“Sorry, dude. I don’t have long distance. The parent’s foot the bill for it so it’s pretty basic. I can’t even text.”
“Oh, okay.” Troy said in disappointment. Jace stood and picked up his tray.
“I’m going to catch up with Magnus, see if she’ll forgive me for being an ass. See you back in the room tonight?”
“Yeah. Good luck with her.” Troy was heading over to the lounge to call his folks again when a receptionist called out to him. He had never seen her before but she seemed to know him. Damn, why was it so impossible to move around in this place without gathering someone’s attention?!
“Troy, Dr. Barren has some papers that he would like you to fill out before your appointment tomorrow. She hefted a huge blue folder and handed it to him. She also handed him a small cup containing two pills. “This is medicine that the Doctor would like you to take an hour before bedtime. There is an informational printout about the medication and if you’d like to have someone read it to you then-”
“No, it’s fine. I think I can do it.” He headed to his room instead of the lounge, curious about the folder that he carried in his hands. He carefully pulled up the chair to the desk and withdrew the contents.
Frowning, he stared at the thick sheath of forms and documents. They listed every medication that he’d ever taken in his entire life and a request for a history of their effects. There was a place for him to document how he did every imaginable thing in life while on medication, as well as off of medication. There were questionnaires asking him to rate things from one to ten, there were questions that asked, ‘how true is this statement…’
As he considered the forms and documents, he thought about all of the work that it would take to make these questions work for him and for his family. He would not complain. He gnawed on his lip and searched the drawer for an ink pen and he thought deeply about every answer before writing it down.
***
The next morning Troy was again awakened by Jace nudging his bed. “Dude, you sleep too heavy!” Troy sat up in bed weakly. Damn he was still tired. “I can’t eat breakfast…I’m too tired.”
“You slept through breakfast. But I brought you some eggs and bacon and stuff that I saw you eating yesterday.” His eyes opened wide and he jumped out of bed.
“Shit! I have a Doctor’s appointment!” He looked around, but not sure for what. He had slept in his clothes and so was already dressed. He quickly ran his hands through his hair.
“Relax. Someone will come down for you when they’re ready for you.” Jace moved towards the folder and picked up the thick file. “Damn, you finished this all?”
Troy took it from him, almost protectively. He’d spent most of the night working on it. “Yeah.” He hugged it.
“What time did you go to bed?” Troy shrugged and sat down at the desk where a tray of cold breakfast sat. “You’re the only one with the time.” He forked eggs into his mouth without tasting them. He was hungry and didn’t care that they tasted like styrofoam.
Jace seemed in deep thought as he tried to figure out a timeline. “Well I went to sleep about 11:30.” He’d given his MP3 player to Troy to listen to and he’d been happily nodding his head in time with the music as he completed his task. Then he took the medicine, by that time Jace had been asleep for about an hour and he figured that he’d be about another hour working on it, but he’d been a lot closer to three.
“What time is it now?”
“9:15.” He responded after checking his cell phone.
“I think I worked on it until about 3 am.” He scooped up fried potatoes with his toast and chewed them quickly. “Thanks for breakfast.”
“You’re welcome. You know…I don’t think they expected you to do that all in one day…”
He didn’t respond, he was thinking about slipping back into bed; lack of sleep was bad enough but add to that the drugs and he felt half dead. He didn’t even get a chance to get to his coffee before there was the knock on the door. He cursed under his breath, jumping up and hurrying to the restroom. “Tell them I’ll be right out!”
Five minutes later he’d washed his face, brushed his teeth and used the toilet and then he and Rebecca were back in the elevator and going down to the main floor where he’d last seen his father two days before.
Rebecca was holding his folder and it had not been easy for him to let it go. He felt pretty anxious about it…and this is what he disliked about medication; this anxiety was not
his
anxiety but the medication’s.
The medical center on the entry level was accessible by anyone so there were people milling around that weren’t just patients. He wondered what he looked like to them. Did he look like he had just come down from the mental ward? Did he look like a homeless bum?
Troy spent the next four hours being poked, prodded, scanned, and questioned. He was asked to get on a treadmill and run, he was asked to give himself a seizure which he did easily by sitting in the doctor’s chair and spinning it rapidly. He was told to sweat, to urinate, to bend over and when he was done he returned to his room and curled up in his bed and slept.
When he woke up it was to Jace, once again, in his personal space. He blinked at the boy feeling disconnected. He’d just received another dose of medicine and he was beyond tired. He stared at Jace who’s black hair half concealed his dainty face.
“You look like a girl…” He murmured. Jace smiled.
“Thanks. Sorry to wake you, I’m sure you’re tired. But it’s time for me leave.”
Troy pulled himself up into a sitting position. His grey eyes were still half closed but he fought the fatigue. “What time is it?”
“Just after dinner.” The young man gestured to the desk. “I brought you a burger in case you’re hungry.”
“Jace, you’re a good friend. And you’ll make some guy a fine wife. I’ll keep my eye opened for a black guy for you. One who won’t care that you have a penis and no breasts.” He yawned, eyes closing.
Jace smiled and watched the tired man. “Take care of yourself Troy and good luck to you.” But Troy didn’t hear. He was sitting up and sleeping.
The next day Troy had one last counseling session with Dr. Barren. He hated seeing Jace’s empty bed and asked Rebecca where the boy would be going as she led him to his appointment.
“Well, as you know, Jace has some issues that he has to come to terms with. He will be in 14 day hold at a long term facility.” He nodded knowing that Rebecca didn’t have to let him know this and he was thankful that she’d told him even though it saddened him.
Dr. Barren shook his hand in greeting and asked him to sit and to make himself comfortable. “I hear you’ve had quite the busy day?”
“I wish I could get some sleep.” He responded with a yawn. He didn’t like yawning in conversation but couldn’t help it.
“Don’t try to fight what the medication is trying to do. It’s trying to relax the portion of your brain that is prone to seizures. We’re pretty confident that we can reduce the frequency of them.”
Troy listened intently. “And the headaches?”
“That’s a tougher puzzle. We are working on discovering if you have an allergy, maybe to certain food; just isolating a trigger may take some time. But there is medicine that will treat the pain. You shouldn’t have to live with that.” Troy nodded once, not sure if he could trust himself to answer.
“Now, we haven’t gotten your test results back but we are pretty sure of two things. First you don’t seem to be bipolar. I know from you and your parents that this has been a big concern for you. I know the diagnosis of bipolar syndrome is often times misread. I think this is what happened in your case. For a while, it was very popular to say, ‘this person is bipolar, give him some medicine.’ We are moving away from those generalities.”
The doctor sighed, “second, and the biggest thing is this; none of us think that you suffer any mental illness at all.” Troy’s eyes grew wide and Dr. Barren smiled. “You react to your migraines and to your seizures. But you have coherency, formal thought order. You have no First Rank symptoms and I doubt if you ever had. In other words; your brain doesn’t look like the brain of a schizophrenic, you don’t have any of the symptoms of a schizophrenic. You have normal highs and lows. Troy, your reaction to stimuli is typical.”
“W-well…w-why…?” Troy lifted his palms trying to say a million things but not able to say one.
“Why?” The doctor smiled at him patiently.
He nodded.
“Why, what?” He made a circling motion, indicating for him to continue.
Troy looked off into the distance. “Why…why do I think crazy thoughts?”
“Such as?” Troy resisted trying to analyze whether or not this question would lead the Doctor to rethink his diagnosis. But it was as he’d told Jace; it was now or never time.
“That the world is a big fat trap waiting to close in on us.”
“Ahh.” He opened a file. “You have some very strong ideas about ‘owning’ possessions and feeling trapped by them.”
Trapped?
“And you reject them before they can be taken away from you.”
Troy began to sweat and his heart was beating rapidly. Freaking medicine…
“You also think that certain items such as cell phones, internet, credit cards are designed to suck you into a pit of additional spending.” Dr. Barren lowered his glasses and looked at Troy honestly. “Well how is any of that psychotic thinking? You may see things much clearer than the average person. And that most people have no choice but to live with these ‘trappings’ just might mean that they put on blinders to cope with it.” Dr. Barren closed the folder. “And having controversial or unpopular ideas doesn’t make for mental illness. But it wouldn’t hurt to talk to a psychiatrist. I’d recommend it.”
He picked up an ink pen and began to write on a pad of paper. “I made some calls to a neurologist. He can see you as soon as next week. Troy, this man is top in his field. He can look at your brain and see things that will tell him which medicines will be best for you. Call his receptionist to confirm and I think that this will put you on the right track to managing your condition.” Troy took the paper and stared at it as if it were gold. Dr Barren rose and offered his hand. Troy shook it enthusiastically.
“I’d like to continue monitoring you and your reaction to the medication for the rest of your stay. We have you on phenytoin. How have your seizures been?”
“I haven’t had one today.” Of course he’d slept up until it was time for his visit.
“Absence seizures do well on that medication.”
Troy was all smiles as he gripped his piece of paper and waved goodbye to Dr. Barren. “Thank you!” He hurried out of the room and to the lounge so that he could call his parents.
CHAPTER 16
Things happened rapidly after that. Troy left Good Saints the next day. His Mom, Dad, Lori, and Bob were there in the lobby waiting for him. He was so surprised to see them that he had to stop a few moments just to absorb how wonderful it was not to have to walk alone in life. He was so accustomed to being alone that he still hadn’t absorbed the fact that his family was at his side now—now that he had allowed them to be.
Deep down he felt regret at all of the time that he’d lost, regret that he was here and Juicy was somewhere else, but he didn’t want sad thoughts, so he immediately pushed those away to the back of his mind.
They went to The Cracker Barrel for dinner and the topic of conversation was his misdiagnosis of mental illness. Though his parents had already shared this information, at one point Bob excused himself from the table. When he returned his eyes were red from crying. Troy looked at his older brother and for once—for the very first time, he understood just how loved he’d always been.
There was a time when he would have killed himself. Now he understood that if he had done such a thing—he would have killed them as well.
Once he was back at his parent’s house, Troy hurried up to his old bedroom and dialed Juicy’s cell phone.
“Hello. I’m not available right now. If you would like to make an appointment-” Troy slammed the phone down in the middle of her generic message. He’d already listened to that same fucking message half a million times…and she still hadn’t called.
“Damnit, Juicy! Why can’t you just…answer the phone?! Just…” He grabbed his duffel bag and…well there wasn’t anything to pack since he’d come empty handed. He jogged down the stairs.
“I need to go to the bus station. I’m going home.”
“Is there something wrong with Juicy?” Mom asked with a serious frown on her face.
“No. I mean, I can’t get in touch with her. She won’t answer, she won’t call.”
“Well what about the appointment with the neurologist?”
Troy was shaking his head and pacing. “I’ll have to get a specialist in Cincinnati.”
Dad went in to grab his keys. “Okay, let’s go.”
“Troy!” Mom never raised her voice and he and his father stopped in their tracks surprised.
“No! No no no!”
“What?” Troy said with a confused frown. His mother’s hands were balled into fists.
“I know exactly what’s going to happen when you leave here. You will go back to Cincinnati. You will call to make an appointment with some doctor, try to see a neurologist. But he won’t be anywhere as good as this doctor. It might take you a month, maybe two to see a good one. Meanwhile all of the work you have done so far will be gone. Your child will be born…and I promise you that you will be too afraid to hold him in your hands!” Her face turned beet red.