Cocoon (23 page)

“They're working with her now,” Barth grimly informed them. “She said she took thirty Clonazepams.” He shook his head and bit his lip so hard, Zoe saw it turning white at teeth pressure points.

They'd no sooner got settled in waiting room chairs than Billie Jean stormed in the waiting room. Still in her dress-up clothes, she looked around at them, frowning. “How is she?”

She addressed Zoe because Barth was sitting with elbows on knees, face in hands.

“Alive is all I know,” Zoe said, sounding even to herself like a zombie.

“That's all that counts.” Billie Jean planted hands on hips and her gaze swept over the lot of them. “Ya'll sitting around here as gloomy as a bunch o' undertakers. Stop this whiny mopin' right now.” She moved over to take the seat next to Barth. There she laid a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“Now's not the time to give up.” Her words were soft yet firm. Zoe felt a bit of strength rise up in her. “Now's time to pray like crazy, folks. We gotta drive back that ol' death angel, doncha know? 'S no time to pine.”

Within moments, Pastor Keith and Louann arrived.

Immediately, the whole caboodle of them disappeared down the hall, into the tiny chapel there.

And got down to serious business.

• • •

“She didn't take thirty Clonazepam,” the on-duty ER physician insisted. “If she had, she'd be dead right now.”

Barth scratched his head and blinked sore, swollen eyes. Now weary beyond words, he seemed to exist in blurred slow-motion. “That's what she told me.” He shrugged limply yet his body remained on alert. His nerves sizzled with apprehension.

Dread.

“Couldn't have.” That was the doctor's final comment on the matter.

“How is she?” Barth croaked, bracing himself.

“She's coming around.”

Barth felt himself cave with relief.

Zoe zoomed in. “She's coming around? Will she be able to go home?”

“No.” The doctor looked grim. “We're admitting her.”

• • •

Seana was assigned to the geriatrics ward because it had the only available room at that time. The psychiatrist on her case was Dr. Moore. He was a very caring man.

The staff refused to allow Seana to vegetate in her room. So she would sit in the common room area. She didn't talk to anyone. She wanted to go home.

Dr. Moore treated her with different medications and then sent her home.

Her next appointment with Dr. Jones, her most recent psychiatrist, rolled around. Seana began to tell him about her suicide attempt. “I took –”

“I already know about it because the hospital sent me the information.” He glared at her. “Let me tell you one thing, young lady. That act was like a slap in my face. After all I've done for you?” He dragged in a deep breath and continued. “If you ever try anything like that again, I will not treat you anymore. Do you understand?”

Seana nodded. Untouched.

“Will you give me prescriptions for my sleeping pills?” she asked.

“No. Absolutely not.”

“How am I supposed to sleep?”

He stood abruptly, a definite dismissal. “That's your problem.”

“What do we live for if not to
make life less difficult for others?”

– George Eliot

B
arth was at the end of his rope and could not, for the life of him, find a way to knot it. He was royally befuddled. Seana was worse off than she'd ever been. In the past years, she'd been hospitalized a total of six times in psychiatric facilities.

And she was no better.

Today, Zoe appeared mid-morning, in Cruella mode. “What's this I hear about you putting my mother in a nursing home, Barth?” She swept past him, stiletto heels clicking rapidly over the hardwood to the sofa until she stood before Seana, peering down into her wan, pale face.

“Mama? Are you going to just lie there and take this insult?” she commanded, hands on hips.

Seana simply shrank deeper beneath the blanket, her forehead corrugated with irritation.

“Zoe, I have no choice,” Barth said dispiritedly. “She's so depressed she can't do anything for herself anymore.” He paced to the kitchen, then back. He shook his head and shifted his glasses. “I can't handle it anymore.”

Zoe looked a little uncertain as she peered at him. “I know she's difficult at times but to put her away –”

Barth spread his hands. “I'm not putting her away. At least not like you're perceiving it. I'm just – burnt out, Zoe.” He sank into a leather chair, feeling as defeated as he'd ever felt in his life. “I've got to have a break.” He laid his head back and closed his eyes.

“Do you really love her, Barth?”

The analytical tone snapped his eyes open and he was on his feet in a heartbeat.

“Yes, I love her more than anything in this world,” he all but shouted, hands planted on hips. Barth peered at Zoe, shaking his head. “How can you even ask that? Of course I love her. Look” – he spread his hands.  – “if you want to take your mother home with you and care for her 24/7, have at it.”

Zoe blinked and her set features went blank. Then she slid into the other leather easy chair, ruminating in earnest. Silence stretched out as Barth sank into a chair and folded his hands across his midriff. Having dealt with Seana throughout the crisis-riddled years, he'd developed patience. So he waited out Zoe's silent internal dialogue.

Finally, she took a deep breath. “I can't do that. Peyton is away most of the day at school and I have my work at the dance studio all throughout the day and late into the night.” She sighed heavily. Then she gave a limp shrug. “I still don't like it but – do what you have to do, Barth.”

She stood. So did Barth. They peered uncertainly at each other, and Barth knew they'd reached a sort of impasse. A vague, fuzzy truce. But at least this magnificent female offspring of Seana's standing before him was not spewing anger today. She's progressed to negotiable.

In fact, Barth felt something from her he'd not felt before.

Empathy. Not a tsunami. But it was a start.

He walked her to the door. When he opened it, June sunlight spilled in and over the highly polished wood floors. Zoe stepped out onto the inlaid rock entrance, hesitated, then turned back. “Bye, Barth.”

“Bye, Zoe.”

She seemed about to say more, but, in the end, she simply walked away, slid into her car, and drove off.

Barth expelled a rush of air and scratched his head.

When he returned to the den, Billie Jean was there, planted in an easy chair.

She'd overheard some of the conversation. “Didn't mean to eavesdrop, Barth, but you know how it is when you're coming up those stairs and catch a serious powwow in session. I caught enough to know that Zoe's just as disturbed over the nursing home decision as we've been.”

She crossed her denimed legs. “However, like Zoe said – she's not willing or able to take up any of the slack here. So –” She smacked one hand against the chair arm. “That's the way it is. And, like I've been saying, I feel it's the right decision for now.”

Barth felt right weak from relief at hearing Billie Jean's confirmation. Oh how he'd wrestled with the decision. Fought it. But fatigue had won out.

“Thanks, Billie Jean.” He removed his glasses and snatched a tissue from the coffee table to clean them. “Couldn't have made it at times without your reinforcement.”

“Shoot,” Billie Jean huffed a dry laugh. “Barth, you're the strongest person I know. Bar none. We've both come through the worst of times and are still in one piece. We're gonna make it through this, too. Just you wait and see.”

Barth gave a weak smile.

He hoped she was right.

• • •

Seana saw Barth's aggravation when she didn't flow with life's happenings. But the weird thing that tinkered with her brain just kept on a' tinkering. It wouldn't let up, and when, in her last hospital stay, she refused to get out of bed for five days and attend classes, Barth seemed to cave in.

His desperation did not impact her. The invisible shell wrapping her deflected any outside stimulus. The warring inside her played out in a private isolated arena.

“Seana, I have something to tell you,” Barth addressed her the day he took her home. She lay on her sofa bed and he'd dragged up the ottoman to sit on, planted elbows on knees and gazed into her eyes. He looked very sad. “I'm going to have to put you in a nursing home.”

He seemed to expect some response from her. Which irritated her.

“Just go ahead. I don't care.” And she didn't.

So Barth called Rosewood Manor, a nice facility just outside Paradise Springs's town limit, within short driving distance for all Seana's family and friends.

The lady at Rosewood Manor helped Barth with the arrangements.

She heard the confrontational exchange between Barth and Zoe that next day. She also heard Billie Jean's conversation with him. Oh yes, she heard. She wasn't deaf. But it was all just words that held little to no significance for her.

Nothingness abounded. The only things that
whooshed
in to punctuate it were sporadic, dreaded spurts of fear and a sense of dread. But for the most part, the white, vast nothingness spread about her like the Mojave Desert, with no beginning and no end.

Seana “moved into” Rosewood Manor within three days of leaving the hospital, following her last suicide attempt. Her roommate was Bess, an elderly lady who couldn't, without assistance, get up or dress herself.

Each day, a Certified Nursing Assistant got Bess up, bathed, and dressed her. Then off she went in a wheelchair to attend activities the facility provided for the patients, such as games and Bible studies.

Seana was awakened each morning by a CNA, who brought her a pan of hot water, wash cloth, and soap with which to bathe herself. When the CNA left, Seana would immediately dump the water into a sink, dress herself, unwashed, and crawl back into bed until time to go to breakfast.

Once a week, certain days were assigned in which patients went to the shower for a more thorough bath. Seana would shampoo her hair then.

Oh how Seana hated that day.

She would return to her room, dressed, with hair still drippy wet. The nurses would come in, see it, and make her dry it. Seana would blow it haphazardly and let it fall where it may.

She didn't care.

Fact of the matter was, Seana didn't care about anything.

• • •

Zoe visited her mother on her second day. Seeing Seana in the nursing home did something to her solar plexus. It was a thudding, agitating thing that spread up to push behind her throat and eyes.

The visit went just as she'd expected. It was like sitting with a comatose person except, every once in a while, the person moved. Zoe decided to chill out and read from the display of magazines on the bedside table, a rare treat nowadays since she'd had to take on more of the dance studio business single-handedly.

Lordy how she missed Peyton's shoulder to the plough.

“Did Peyton come by to see you yesterday?” she asked Seana, who remained curled up on her hospital bed. Dressed, but still in bed.

“Yes.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“Yes.”

Zoe heaved a great sigh and plopped her book down on the table. It was a Reader's Digest. No time to get into novels these days. Crazy as it seemed, she felt guilty not trying to at least engage her mother in small talk.

Stupid, huh?

Like banging her fingers with a hammer over and over and not expecting blood.

“Did you talk to Peyton?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

A vertical frown line formed between Seana's eyebrows.

“I didn't want to,” they spoke simultaneously.

Zoe made a scoffing sound. She stood up and began to roam restlessly around the room. Bess, the roommate, was out playing Bingo. Why couldn't her mother get out of the blasted bed and do
something
?

“Mom, won't you please get up and let's do something together? Just walk or sit in another room, or anything to have you moving. You're like a knot on a log lying there. Vegetating.”

Seana clicked the remote and presently Zoe heard the familiar sports-related cacophony blast from the television.

Zoe threw up her hands and rolled her eyes. “I give up.”

“Hi,” Barth said as he entered the room, walked over to the bed to lean over and kiss Seana's cheek. “Sit down, Zoe,” he invited as he took one of the chairs and settled in for a spell.

“I'm just leaving,” Zoe said, relieved that she could depart without feeling that splintering sense of guilt over leaving.

Abandonment. That's how she perceived it today as she left the Rosewood Manor and drove away.

“Nonsense,” was what Scott had called it. “Zoe, you have a life to live, responsibilities. Your mother, in her right mind, would be the first to tell you to get on with your life. I remember what a fabulous person she is underneath this psychosis. That version is very, very wise. She wouldn't want you to beat yourself up over unrealistic expectations of yourself.”

Scott.

She missed those heart-to-hearts. He'd not been there for her lately. She knew she'd hurt him by denying her feelings for him. She'd driven him away, just as she had the others.

Oh well; she snuffled back the threat of tears.

No room for melancholy now. Not ever.

That lapse with Scott had been utterly stupid. How could she forget that she could not depend on another soul to rescue her?

She must be strong.

• • •

Seana lay in bed the next morning. She felt her stomach contract. Growl.

“Breakfast time.” The CNA poked her head in the door and smiled at Seana. “Get up, sleepyhead.”

“Okay.” She'd already poured out the hot water without first bathing. Had dressed. So now she headed for the dining room.

Her breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs, toast, and a half cup of black coffee. That's all she wanted. She carried her tray to a table where several other ladies were already seated. Seana took a seat there.

“You can't sit here,” one of them, a squinty-eyed female, quickly insisted. “This is our table.”

Seana arose, picked up her tray, and wandered around the room until one friendly lady beckoned to her. “Here, you can sit with us.” Another woman sitting there smiled at Seana as she took her seat. At the end of the table was a blind woman.

The seating arrangement became routine for Seana in coming days. Comfortable.

She decided that day she didn't want to go to supper.

“Would you please bring my supper to my room?” she sweet-talked the CNA. “I don't feel so good.”

Her winsomeness had not totally deserted her, she discovered, because the CNA liked Seana and would always give in to her wants.

• • •

Night times at Rosewood Manor were something else.

Seana's roommate was nice enough during the daytime. Unlike Seana, Mrs. Hyde, though dependent on assistance, faithfully participated in the facility's activities. So during daylight hours, Seana was queen bee of the domain.

Come sundown, Seana's meds rendered her groggy and in search of slumber. Just when she wanted the television turned off, Mrs. Hyde wanted to play it.

Seemed that loud volume soothed the roommate while it blasted Seana's senses to Hoboken and back. And the noise roared into the wee hours.

One night, after midnight, Seana lay in her bed listening to the woman's snoring. Her nerves were jumpy. Quietly, she slid off her bed and tiptoed to the television set. She turned it off.

Immediately, Mrs. Hyde roared, “What do you think you're doing? I was watching that!”

“You were snoring.”

“I was not snoring. That's my TV and if I want to play it, I will!”

Seana turned back to the set. “I'll turn it back on.”

“No!” she shrieked. “Don't touch it again.”

Seana crawled back into bed.

What had just transpired became the extent of conversation Seana and her roommate had the entire time she was at Rosewood Manor.

• • •

Mother's Day dawned bright and fair.

Sunlight spilled into Seana's room with excruciating cheer. After a dismal breakfast, Seana burrowed into her bed and began to sink into a slumber pool.

“Hey, hey.” A deep female voice scattered the drowsy mist. Seana blinked and peered into the caramel-y features of Eartha, a patient down the hall who'd decided she was Seana's voice of conscience, rescuer, and nuisance.

The full lips smiled, showing pearly whites that stretched forever. Seana groaned and tried to cover up her head.

“Ah, ah.” The cover was wrenched from her hands. “Ain't you gonna get all dolled up for your chirrun?”

“No.” Another wresting match over the cover, which was over in a breath because Eartha was taller, bigger, and much stronger.

“I think you are,” Eartha insisted firmly.