Josh says no, that you’re under anesthesia, you don’t feel a thing, but Howie says, “Yeah? And what about that guy who woke up in the middle of it? I heard you could hear him screaming from three blocks away.”
“That never happened,” Chaz says. “That’s just one of those stories. Like the one about the people who took a little dog home from Mexico, and it turned out to be a rat.”
Although she’d rather be telling only Josh, she nonetheless announces, “I start tomorrow. January twenty-second.”
“Today is the twenty-second?” Jeanette asks.
“No,” Bunny says. “The twenty-second is tomorrow,” and, although it makes not a lick of difference to her either way, Jeanette says, “That’s a relief.”
“Start what?” Howie wants to know. “Start what?” he persists.
“ECT,” Bunny snaps. “I start ECT. Are you happy now?”
Howie raises his paper cup of apple juice to make a toast, and Andrea says, “Put that down. She’s going for ECT. She’s not getting married.”
“Did they tell you which doctor you’re getting?” Jeanette asks.
It’s Not Allowed, but no one other than Bunny knows that Josh has his hand on her knee, and he gives it a squeeze.
“I’d kill for ECT,” Andrea says. “General anesthesia is so fucking nice. If I could figure out how to put myself under, that’d be my drug of choice.”
Bunny nods. “Dr. Tilden.”
Dr. Tilden is Josh’s ECT doctor, too. Josh tells her that Dr. Tilden is very peculiar, which is something significant considering where they are.
“Peculiar?” Andrea says. “The guy’s a freak. But,” she adds, “he is the big-deal expert, the one who trains the residents.”
Teacher and Jeanette have Dr. Futterman. Chaz says, “I got the black guy. He’s okay. You should ask for the black guy.”
“Tilden’s like those space aliens,” Andrea says, “from that movie, the one where the aliens look human, but something’s off.”
Howie wants to know which movie that is. Chaz remembers the movie but not the name of it, and Teacher, having given up on the plastic knife and fork, picks up the chicken breast with his hands, and eats it as if it were corn on the cob.
Sins of Omission
Albie doesn’t like to come to her empty-handed. He needs her to know that he loves her, and puts a pack of two legal pads on the table. Instead of the usual yellow, this paper is pink. Also, he’s brought her six chocolate bars and another box of pens. Pens have a way of disappearing no matter where you are. The jar of Nutella, he tells her, is from Jeffrey. “Jeffrey misses you,” Albie says. “We all miss you.”
“I miss you and Jeffrey, too,” Bunny says, and without a pause, nothing to indicate so much as the start of a new sentence, never mind a new thought, she adds, “Tomorrow.”
“What about tomorrow?” he asks.
“Tomorrow,” she starts to tell Albie that tomorrow morning, before breakfast, she will undergo her first round of ECT. And then, just like that, she decides not to tell him.
To assume that she doesn’t want to worry him is a possible explanation, the generous interpretation, but it’s also possible that she fears, not that he will no longer love her, but that he will no longer love her as he once did, that he will forever see only the fault line where she cracked, now held together with Krazy Glue. Instead, she says, “I know.”
“You know?” Albie’s voice is light, almost teasing. “What do you know?”
And Bunny says, “I know about Muriel.”
Albie has never flat-out lied to her before, never bold-face lied to her, and he isn’t about to bold-face lie to her now. He needs to explain to her that, counterintuitive as it might sound, when he is fed up and tired and at his wit’s end, a respite with cool, no-nonsense Muriel releases his frustration and refuels his patience. Muriel reminds him why he loves Bunny; Bunny with all her surprises of unpredictable intensity and cuckoo rationality. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I love you. I really love you.” But before he can say any more about it, Bunny says, “It’s okay. I understand. I really do,” which serves as further proof that as fond of Muriel as he is, and Albie is fond of her, very fond, he could never love Muriel the way he loves Bunny, and Muriel could never love him the way Bunny does. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she says.
Bunny and Albie both know that confession isn’t necessarily the truth, and omission, opting not to tell, isn’t necessarily a lie. Why Albie doesn’t tell Bunny that, when visiting hours are over, he is going to see Muriel, to have a drink, maybe or maybe not take her to bed, should be obvious. Why Bunny chooses not to tell Albie that, first thing in the morning, she’ll be undergoing her first electroconvulsive therapy treatment, that could’ve done with a few words of explanation, but she says only, “I’m tired.” She closes her eyes as if her eyelids were too heavy to keep open, and Albie kisses one, and then the other. “Go to sleep,” he says. “I’ll see you tomorrow. If you want, we can talk more then.”
“Maybe,” Bunny says, “I’ll see you tomorrow. Maybe.”
Snacking
Instead of a game show, everyone is watching a repeat of Law and Order except for Chaz who has turned his chair around, his back to the screen. Lennie Briscoe and Ray, the handsome Hispanic detective, parked in their unmarked cop car, are drinking coffee when their suspect emerges from a building. If it were a different night, Bunny would’ve sat down and watched Law and Order. But it isn’t a different night. It is this night, and this night will be followed by tomorrow, and Bunny is scared.
The dining room is empty except for two aides setting out the evening snack. Orange cheese sandwiches on plastic trays along with bunches of pale green grapes. Bunny sits at the table partially eclipsed by a column where she tries to focus on what has happened to her, but not what will happen to her. But, as we all know, it’s impossible not to think about something you’re thinking about. Relief is found only in distraction, and distraction, relief, comes in the form of Josh. He pulls out a chair, but before he sits down, he asks, “It is okay? If I join you?” The same as always, Josh is dressed in gray sweat pants and another worn-thin Yale T-shirt—this one sports a bulldog, faded over time and many washings. Without shoelaces, the tongues of his black Converse high-tops flop out, like the tongue of the bulldog on his T-shirt, panting. Perhaps Josh was on the basketball team in college. He is narrow and tall enough for that. He takes one of the sandwiches from the tray, and Bunny says, “You want to hear something funny?”
Josh lifts the top slice of bread as if he were expecting to find something other than the orange cheese inside. Maybe a slice of pickle, and Bunny tells him about the note she got from the Creative Writing therapist in response to her last prompt. You are not without talent, he wrote. You should think about becoming a writer.
It could be the disappointment, the hope for the pickle slice dashed, or simply a lack of appetite; whichever, Josh returns the sandwich to the tray and says, “The guy’s not a therapist. He’s an MFA student from NYU.”
“I know, but still, it’s funny.” As a therapist, the MFA student from NYU has pretty much the same credentials as a do-gooder dog, although the MFA student is, if nothing else, reliable, whereas the dog has yet to show up. Still, Bunny is certain that the dog would possess the greater sensitivity of the two. “Because I used to be a writer,” Bunny says.
Josh nods his head, and he tells her, “I know. I’m a fan. Of your books.” Then, as if to cover his tracks, as if to deny the fact that the sandwich has been touched, he adjusts its position among the other sandwiches. “I’m sorry. Fan probably isn’t the right word.” Already, Josh has had twelve treatments of ECT, but still he droops as if he were a wax candle, a taper, melting.
“Can I ask you a question?” Bunny says. “About ECT? A personal question? Do you think it’s helping? Is it doing you any good?” she asks. “Do you feel b
etter?”
Josh pauses to consider his answer, and then he says, “Not that I can tell. No. I’d have to say no. I’d have to say no, it hasn’t done a fucking thing,” and Bunny eats a grape.
Rise and Shine
All dolled up in pristine paper pajamas and a fresh pair of slipper-socks, Bunny is accompanied by an aide who leads her through a maze of hallways, where, at the end, she is handed over, like a baton in a relay race, to the nurse who is waiting for her. This nurse introduces herself. “Sondra,” she says. “With an o.” Sondra is short and has the body of snowman, including no neck; all o’s, and Bunny thinks about how Ella, the other nurse whom she also likes, the one on the ward, is gangly thin. Not that she makes anything of it. It just is.
Bunny has no fever. Her heartbeat is strong. Her blood pressure remains gorgeous. Her pulse is a little rapid, but that’s to be expected when you’re nervous.
Sondra takes her hand. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Sondra tries to reassure her. “Dr. Tilden is the best there is. I’ve been at his side for hundreds, maybe even thousands of procedures,” Sondra says. “Nothing has ever gone wrong. I wouldn’t lie to you.”
Sondra sounds sincere, but still Bunny says, “Everyone lies.” In a far-off kind of way, as if she’s drifted into the past, and not referring to Sondra, she repeats, “Everyone lies.”
As a seasoned professional as well as a sensible woman who has raised three children and survived their adolescences, Sondra knows when and when not to engage. With her clipboard in hand, she runs through the checklist: Breakfast? No. Liquids after midnight? No. Hearing aid? No. Pacemaker? No. Prosthetic devices? No. Dentures? Contact lenses? No. No. Jewelry? Not Allowed. “You’re going to be fine,” Sondra says.
“Isn’t it pretty to think so?” Bunny says.
“Pretty?” she asks.
That Sondra does not recognize one of the most famous lines in all of American literature does not lessen Bunny’s opinion of her. Nonetheless, she pegs Sondra as illiterate, the word coming to mind as il-lit-er-ate, almost like Lo-li-ta; almost, but nowhere near as good. Nowhere near as good is never good enough.
Sondra then sends Bunny to an adjacent bathroom to empty her bladder, an instruction that, for no reason other than that not all of her faculties are intact, Bunny cannot make sense of until Sondra clarifies, “Urinate. Pee.”
What We’ll Do to Get Attention
The Treatment room—treatment, one more word Bunny now puts in air quotes, “treatment”—is dimly-lit, although it could be it seems dimly lit only by way of comparison to the ward where the rows of fluorescent lights cast a relentless and ghastly-yellow overglow, rendering everything, and everyone, ugly. This light is softer on the eyes, calming even, but the association Bunny makes with it is sinister, an association magnified by the contraption on the far side of what she’s thinking of as the operating table, which is in fact a gurney and no different than an examining table except it’s longer, wider, on wheels, and an examining table doesn’t usually come with restraining cuffs. Wires, black wires like adaptor cords, dangle from the equipment. The dials look like knobs on an oven.
It’s only natural that Frankenstein would come to mind, but Bunny, being Bunny, instead is reminded of the Milgram experiments, way more creepy and they really happened. But this isn’t some gothic horror insane asylum. It’s not even Bellevue, where Bunny ushered in the New Year strapped to a gurney and injected with a sedative. It’s one of the top hospitals in the tri-state area with a world-renowned cardiac unit.
Bunny sits sideways on the edge of the gurney as if she were about to jump off. Sondra tells her that Dr. Tilden and Dr. Kim will be here any minute. “Dr. Kim is the anesthesiologist,” Sondra explains. Then she tells Bunny to lie back. “Feet up. Rest your head here.” She pats the pillow, which is no more of a pillow than the pillow on her hospital bed is a pillow, and she reiterates that there’s nothing to be afraid of, that everything will be fine, and Bunny thinks, There’s everything to be afraid of.
This thought is followed by another thought, a far more alarming thought: she is no different than Howie. A perfectly normal person pretending to be mental. Pretending to be mental to get attention. That she would undergo electroconvulsive therapy just to get attention is not necessarily something to put past her.
The need for attention can be like the need for air: Pay Attention to Me.
Dead center in the living room, gripping a butter knife, the tip poised at her heart, while her mother, who did not indulge nonsense, vacuumed around her feet. If she broke her leg on the high-school weekend ski trip, everyone would sign her cast. Even a broken arm would’ve been good, but that didn’t happen, either. First love hit its high point with its end, when her friends gathered around to console her, to tell her she was too good for him. Her friends were a claque of dimwits; a thought she kept to herself because she wanted to be popular.
Like the broken coil she is, Bunny springs up on the table, and she tells Sondra, “I’m faking. I’m doing this just to get attention.”
Sondra places her hand on Bunny’s shoulder and gently eases her back into a prone position. It goes without saying: anyone who would go to such lengths just to get attention, that person would have to be seriously sick in the head.
If It Quacks Like a Duck
Although New York magazine does not include this particular specialization in their annual round-up of the “10 Best Doctors in New York,” Dr. Tilden is tops in the field of electroconvulsive therapy which, granted, is not a crowded field, but what matters here is that as far as the psychiatric community is concerned, he is the gold standard.
Then again, the Nobel Prize was awarded to the quack who thought up the lobotomy as a quick fix.
No matter the forewarnings about Dr. Tilden, Bunny is not prepared for the man’s plaid pants. Gray, navy blue, yellow plaid with a thread of lime green running through like the plaid upholstery of a couch at the Salvation Army selling for $18.99. Bunny worries that the plaid pants are bell-bottoms. Dr. Tilden’s lab coat is buttoned all the way to the top button, as if it were a white shirt to be worn with a tie. A lock of chest hair peeps out like a pin curl. Bunny goes rigid at the thought that beneath his lab coat he is not wearing a shirt, and she thinks, “This quack is about to mess with my brain.”
Dr. Tilden fusses with the equipment, checking that plugs are plugged in and cables are connected. He is attentive to details. That Dr. Tilden acknowledges Bunny no more than he would greet the plastic Visible Woman from Anatomy 101 is not something she should take personally. He appears equally oblivious to Sondra and Dr. Kim, who is the anesthesiologist. He’s definitely got some kind of Asperger-y thing going on.
“We are now going to perform bilateral electroconvulsive therapy,” he announces, as if he were addressing an imaginary group of medical students gathered around the gurney to observe the master. “Stimulating electrodes will be pasted, bilaterally, on the scalp.”
For the second time in twenty minutes, Sondra slaps a blood pressure cuff around Bunny’s upper arm.
Dr. Kim seems like a normal person.
Dr. Tilden says that electrode paste prevents burning. If his horizontal voice were calibrated and recorded like a heart on a monitor, he’d be pronounced dead.
Sondra rolls up the bottom of Bunny’s pajama leg, and she wraps another blood pressure cuff midway between her knee and her ankle, followed by two self-adhesive electrodes she tapes to Bunny’s foot, all to monitor her gorgeous blood pressure while she is under sedation.
Dr. Kim inserts a catheter, an IV line to administer the muscle relaxant and the sedative, into a prominent vein on Bunny’s right hand, and she dots Bunny’s breastbone with a few electrodes of her own. “And this,” she says, “will monitor your blood-oxygen tension.” She clips the oximeter like a clothespin to Bunny’s index finger.
After planting two more electrodes, one square in the mi
ddle of her forehead and another one on her collarbone, Dr. Tilden turns to the machine and again fiddles with the dials.
Dr. Kim puts an oxygen mask over Bunny’s mouth and nose.
“I want you to start at one hundred,” Dr. Kim instructs, “and count backwards.”
If Albie were here, Bunny would ask him, “What the fuck is blood-oxygen tension?” If Albie were here, she wouldn’t be alone. But Albie isn’t here, and for that she has only herself to blame.
She can’t remember what comes after ninety-seven.
Bunny is sorry.
Bunny tells herself that this is not real, this can’t be real.
Ninety-four, ninety-three.
Prompt: Describe a Landscape (300 words or less)
Picture it like this: you are driving your car on a narrow and lonely mountain road. A narrow and lonely mountain road that winds like ribbon. You are above the tree line. It doesn’t matter what kind of car you are driving, but it definitely is not a new car. It’s an old car, a shit-can of a car. The sky grows dark, but not because it’s nearing the night. It’s sometime between two and three in the afternoon. The sky grows dark because storm clouds are gathering, and it gets darker still. A drop of rain splats on the hood of your shit-can car. And then another drop of rain splats and then another and then more. You turn on the windshield wipers, but nothing happens. You turn the windshield wipers off and then on again, but still nothing happens. The windshield wipers don’t work. The windshield wipers are broken. The rain is no longer falling in drops. The rain is falling in puddles that splash against the car windows as if pails of water are being emptied from above. There is no place to pull over. You can’t see the fucking road. You put the car in park and turn off the ignition. You sit there and watch the rain wash over the windows. You watch the landscape, a world without definition. You listen to the rain drumming on the roof of the car, and you think, People who are not easy to like, they have feelings just like nice people do.
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