His Bright Light

by Danielle Steel

  Summer 1996, left to right, Victoria, Nick, Zara, Maxx, Beatie, Todd, Sam, Trevor, Vanessa (photo credit 1.26)

  And in the mental hospitals where he stayed occasionally, there were mental health workers who explained their rights to people like Nick, and told them they had the right to make choices. The choice Nick made in September was to stop taking his lithium, and the reality was that we couldn’t force him to take it. Officially at least, he was an adult now.

  We had tried to give him independence in other ways. He had graduated from high school in June, and was taking courses at a local junior college, and we were proud of that. And Julie and her family had just moved in the fall, into a house that suited her and our needs perfectly. It was a large, comfortable house for her family, with a room for Nick if he needed it, and a little mother-in-law cottage where Nick could live independently from her, while still being close enough to be safe. Nick could sleep there if he was in good shape, and behaving, and he loved it.

  But in spite of that, he felt he needed to make a bigger statement about his coming of age. He absolutely refused to take his medication, and we all knew it was only a matter of time before disaster struck him. We just didn’t know what form it would take then. But no amount of cajoling, wheedling, or even threatening would make him take it. He said he felt fine, the lithium had cured him, and he no longer needed to take it. It was typical behavior for a manic-depressive. Many of them stop taking their medication from time to time, usually because they feel so normal on the lithium that it’s deceptive, and they convince themselves that the problem that led them to it has vanished. Nick was no different, but as the days and weeks rolled by, he became more and more difficult and unmanageable. He was like an express train careening seriously offtrack, and I was desperately worried about what would happen. But I had an unavoidable trip to England for a few days where I got a series of frantic phone calls from Julie. Nick needed to be hospitalized but he wouldn’t agree to go. Now that he was eighteen, he didn’t have to do that either.

  We no longer had the right to hospitalize him when we felt he needed it, or if the medication needed adjusting. He had to agree to go, and of course he wouldn’t. The more he needed it, the more he refused. It was an insane system. This time my daughter Beatrix went to Julie’s and spent hours with Nick, cajoling him into going to the hospital. They must have had a hell of a time with him, and called me several times late that night. But he finally went and bounced right back out two days later. But I came home that night and saw him as soon as I got back. It was obvious that he needed help. Without his medication, he was getting wildly manic, and we all knew that crushing depression would follow.

  I spoke to his psychiatrist the next day, but our hands were tied. We couldn’t prove he was a danger to himself. He never really had been, and he was certainly not a danger to anyone else. He wasn’t aggressive in any way, he was just acting crazy. And living with him must have been driving Julie up the walls. Living with someone in a manic phase is like spending your vacation in a Waring blender. Definitely not easy.

  I was particularly aware of it when he called me nearly two weeks later, from Julie’s house, at four o’clock in the morning. I happened to be working, which was unusual even for me, but I was finishing a project. Nick wanted to know if he could bring someone home to dinner the following week. I assured him he could. And then he called me back every half hour after that to confirm it. He was friendly and adorable on the phone, but wound up like a top. And I called him back the next day with an idea that might or might not work. But I was ready to try anything to convince him to take his medication.

  I asked him very inelegantly if there was anything he wanted. If bribery would do it, then that was okay. We had to get him back on lithium and Prozac. Nick thought for a long minute, and then said yes, there was something he wanted.

  “Will you go back on lithium if I get it for you?”

  “Okay,” he said easily. And I held my breath wondering what it would be. One forgot at times how childish Nick was, particularly off his medication.

  “What is it?”

  “T-shirts for the band.” That was it? That was all? He was willing to go back on lithium for T-shirts for the band? I almost cried, I was so relieved. And I called the doctor after I hung up, but for some reason the doctor decided to wait till Monday. It was something functional and practical, maybe it had to do with tests or blood levels, or waiting for results, but he’d been off it for about six weeks then, and the doctor felt comfortable letting it wait a few more days until after the weekend, and I agreed with him. Nick didn’t seem to be in any particular danger. He was just irritable, high strung, and wound up. And if Julie could live with it for three more days, I could.

  I went to L.A. that weekend, with Tom, the man I’d been seeing for just over a year by then, the only one I’d dated since the separation. Nicky was extremely fond of him, and the two had formed an instant bond, in typical Nick fashion. Nick either liked you, or he didn’t, and he had an uncanny sense about people. He had fallen in love with Tom as soon as they met. Tom is straightforward, kind, intelligent, honorable, and Nick sensed all of it. He was always telling me how much he liked him, and urging me to do something about it.

  And we had a great time in L.A. that weekend, although I was in constant contact with Nick and Julie. Nick seemed to be hanging in, and we were all anxious to get him back on his medication on Monday. But in the meantime, Tom and I had a good time in L.A. with friends, and for the first time began talking seriously about the future. We talked a lot about Nick too. Tom was as worried about Nick’s unmedicated state as I was. We always talked about Nick, and Tom had taken a backseat position of concern about his illness since he knew him. He cared a lot about Nick, and always inquired about him.

  I was still happy about the weekend when I got home. And on Monday morning, my world seemed instantly blown apart when Julie called me, screaming into the phone that Nick was dead. Paramedics were there and trying to revive him. I was hysterical, breathless, horrified, and with shaking hands, dialed John. And I called Tom to tell him seconds after. He was as devastated as I was. What seemed like a thousand phone calls followed.

  The paramedics had been able to start his heart again, but had to do so twice more on the way to the hospital. He had obviously overdosed on something, but no one seemed to know what, or why, or how it had happened. Julie had been vacuuming when she got a sudden strange feeling, and went to check on Nick in his cottage. The paramedics said afterwards that although he’d been unconscious for several hours, his heart must have just stopped when she got there. It was a moment of utter panic for all of us. John and I took off for the hospital minutes later. Tom offered to come as well, but it seemed too awkward, and I promised to call him. And all the way across the bay, I prayed that Nick would be alive when I got there. I was barely coherent.

  And when I ran into the hospital when we got there, Nick was in terrifying shape. Julie was there waiting for me, and a few minutes later, Nick’s psychiatrist arrived, and Camilla joined us shortly after. I was in hell, terrified of losing Nicky.

  As best we could figure it, the lack of lithium had apparently gotten to him finally, and he appeared to have attempted suicide. He had used heroin, and an unknown assortment of drugs and poisons, to do it.

  Beatrix joined us at the hospital right after I arrived, and Nick was incoherent and wild-eyed in the emergency room of a trauma hospital, where they had brought him. They warned me immediately that he was in extremely critical condition, and even if he survived, was likely to be brain-damaged. He recognized no one and nothing, his eyes were open but he appeared not to see, could not speak, and was flailing his arms, and making terrifying bovine noises. It is a sound I will never forget, sort of terrible monsterlike moans, and I couldn’t help wondering if this would be it for Nick forever, if he survived it. But one thing came clear to me very quickly. All those things one says when one isn’t faced with a situation like this one, about not wanting
your child to survive if he’d be brain-damaged. I didn’t care if he’d be a vegetable for the rest of his life, I didn’t want to lose him. I didn’t care what it took to keep him alive, but I wanted to do it. I didn’t want to lose him. I was absolutely certain of it.

  But he was in dire shape for hours. And they said that if he were to survive even moderately functional, he would have to come out of it fairly quickly. And four or five hours later, there was no sign of improvement. I went outside once or twice, to cry and call Tom. But there wasn’t much to say. The situation looked hopeless.

  The entire trauma team was still working on him, but they were getting nowhere.

  Finally, as Nick continued to moan and had no consciousness of his whereabouts, I sat down next to him. We had been there by then for eight hours. I took his hand in mine and started talking to him, no matter that he couldn’t hear me. Julie tried to talk to him from time to time too, shouting at him to come out of it, to look at us, to hear us. The whole event had been traumatic for her, as she had kept him going with CPR until the paramedics arrived. She had saved him. And if she had vacuumed for five minutes longer, he would have been gone now. I was acutely aware of what I owed her. My son’s life, if he survived it, which at that point, was still uncertain.

  I talked to Nick endlessly for an hour, sitting close to his ear and telling him over and over and over again how much I loved him, that I was there, and that I was waiting for him. And John and Beatie stood by, feeling helpless, and watching.

  “Come on, Nick … I’m here … open your eyes … look at me … it’s Mommy … I love you, Nicky…” It was an endless rote of words, and for a long time it seemed hopeless, but I had convinced myself that somewhere, in the dark hole where he had fallen, he would hear me. I had almost given up, when he turned to me with wild eyes, moaned horribly again for a minute, and then pursed his lips together, trying to make a sound. I wasn’t sure if he could see me.

  “Mmmmmoooommmm,” he said, and I stood there and cried. He sounded terrible, but he had said “Mom.” It was like snatching him from the jaws of death as I continued to talk to him, and they worked on him. I felt as though I had pulled him back from the abyss where he had fallen.

  Hours later they moved him to the ICU, and he was slightly more coherent, but nothing was assured yet. And they only had a vague idea of what poisons and drugs he had taken. And a slightly better picture of the damage he had caused himself. He had injured his liver, kidneys, spleen, and deafened himself, perhaps temporarily, perhaps not, and his legs were paralyzed. The motor skills in his arms were affected, his vision, and perhaps his heart. And they were not clear yet about the full damage to his brain.

  But when I finally left that night, they thought he would survive, though he was not completely out of the woods yet, and wouldn’t be for several days. I went home for a few hours to the other children, and explained what had happened. Everyone was worried sick about him.

  We had worked out shifts at the hospital. John stayed until I got back, and Julie, Camilla, and I agreed to take eight-hour shifts with him for as long as we had to. And Beatrix was going to be there as much as she could, when she wasn’t working.

  By the next day, things had improved, but only slightly. They were doing a thousand tests on him, and Paul, his attendant, sat at his bedside and cried like a baby. We all did. My beautiful boy was hovering on the edge of death, and I could only imagine what had brought him to it.

  The next week was something of a nightmare, but he got better day by day. He went from neuro-ICU to coronary-ICU to renal-ICU and at one point, as they wheeled him from one ICU unit to another, for tests and closer observation, Nick looked at me with that grin I loved so much and said, “Why don’t they just leave me in the parking lot so I can smoke?” Very funny. I wanted to shake him for what he’d done, and make him swear he’d never leave me. The thought of what had very nearly happened made me shudder.

  He admitted to having been depressed and fed up and not thinking clearly and the neurologist had started him on lithium and Prozac again within hours of his arrival.

  Three days after he came in was Halloween, and I arrived with an armload of decorations for his room, a silly T-shirt, and orange-and-chocolate cupcakes. He loved Halloween and I didn’t want him to miss it. Little did I know it would be his last one. I wore a purple wig and a witch costume to amuse him.

  But he was lucky this time. By the end of the week, he still couldn’t feel his legs, but he could walk, somewhat awkwardly, they had figured out that his heart was all right and he hadn’t damaged the lining, his hearing had returned, the rest of him was still a mess, but he was no longer in danger.

  I was commuting to the hospital, an hour away, twice a day, and running between Nick and the other children. It was a shocking experience for all of us, which left us rocked to the core, half angry and half hysterical over what Nick had done and very nearly accomplished. I think we were all reverberating from the emotions. The younger children, in particular, were badly shaken.

  Nick stayed at the trauma hospital for eight days, but at the end of a week, they very responsibly asked us to move him. They said they weren’t equipped to help him psychiatrically, and their hospital wasn’t set up to protect him. They were afraid that he would try it again, which sounded absurd to me. I was sure he had learned his lesson. He was being wonderfully affectionate, and seemed happy to be alive, and maybe by then the lithium was helping a little, or at least the Prozac. His friends were visiting him and he seemed in remarkably good spirits. The rest of us, particularly Julie and I, looked exhausted and frazzled. I had never in my entire life been through anything so stressful. But miraculously, they were beginning to think that he might recover completely. His brain functions had been assured by then, and he had sustained no permanent damage, which really was a miracle. The only lingering problems he had were some liver disfunction, and the fact that his legs were still partially numb. But they said they could stay that way for six months or more. He was going to have to get therapy to help them.

  The trauma hospital had been extraordinary with him, and I was immensely grateful to them. There were so many people to be grateful to. Julie, the paramedics who had continued CPR, the emergency room staff, the people in the ICU, a wonderful neurologist who really cared about Nick, and an extraordinary psychiatrist who got Nick’s number the first time she met him. She was the one who suggested we move him, and quickly. And if only to humor them, I did. Eight days after he arrived, Nick went by ambulance to a hospital in the city with a psychiatric unit. He was put in a room with a suicide watch on him, and I could finally visit him easily, without negotiating the bridge or rush hour traffic twice a day. It made my life a little easier, and gave me more time at home with the other children. I finally began to relax, knowing that he was in good hands, and I no longer had to worry about him. All we had to do was get him on his feet, literally, keep an eye on his liver, and get enough lithium back into him to settle him down again. Compared to what we’d just been through, that seemed easy, and every minute of every day, I was grateful that he was still with us.

  In fact, by the time we’d settled him in, he was not only in good spirits, but somewhat feisty. His friends were visiting him, and somehow I managed to close my eyes to the danger signs, although I am not usually prone to denial. But I considered what had happened an aberration, because he had been off lithium at the time. I knew that once back on, it was unlikely to happen again. But what I underestimated entirely, or had never been told, was how lethal his disease was. In my view, it was something that could make him unhappy all his life, but not something that could kill him. I missed that message completely.

  Supposedly, sixty percent of all manic-depressives attempt suicide, and thirty percent of all manic-depressives are successful at it. I’m not totally sure of that statistic but if it is even close to accurate, it’s very impressive. I never realized that Nick had a thirty percent chance of dying as a result of his disease, or I would have be
en even more panicked.

  As it was, I wrote him a poem, which told him how I felt about what he had done. It said it all, and Nick carried it in his wallet forever after and said he loved it.

  Once Nick was settled into his new hospital, I tried to calm down myself, and was looking forward to a weekend with my children. Tom and I went to visit Nick on Thursday night, and Tom made Nick promise, for whatever it was worth, that he would never do anything like that again. Nick promised he wouldn’t, and looked as though he meant it. We ran into Todd at the hospital too, and the four of us sat and chatted for a while. And I know Beatrix and Trevor had also been to see him. And I let Samantha go for a few minutes, and bring him food. He hated the food there, but otherwise, he seemed comfortable and happy. And Sam, particularly, was thrilled to see him. He had scared all of us, and it was as though we each needed to touch him and see him, to reassure ourselves that he was still with us.

  Tom and I had a nice evening with the kids on Friday night, and were relaxing with his arm around me when the phone rang.

  It was the hospital, and they quickly told me that Nick had tried it again, but they had saved him. They had found him almost immediately, had to start his heart three times this time, but they already felt that he was out of danger by the time they called me. It had all happened very quickly. And they believed he had overdosed on some drugs that friends had brought him. “Friends.” Not my definition of friendship, to bring a mentally ill boy drugs in a psychiatric ward, on suicide watch. I was too stunned to react at first, but Tom looked distressed. I told him what had happened, and a little while later he left. He was tired too, and wanted to go home and get some rest. We had all been through the wringer.

  He thought I should go to the hospital that night, but after he left, I didn’t. I was too angry at Nick to go. I knew he was out of danger, and I didn’t want to see him. I just couldn’t. And there was nothing I could do to help him. He was safe. He was alive, and I needed some time to absorb what had happened. Julie and I talked on the phone, and I called John and Dr. Seifried. But it was obvious that the demons that were driving Nick now were stronger than he was. And I was heartsick when I went to bed that night, but grateful again that he had survived. But I was beginning to wonder how often I was going to have to be grateful after Nick dared the fates to take him.