirl fascination. As I told her the whole story, it occurred to me what a cliché it all was. By the time I was done talking, Grace’s expression was more frightened than mine had been when Dixie “Maleficent” Reed had busted me swapping spit with her prince.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked.
Her mouth was agape. “I just can’t believe it.”
“I know, right?” I said, motioning like I was about to high-five her and celebrate my one-night stand, but she left me hanging. “Grace, it’s fine.”
“It’s really not. He shouldn’t have taken advantage of you like that.”
“Whoa, he did
not
take advantage of me. I wanted him, you know I did.”
“But he should know better,” she said.
“Also, he has a girlfriend,” I said and burst out laughing at the absurdity of it all.
She stared at me like I was huddled in the corner of the garage, hiding from federal agents. “I really don’t know why you’re laughing, Chloe. He took advantage of you, and I don’t like it one bit.”
I wished she would stop saying that, so I cleared my throat and went in for the kill. The one thing she hated more than anything. The one statement that always sent her flailing into back-pedal mode. “I shouldn’t have told you,” I said and stood up.
She shot up after me. “I’m sorry, but you know I’m only looking out for you, and he seems like a real shit. I can see in your face that you’re completely smitten with him.”
She was right.
“Please, Chloe, look what you just came home to. You have so much going on, and you start law school in a couple weeks…I just don’t want to see you get hurt. You know that,” Grace said and then gave me a good long hug.
“Love you,” I said.
“You too.”
The next day I moved my stuff into my new apartment. I’d barely set down the last box when I had to dash out to meet with my mom’s doctor at the hospital. I hadn’t had anything to eat because nothing could fill the hole in my stomach.
“How is she?” I asked, sitting across from him at his desk.
“She’s doing much better. We gave her some Seroquel, which is typically used to treat symptoms of schizophrenia, although we’ve diagnosed her with delusional disorder.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Patients who have delusional disorder appear to function normally, but make unusually odd choices based on their delusional beliefs.”
“Such as spending an afternoon on the garage floor to avoid imaginary law enforcement? Or whispering to the women at the dry cleaners not to wait on the man behind her in line because he’s one of them? Or hanging bed sheets over every window even though the blinds are already closed?”
“Precisely,” he said. “We’re going to adjust her medication for the next few days to see where she functions best, but then she will be free to go.”
I let out a breath that I’d been holding in. I was so relieved to hear that she’d be going home soon. Mom hated being out of her element. “Okay, thank you, doctor.”
“Do you live at home?” he asked.
“I’m starting law school, just moved into my apartment today actually, but I feel terrible about leaving her.” And I did. The guilt of having left her alone all summer was tearing me up, and the thought of doing it again, combined with the image in my brain of her huddled on the garage floor was almost too much to bear. “What if she skips her medication, or refuses to take it? She has no one to look after her.”
“If she stops taking her meds, well, then she’ll have to live with her paranoia and delusions. There isn’t much we or you can do to force her unless she becomes a danger to herself or to others.”
I massaged my forehead and sighed. “I just don’t know what I should do. I really don’t think I can live with myself if I abandon her at a time like this. I don’t feel right about leaving her alone again.”
The doctor took his glasses off, placed them on his desk, and lowered his chin. “You want to know the truth?” he asked me.
“Please.”
“I’ve dealt with many cases like your mother. Some much better; some much worse.” He paused, struggling for the right words. “Your mom is like the
Titanic
: if you stay with the ship, you’ll go down, too. Those people who clung to the boat ultimately perished. You need to get yourself on a lifeboat and get as far away as you can,” he said. “I’m not telling you to desert her completely, but once you save yourself, you’ll be able to care for her better than you could now.”
I nodded with instant clarity, then hugged him and thanked him for giving me some perspective. As he spoke, I knew he was right. Though I didn’t like thinking of my mother as the
Titanic
, I knew that neither of us had a chance at a better future if I shelved my goals to stay home with her.