Breakaway (A Gail McCarthy Mystery) (14 page)

Following his directions, I stepped through the open door of the office and looked around curiously. A very ordinary office, it seemed, much like the waiting room. A desk in one corner, various bits of stuff tacked on the walls, a shelf full of books. There were several seating options, including a couch, a couple of armchairs, and the desk chair. I wondered if I would be evaluated on where I chose to sit.

I selected an armchair across the room from the desk, avoiding the couch. Patient fears intimacy; I could just imagine the mental note.

Quit being paranoid, Gail, I told myself. And besides, that's what you're here for, anyway. You want him to evaluate you. Be that as it might, it was still uncomfortable. I felt like a bug on a pin. And here was the botanist, bending over me.

Shoving the image away, I watched Dr. Alan Todd settle himself comfortably into the desk chair, turning his back to the desk so that he faced me. He placed a file folder in his lap and glanced at it, then back at me. Folding his hands quietly over the folder and leaning back in his chair, he said, "So what can I do for you, Dr. McCarthy?"

I decided to be blunt. "I'm depressed," I said, "and it's beginning to interfere with my life. My friend, Kris Griffith, said you helped her with a depression. I was hoping you could help me."

"What form are you picturing this help taking?" he asked.

"I'm not sure. I've never seen a shrink, I mean a psychiatrist, before. I know there are antidepressant medications; I wondered if some of them might help me."

Dr. Todd regarded me steadily. "Tell me about this depression," he said.

At this, I had to think. What was there to tell? "I'm not sure exactly what caused it," I said. "I have a lot of new stresses in my life, but there's nothing going on that's really negative. My boss made me a partner recently, and I moved from one place to another. About six months ago I broke up with my boyfriend, but that was a mutual decision and I still think it was the right thing to do."

I realized that he was doubtless linking my breakup with Lonny to the onset of depression. Well, let him link. It did seem to have happened like that.

"What are the symptoms of your depression?" Dr. Todd asked.

"I'm not interested in anything anymore. Not my job or my horses or my garden or the man I'm dating. I'm tired all the time, I don't have any appetite, I cry for no reason, and I'm always wanting to sleep. Sometimes I even feel like I'd rather be dead than go on this way." That was as accurate a description as I could come up with.

"Sounds like you're depressed." He smiled at me in a friendly way, as if being depressed was no big deal, a minor problem that we could solve together. I sure as hell hoped he was right.

"I was an only child," I began, wondering what to put in and what to leave out. "My parents were both what I think you'd call introverts; they seemed happy together but they didn't have a lot of friends. My dad was an only child and his parents were dead from before I could remember, and my mother's family lives in Michigan. So there weren't any grandparents or aunts and uncles and cousins around. I was raised out in the country on an apple farm, and I learned to entertain myself."

"Were you lonely?" he asked.

"I don't remember being lonely. I think now that I was just used to feeling lonely, maybe. It seemed like the norm to me. My parents didn't pay a whole lot of attention to me; they mostly left me to my own devices. I read a lot. I made up stories and games. My animals were my friends."

The shrink watched me quietly; I had no idea what thoughts were going on behind the steady blue eyes. "So you don't remember having any feelings of sadness and depression?" he asked.

"No, I don't. I was sad when my parents died, of course."

"When did they die?"

"When I was seventeen, about to turn eighteen." I went on, trying to meet his eyes. "They were killed in a car crash on the highway. Overnight I went from being secure to having to fend for myself. Our home had to be sold to pay debts and taxes and whatever; by the time it was all said and done there wasn't much money left. My aunt in Michigan offered to let me live with her, but she was a virtual stranger, and I didn't want to do that."

"It must have been a difficult time."

"It was. I'd always wanted to be a veterinarian, and I decided then that I would make that happen. I quite consciously meant to create a new security for myself, one that wasn't founded on other people.

"It wasn't easy, though. I had good grades in high school and I was able to get a scholarship, but I still had to work in order to pay my bills. I worked full-time as a waitress to put myself through college and vet school."

"No. Actually," I thought for a minute, "I was sad, of course. But I can't remember crying much, or feeling terrible. I was mostly shocked. And just like later, there simply wasn't any space for me to fall apart. I needed to make arrangements, pay bills, get myself accepted to college, rent a room .... You see what I mean? I couldn't let myself be too sad. I had to function. No one else was going to take care of me. I had to do it myself."

I leaned back in my chair and let out a deep breath. That was the most I'd ever said about myself to any human being. In general, I tended to keep my feelings and struggles to myself. Still, that was the point of coming here, wasn't it? To unearth buried problems. Dr. Alan Todd continued to watch me quietly; he seemed to be thinking.

"So, what's your diagnosis?" I asked flippantly.

"Oh, you're depressed, certainly," he answered in a similar tone. "I'm just wondering how we can most usefully help you. I'm not sure medication is the way."

"Did you give Kris antidepressants?" I asked him.

He studied me. "I really can't talk about other patients," he said at last. "However, I can say that I don't normally prescribe antidepressant drugs for someone who is in what I would call a situational depression."

"What's a situational depression?" I asked.

"When something has happened to cause the depression. A specific situation, like the breakup of a marriage, or a death. Essentially, the depressed person is really grieving; it's a natural process. Quite different from a person who suffers from chronic depression."

"So, what about me?" I asked.

"Your situation is a little different," he said. "In my opinion, and of course it is just an initial guess at this point, your depression was probably triggered by the breakup with your boyfriend. But part of the problem is the loss of your parents. You didn't grieve then, as you explained, and the grief is still there inside. This most recent loss has touched those old, and very deep, feelings of loss and grief."

"So, I'm really depressed about my parents' deaths?"

"Possibly. I surmise, too, that even when they were alive, you felt somewhat cut off from them, somewhat isolated and unconnected, and that your depression is about this, also."

I sat quietly, thinking. The words rang a bell. I had long been aware of my inability to connect easily with other people. Over the years, I had rationalized that it was simply part of my personality. But now I wondered. Had I always been lonely? Was I sad about that?

And what about Lonny? He had been the closest I'd come to warmth and intimacy, and yet I had always held myself apart from him. I'd never wanted to take that final step, make a commitment, give up my autonomy. Since my parents' death, my autonomy had been my security. Not needing anyone was my defense against being hurt.

"I think," he said slowly, "that the best thing we can do is to talk about your parents and your childhood. We need to go back to the time when they died, as well as the times when you were a little girl, and you can perhaps let yourself experience your feelings of grief and loneliness. Depression is about depressing something. You're holding feelings down inside where you can't feel them, because you're afraid to feel them. You perceive them as too painful. If you let these feelings come up to your conscious mind and allow yourself simply to feel them, to accept them, oftentimes they will cease to trouble you.

"There's an old Zen saying, 'What you resist, persists.' " Dr. Alan Todd folded his hands in his lap.

What was this, a Zen shrink? I had the impulse to say, "Yes, master." Still, his words were hitting home. Somehow when he spoke about my parents, I felt an emotional resonance-like a bell that has been struck. Deep in my heart, I believed he was right.

"You don't want to prescribe some drugs?" I asked him.

He regarded me. "No, I don't think so," he said. "Not yet, anyway." Another level look. "Perhaps we could meet again in a week?"

I stood alone in the waiting room, which was still empty. Perhaps I was the last patient of the day. The thought made me feel odd. Here I was, the patient of a shrink, not a role in which I had ever envisioned myself. And yet, I found I believed that he was right, that he might help.

Whatever I was, I assured myself, I was not a quitter. Dr. Alan Todd had set me a task-to understand myself and my relationship to my parents. If that sort of understanding would help with this depression, I would work at it.

TWELVE

By the following morning, I wasn't feeling so optimistic. My first call had turned out to be deeply frustrating-a horse who had gone down and wouldn't get up. This problem can have a number of causes, and in this particular case, I had found myself completely stymied when it came to diagnosing what was wrong.

The horse, a fat, gray Quarter Horse gelding, lay on his chest in the stall, obdurately refusing to get to his feet. His pulse and respiration were only mildly elevated, and he didn't seem to be in much, if any distress.

"He's been like that since yesterday," his owner, a woman in perhaps her sixties, said tearfully.

I stared at the horse. I'd already tried to get him up by the simplest methods; I'd run a rope from his halter over the rafter beam, and had his owner haul on it as hard as she could while I tugged with equal force on his tail. No go. The horse lunged upward and collapsed, seeming to lack control of his legs.

The only useful piece of information I had wasn't helping me much. The gelding was positive for HYPP, sometimes known as "Impressive" syndrome, as it often occurs in horses who are descended from the well-known Quarter Horse stallion Impressive.

Trouble was, the symptoms this horse was displaying didn't match up with HYPP.

Normally HYPP horses have seizurelike signs and obvious distress, and this horse had none of that. I'd already pumped some fluids into him-the classic treatment for HYPP-but so far I'd seen no results. At this point, I'd been here two hours. It was time to call for help.

I wasn't crazy about asking Jim to bail me out of difficult cases; let's face it, it hurt my pride. But I knew that it was in everybody's interest, let alone it was my moral obligation that I do the best I could for this horse. And right now that meant finding somebody who knew more about this situation than I did.

Unfortunately, Jim, when I finally got him on the phone, sounded genuinely puzzled. "I don't know, Gail. I've never seen an HYPP horse go down like you're describing. And if he is HYPP, there isn't much to do except run fluids into him and let him rest."

"I've done that. He's been down twenty-four hours now," I said.

"Better get him up," Jim said unhelpfully, and hung up the phone.

Great. I considered my options. Finally, I told the woman, "I think we need to make a real effort to get this horse on his feet."

"What can we do?"

"I think we could try a tow truck with a boom."

"Well, all right." She was dubious but accepting. Between us, we managed to make arrangements. An hour later the tow truck arrived, driven by an aging hillbilly in a dirty ball cap and low-slung jeans, who was sporting the worst-looking set of teeth I'd ever seen. He was friendly and helpful, though, and jockeyed his truck into the necessary position with a quiet competence that was reassuring.