That man was an idiot.
Warner listened, and she remembered everything. Not once did she ask me about how something made me feel—I hated that question. She just waited patiently until I inevitably ranted about anything and everything. Even if she didn’t always look like it on the outside, I knew there was a human being behind that prescription pad.
It was the morning after movie night, and I was feeling particularly chatty. I was also beginning to feel a slight, uncomfortable tightness in my jaw. Oh, and sweaty, which was odd for the end of December. As the words tumbled out of my mouth quite rapidly, I steadily raked the surface of her miniature desktop Zen garden, transforming the polished stones and white sand into my own personal landscape.
“I think my Mom is embarrassed,” I began.
“What makes you say that?” Dr. Warner promptly scribbled a few notes on her pad, then returned her gaze to me, gently tilting her head to the side.
“Well, for one, no one really knows that I’m here. The only people who visit me are close relatives, like my dad’s family. I don’t even think Mom’s told Grandpa Thomas yet… but I guess it’s good that a few people have seen me. That’s better than no one at all,” I paused to think for a few moments. “Why do you think that is?”
“Pardon? Why do I think—”
“Why do some people get visits from everyone? And then some not at all? How does that even happen in a hospital? Shouldn’t people want to visit their loved ones when they’re in the hospital? I mean, I know this is a different type of hospital. Then again, I guess it happens even after death. Some people have visitors lined all the way out the door and around the funeral home. And others don’t have anyone show up at all.”
Dr. Warner looked up from her pad, confused, apparently trying to follow the direction of my thinking. “I find it interesting that you’re making this about death. Have you thought about this before? Your funeral?”
Who didn’t think about death? But I also knew that thinking about death wasn’t exactly something you wanted to mention in a place like this. I instantly regretted the comment, worrying that I may have just locked myself up for another eight days. “It’s an example,” I explained. “You don’t need to read into it—or jot it down on your notepad. It just bothers me. Don’t start… thinking things.”
“Thinking things?”
“Thinking that’s a sign that I need to stay here any longer!”
“I see.” Warner paused thoughtfully and then continued, “It bothers you that your friends don’t know you’re here, and so they can’t visit?”
“It bothers me that if the few friends I have did know, they probably wouldn’t visit. Or they would feel very weird about it.” I knew I was rambling, and the problem was that I couldn’t seem to make myself stop. But it was true. I knew deep down that the friends I had wouldn’t want to come to a place like this to see me.
“This is the first time you’ve mentioned friends since our meetings together. It can be challenging for anyone, especially young people, to make sense out of all this. Do you worry that your friends might not understand, Sage?”
“Well, it occurred to me this morning. I’m sitting there eating breakfast with these girls, and I started to wonder about their lives outside of this place. Like, did you know I play field hockey? And run track. Meanwhile, they say sports are supposed to prevent girls from getting into trouble.”
“No, but you mentioned your photography… Is that how you view this, Sage? ‘Getting into trouble’?” she asked.
“Well, isn’t it? I mean, I’m here. I didn’t even get to have a normal Christmas. My dad has probably done much worse than I ever did, and he never got locked up.” And that was the truth. Dad had already told me a bunch of stories about when he was my age, even younger. Not once did anyone comment on him being unbalanced. “I mean, I know there is the whole genetic component… you know, my grandmother,” I admitted sadly.
Warner nodded. “Sage… I’m a little concerned that you’re blaming yourself.”
I loved how just about every adult I’d encountered, even the ones I respected, had to make some sort of comment to me about the gravity of my situation. But Warner had tapped into something there. I hated feeling like this was all my fault. It was like I knew in my head that it wasn’t, but emotionally it felt like I must have done something really, really wrong—and now it was karmic payback time.
“Yeah, I know,” was all I could say in response.
Warner cleared her throat. “Sage, our goal here is to help prepare you for returning home and living a well-adjusted life beyond these walls. School. Peers. Family. These are all significant aspects of who you are. We need to make sure that you’re ready for those pressures.”
Who I was? Pressures? What did she know about anything?
“Yeah, but you’re not going to change how many people will end up at my funeral!” I exclaimed.
“You didn’t answer my question earlier. Have you thought about your funeral?”
I snorted. “Well, obviously.”
It annoyed me how this was somehow indicative of my being abnormal, not like everybody else. But how did people not think of the end? It always surrounded us. Nothing just remained in perpetual motion. We were continually starting new activities and ending them in order to move on to something new. Our lives were no different. But for whatever reason, harboring these feelings was supposedly some sort of red flag. I’d heard the term at risk thrown around. But if I were a fifty-something-year-old man, no one would even blink at any of my observations.
“Sometimes, I visit my grandpa. He still lives in the same house, in the same neighborhood where my parents grew up. Have I mentioned that Mom and Dad grew up together?”
Warner nodded. “You have.”
“Well, anyway, the house is really old, and a lot of the people they grew up with moved away a long time ago. Sometimes when there’s not much to do, Mom and I just go for a walk. We might stop for pizza. But when I was younger, I really liked to go by this one pet store. I liked to look in the window, where they keep all the puppies, and I named all of them. Well, at least in my head. They’re so cute and little. And when you look at them, you realize just how innocent they are, just playing and yipping at each other.”
“How old were you?”
I thought about it for a moment. “About ten,” I said. I laughed, then paused as one specific memory came back to me clearly. “I remember once, this apricot-colored cockapoo had a Puggle’s paw in her mouth and just gnawed at it, completely oblivious to everything else. It was adorable, really. They didn’t know that some family would come along one day to purchase them. They didn’t even know if they’d get a good family. We never bought one because Mom said they were too expensive. Some of them cost as much as eight hundred dollars, and she thought all the responsibility for caring for one would fall on her lap.”
“Eight hundred dollars? That seems awfully expensive for families living in the Bronx.”
I rolled my eyes. “Dr. Warner, please. People always manage to find money when they want something—and we’re talking about puppies here. Everyone loves puppies!”
It always amused me how outsiders reacted whenever I shared one of my Bronx moments with them as if they were expecting me to share some horrifying tale. They didn’t understand. The Bronx was just another place where people lived, and people were people. There is good and bad wherever you go.
Mom had once explained that the Bronx had a very diverse population, but a lot of people who were unfamiliar with outer boroughs assumed it was all negative. They had heard the stories but had never actually gotten to know the people. I wasn’t glorifying anything or glossing over its problems, but all cities and towns had weaknesses in need of change and strengths to be celebrated. I’d be a fool to walk along some of its neighborhoods alone at night, but there was also a lot to be proud of. Dad even went to a private Catholic college in the Bronx, and he’s one of the most successful people I know. Truthfully
, I had been a little more frightened by some of the behaviors I’d seen from a few people who came from more typical places. What lay hidden behind suburban closed doors could be pretty scary.
Warner nodded silently, so I continued.
“Like I said, I would name all the puppies. We did this almost every weekend for a while. Whenever we’d see that one was sold, I’d make up a story about its new home, and I’d speak to the puppies left behind. I’d tell them about Franklin’s new family. Or how Lila just learned how to play fetch. I would tell these stories, and of course, the stories would become more and more numerous as more puppies left. Finally, all the original puppies were gone, and then there were all these new puppies in the window. It began to really bother me.”
“Bother you that you could no longer see them?” Warner asked.
“No. It bothered me because there was no way of knowing if my stories ever came true. What if some really bad person bought the puppy? Or someone with good intentions who thought they knew what they were doing but couldn’t raise them right, and then had to hand them over to a shelter? All that time, I may have been lying to those little guys about what had happened to their friends. And there was no way for me to know, or ever find out.” My voice trembled terribly with lament.
Dr. Warner scribbled something in her pad. “Is it possible that you might be able to make a connection between your preoccupation with death and this story—”
“I’m not preoccupied with death.”
“You’ve mentioned it.” She flipped through a few pages of her pad. “You’ve mentioned death a total of eleven times this week. I think that, in many ways, you’re finding difficulty forming attachments and dealing with impending separation,” she concluded.
“Are you serious?” I demanded. “Didn’t you even listen to a word I said?”
She blinked.
“You’re trying to make some psycho-babble sense out of what I’m saying instead of just letting me finish. Everything ends. Even looking at puppies while getting your hands and mouth all greasy with pizza ends. Even a fun, harmless activity that your mom takes you to ends. I’m not sick for realizing this. I’d be stupid if I didn’t.” I stomped both feet forcefully against the floor for emphasis, overtaken by a sudden surge of anger.
Warner sat there in silence for a few painstaking moments. I could tell she was sizing up my words, letting them roll and twist within her thoughts until she found some sort of meaning in them. And I began to panic, realizing that if I didn’t watch out, she wouldn’t let me go home.
Finally, her eyes softened just a bit.
“Did you find that you had similar thoughts when your parents went their separate ways?” she asked.
“I was ten.”
“Around the same time your mother took you to look at those puppies?”
I remained silent.
“That’s not that long ago,” she continued. “Earlier memories than that can even surface over time, even if we’re not fully aware of them. Sometimes we may not recall certain events specifically, but our emotions linger. A sort of fingerprint is left there, shaping us, with us in the background.”
Warner wasn’t budging. She was still talking about the divorce. I hated talking about the divorce.
“My parents failed. They were together way too long. Dad needs other things going on in his life. He’s super-smart— well, Mom is, too—but Dad gets bored very easily, and he can never stay in the same place for too long. Something always happens. Mom has a lot of issues herself — some real obsessive compulsive-like stuff. Like, there’s a list for everything. I’m actually surprised over how… disheveled she’s been looking since I got here. She’s a good mom, though—don’t think otherwise. She’s just very… demanding. Not in a critical way, demeaning way. More like she’s afraid of what can go wrong, so every one of her actions is made in anticipation of preventing the wrong from happening. Does that make any sense?”
“It does.”
“We’ve moved around several different places, Mom and me. We can only afford where we are now because Dad sends money for me. We’re in the part of Yonkers that has the Bronxville ZIP code. You know this; I’ve already told you. Well, I’d rather have Mom use my money towards renting a better place for the two of us. I’m sure that when I’m off to college, with a zillion dollars in loans, she’ll end up somewhere else. Dad will no longer be financially responsible for me. I mean, he might still help—well, I really don’t know.”
“Sounds like you’ve given it quite a bit of thought,” Warner observed.
“I have thought about it, about everything. Dr. Warner, am I sick because I can see what’s in front of me? Because I’m not on social media sites posting pictures of my brunch? Because I have these… thoughts… sometimes… that I can’t control?”
Dr. Warner cleared her throat and placed her pad on the end table beside her. “Sage, you have harmed yourself with the intention of ending your life. This goes beyond the question of whether you’re a typical teenager. If I were your oncologist, you wouldn’t question treatment, not for a single second. Would you?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“This is an illness, Sage. This is nothing to feel ashamed of or feel guilty about. Pointing fingers of blame won’t help us here either. What will help, Sage, is time and commitment to treatment. This isn’t about puppies, or social media, or even your parents’ divorce—even though that obviously caused some bit of sadness. This is about you, Sage, taking ownership of your life and deciding to do what needs to be done in order to live your life.”
For someone who rarely spoke, Dr. Warner was really giving me a mouthful. I stayed silent and just listened.
“As you know, my colleagues and I have reviewed your situation with your parents. We are at a point where we can’t insist that you stay here. Personally, I don’t see you as a harm to yourself or others. But there are still some concerns that we all have about your transition back home. Although we can’t make you, it is possible that you may decide to stay voluntarily a little while longer. This is something we will speak about in detail with both your mother and father because ultimately it will be a family decision.”
It wasn’t quite what I was expecting. You can go, but we really think you shouldn’t go. “Are you concerned because I talked about funerals?” I asked.
“Yes. But there’s much more to it, Sage. Should you decide to go home, the plan is that you’ll see a psychiatrist on a fairly regular basis and take your medication as prescribed. We want to make sure you don’t have to come here again. We don’t want that for you.”
“And how do I stop being sick?” I asked. “Isn’t that the whole point of all this? You were all supposed to make my brain work again.”
“Sage.” Warner smiled patiently. “Your brain works; it always has. You have made tremendous progress since the start of your stay here. Much of that is because you want to get better. You have tried to get well. Over time, you will continue to work through this and, yes, things will get better. But it’s a struggle. No one is claiming otherwise. Outpatient treatment can be challenging.”
“I messed up pretty bad, huh?”
“Sage, this is not your fault. You didn’t bring this illness upon yourself.”
They were comforting words, but I still wasn’t quite ready to believe them. As Dr. Warner and I continued to talk that session, I felt as if I were engaged in two conversations—one aloud with her and one inside of my head. Part of me just wanted to go back home and try, do everything in my power to get better. The other part, well, I didn’t really know what to do. I didn’t want to change who I was, didn’t want to just swallow a pill and become a new person. What if I lost something in the process? What if I stopped being me?
After our session, I stopped by my room to grab my coat and bundle up in my mittens, knit hat, and scarf. Needing a change of pace, I then headed out to the courtyard to clear the cobwebs, as Dad would say. Once there, standing alone, I stared out into the sno
w-covered trees until everything sort of merged together, becoming one endless, hopeless mass of white and gray. When I thought about it, I realized that not much separated me from the outside world.
There was a wall, maybe about six feet high. I was strong. I could probably scale it if I wanted to. One night while I was staying at Dad’s, I had snatched a hundred-dollar bill out of Abby’s wallet and sewn it into the inner lining of my coat, just in case of emergency. Abby has so much more than anyone could ever ask for. She never even noticed the money was gone.
I could run until I came across a residential street, hail a taxi, take that to board a train… to who knows where. I could just leave. I could run away and keep running. I could wait behind the back alleys of restaurants and snatch whatever food was thrown out into the dumpsters each night. I could find small, neglected crevices of buildings to crawl inside—or a church—and hide, just to steal a few moments of precious sleep.
Mom would probably be the only one even to notice. Well, so would Dad. But by that time, I’d be gone.
But then, realistically, I’d get bored. And lonely. And even more realistically, I’d run out of money… and hope. So, I’d eventually return. And Mom would be so angry, but too relieved to show it, so she’d let it go. And Dad would simply be moved to tears. Maybe a few people would even talk about it, ask how I did it, and wonder what things were like… elsewhere.
And maybe, just maybe, someone would tell me they had missed me.
Chapter 5
The Things I Cannot Change
Julia
The importance of listening. It was one of the many topics Dr. Warner had spoken about with Sage’s father and me during our meeting with her that first Saturday in January. After we went over the challenges Sage might confront after her discharge, Dr. Warner went on to stress the importance of maintaining a sense of order and routine, for us, despite the jarring disruption of Sage’s hospitalization. Simply put, Sage wasn’t the only one whose life had changed. She wasn’t the only one who may have trouble adjusting. By the end of our meeting, Dr. Warner recommended a few people that Mike and I could see if we wished to, including several support groups in the nearby area for the family members of those struggling with mental illness.
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