Rudy rested his chin on his daughter’s thin shoulder. It fit just right there. His mind drifted for only an instant, in which he remarked at how he had become a sort of therapist in his psych-ward room. It was weird, but he found himself able to be optimistic and confident for everyone but himself. It was some combination of the CBT therapy and workbooks, and the groups, and ratcheted-up understanding for his comrades on the floor, along with that invisible strand of grief that flew out from his heart to others, like a fly-fishing cast of empathy for others from his planet. Suddenly he’d become an armchair therapist to his daughter and his, dare he say, girlfriend.
“So that’s the kicker,” CeCe said into her father’s thick sweatshirt hood. “Mr. I’m-coming-to-the-rescue-to-save-the-day, Mr. I’m-God-now-and-I-get-to-tell-you-your-kid-isn’t-going-to-make-it—well he managed to fit in screwing a floor nurse as his third holier than thou reason for not coming home to his family.”
“Oh, honey. Oh, CeCe.” He went on to tell her everything he was thinking, which was that that God-like demeanor of life-and-death specialists perhaps led to a sense of entitlement that made him feel justified in the affair.
“Yeah, well he sure had disdain for our love life. Not that I didn’t try.”
Rudy continued, telling her that seeing death, working in a hospital, in a trauma setting, constantly jumping into fight-or-flight mode with coworkers gave them a sense of connection that falsely seemed like it should be acted on romantically.
“Your mother was around this for thirty years, and she swore that it was not that far off from General Hospital.
“There’s therapy. Marriage counseling. Your mom and I even went once, after her miscarriage. We were like one of those floats in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade that’s gone all off-kilter, bumping along down the street at half-mast.” Rudy felt like he was nearing the end of his psychological explanations and was wandering into a territory of terrible mixed metaphors.
“Do you think our family is keeping the Kleenex company in business?” CeCe laughed through her sniffles, wiping her nose with her wad of tissue that was now nearly as big as an airplane pillow.
Rudy laughed. It seemed his daughter had somehow managed to channel her mother’s sense of humor in these recent weeks. It was the closest he’d ever felt to CeCe.
“Counseling?” he repeated.
CeCe buried her face in the entire wad of Kleenex. “He wants a divorce.”
Rudy hugged his daughter again, the only thing he could do at the moment, singing in her ear “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” which she’d loved as a girl.
21
Rudy had been in the hospital for two weeks and two days. During this time, he’d only been off the ward to wind down the cement stairwell (caged in on the sides by floor-to-ceiling chain-link fencing) to the garden. A few times Sasha accompanied him.
They strolled, identifying the flowers without plaques as best they could. “Larkspurs, not delphinium,” Sasha had mused, bending her willowy body to inspect the deep-blue blooms between her fingertips. It seemed that her Nordstrom work clothes—typically a skirt, billowy blouse, and cardigan—camouflaged how thin she was. Rudy looked forward to cooking for her again in his own kitchen.
And so Rudy was feeling ready to go the morning Dr. Ring came bearing the good news that he would soon be released. Just the weekend and a few days beyond that, to ensure that the medication and dosage they had mutually agreed upon was a well-tolerated best choice: an SSRI antidepressant, plus a medication to augment that, as well as an antianxiety med to be used as needed.
Dr. Ring sipped from his herbal tea, settling into the chair in the corner by Rudy’s, and for a moment peered down on the busy morning activity below.
Bee wouldn’t be there when he got home. It wouldn’t be as though one of them had merely gone on a business trip and now they each brimmed with stories to share. Bee was never coming back. Rudy was a widower. He wasn’t sure what other definitions applied to him now.
He turned to Dr. Ring. “What is my diagnosis?”
Dr. Ring sat up straighter in his chair. “You’ve got depression. Or what we specifically call major depressive disorder—which is unipolar depression, as opposed to bipolar. You’ve also got generalized anxiety disorder and trauma from your wife’s sudden, shocking death, and your efforts to try to revive her.” Rudy nodded, appreciating the fact that this would be easily explainable to both CeCe and Sasha.
Dr. Ring looked into his empty cup with a twinge of disappointment, perhaps wishing there were more of his tea. “Some of us are born with a predisposition for depression, and it is triggered by life events.” He paused, looked at Rudy to catch his eye. “Would you say that Bethany was your best friend?”
Rudy nodded, his eyes welling up. Quite frankly, he was getting sick of all this crying. He didn’t want to live in a Hallmark movie for the rest of his life.
“Just think of the gravity of that,” Dr. Ring said. “The latitude you would allow anyone close to you, had they experienced such a loss.”
A nurse bumped through the door with the vitals cart, smiled when she saw Dr. Ring, and said she’d come back.
“It is my belief,” Dr. Ring said, looking down at the gingko trees lining the strip of grass at the small parking area, “that grief is like asthma or arthritis.”
Rudy nodded, but he had no idea what Dr. Ring meant.
“It is a chronic condition.”
“That’s encouraging,” Rudy laughed.
“Stay with me,” Dr. Ring said, holding out a hand. “It actually is encouraging. Because if you accept grief as something you will likely always carry with you, it is less shocking when it rears its head.”
“Okay.” Rudy uncovered the cup of hot water on a tray he’d been given for tea, selected an herbal tea bag from a sugar and tea container, mixed it up, and handed it to Dr. Ring.
“Let’s say,” Dr. Ring hypothesized, taking the cup from Rudy, “let’s suppose that someone told you that it was never going to rain again. Ever. Rain was over, done with. There was closure on rain. How would you feel if one day you awoke to a cold, gray morning with rain beating against the window?”
“Despair,” Rudy answered. “But I feel despair no matter what when the grief comes.”
“Yes,” Dr. Ring agreed. “But you’ve been encouraged to believe you should avoid experiencing despair. But if you know that it will always rain off and on, you recognize it. You may drop to your hands and knees, and pound your fists on the floor, but you know this rain. And sometimes it might come for a short interval. Like a song on the radio. Or the smell of roast chicken at the grocery. And you know it. There it is again. The grief. It is a part of you and you will get help from others to address it and manage it. I’m encouraging you to recognize and accept this new part of you. And this doesn’t mean you don’t move on. You can move on and honor your dead wife at the same time. When my brother died, I will never forget our neighbor’s words to me. He said, ‘Things will never be the same. They’ll get better, they’ll be different, but they’ll never be the same.’ Those words stayed with me forever. Because that is exactly how I felt.”
“In some ways, I feel that I’m already moving on, and that does scare me,” Rudy said.
Dr. Ring took off his glasses. “In what way?”
Rudy thought Dr. Ring would tell him all of the predictable warnings when he heard about Sasha: You’re in a vulnerable position right now. Don’t make life-altering decisions, big plans, other than decisions that will reduce your stress. And he did. Rudy knew he was right. In the abstract. Just as a medevac landed on the hospital roof above the emergency room, Dr. Ring said, “Life is short. Love heals us. Sounds corny, but it’s mostly true.”
This adage was better than any pill. Rudy had lived for a crippling year with lonesomeness, and he had the opportunity to be with a person he was starting to have strong feelings for, and he figured the worst that could happen was that it wouldn’t work out.
“But what
about Hercules’s hydra?” Rudy asked Dr. Ring.
Hercules’s hydra was a concept and actual illustration Dr. Ring had drawn for Rudy during one of their first talks. Sometimes, rather than attacking one snake at a time rearing from the head of the hydra, you had to cut off the whole shebang from the neck. Grief from the death of a spouse disabling him, job changes, the decision to give away his wife’s things—you had to cut the whole thing off at the neck. Not live in limbo, fighting one snake at a time.
Dr. Ring sipped from his tea. Instead of gazing out Rudy’s hospital window, as he typically did, he reached over and gave Rudy’s hand a squeeze. “You deserve companionship and peace. We all do. But let me just say one thing, and please, will you take it to heart? Do not. Do not place the metric of your happiness, your recovery, your wellness, depression relapses on to Sasha, or the situation of having her with you. I know this sounds obvious, but just will you promise me to watch for that?”
Rudy was touched by the words “promise me,” something he’d hear from Bee, from a family member, a friend. A simple, genuine, nonclinical request, devoid of rhetoric.
“I promise you and I am grateful to you more than you’ll know. You folks up here—” Rudy choked up.
Dr. Ring patted Rudy on the back, and then set down his tea. “Rudy, it’s been a pleasure. Remember that you have more support around you than you realize.”
Rudy thought back on his admission, on how he’d been frightened and indifferent and skeptical all at once. He could see now how his initial fear and apprehension came from movie clichés and the pictures people were quick to paint when describing the mentally ill (or an unkempt or homeless person, for that matter—weren’t they all the same?). She looked as though she escaped the nuthouse! Really? Like a college student or emergency room nurse? Like a professional opera tenor or software engineer or winery owner?
Sure, Rudy remained spooked by the idea of somehow becoming as lost as the patient who floated through the halls of the locked unit—with a bald head and hollowed-out eyes that made him appear like a cross between a ghost and a hard-boiled egg. One morning the gentleman peered through the window of the door of the group therapy meeting on the locked side, blinking in at the patients from both units. The pointed tip of the man’s big head, patched with thin wisps of black hair, knocked gently against the glass, as if he wanted to get in, join the others. One of the group leaders would step out to help the patient to the nurse’s station. Rudy felt both pity and fear toward the man, and shame for experiencing that tinge of fear. But it wasn’t fear of the guy so much as anxiety over falling down the same dark hole that had trapped him. Later, a young woman named Cheyenne, who was staying on the unlocked side for a second time—for a lithium tune-up—expressed serious concern for the man.
“Hi, Alex!” she called out, as the gentleman shuffled by with a lockdown group, through the open-unit dayroom to the stairwell down to the garden for air. These patients had to venture out en masse, with a nurse. Alex just stared over his shoulder blankly at Cheyenne, as though she were as incongruous as a clam or shoe.
“Oh, no.” Cheyenne looked struck as the thick door thumped shut after the group. “Alex and I were here at the same time before. Over here.” She tapped the long table where some of them lingered after dinner, working puzzles, playing games, reading the paper. “He was funny. Totally athletic. I wonder what happened.” And by happened, Rudy knew that this was likely a chewed-up-by-life event that could have happened to any of them. The death of a spouse, for example.
At night, when insomnia hovered beside Rudy’s bed, rudely mouth-breathing and tapping its foot against the bedframe, Rudy imagined himself declining like Alex. Landing back in the hospital on the locked side, suddenly that vacant and lost, his mind an empty parking lot. There but for the grace of Sasha, CeCe, Dr. Ring, and a team of excellent doctors and med students, Rudy was doing better. But he knew he would have to work on himself once home. Every day.
The day before Rudy was to leave the hospital, CeCe came by looking tired, with circles under her eyes cover-up makeup couldn’t quite hide. Rudy tried to get out of her what was going on at home, but she was adamant about it. Focusing soley on Rudy’s discharge—what the plan would be that day, that week, and in the weeks following. There was an outpatient program Dr. Ring wanted Rudy to attend. Where would that be? How would Rudy get there?
“I’ll drive,” he assured her.
“On this new medication?”
“It’s not new at this point. I’m acclimated and will be fine.”
CeCe took notes in her day planner, and suddenly Rudy felt like her second child for whom arrangements needed to be made while she worked.
“Sweetheart,” Rudy bent over with his hands on his knees, looking up at her from below so he could meet her gaze, “I’m going to be fine. Things are looking up. There’s a plan. A post-hospitalization plan that the doctors and a social worker will go over with me. You can come and meet with us if you like. But it’s optional.”
CeCe stopped writing. She looked hurt.
“I mean,” Rudy ran his hand over his face, clean-shaven for Sasha, “I just don’t want you to worry too much. I’m not medicated to the point of impairment. I’m worlds better . . . In fact . . .” Rudy stumbled. He went over the lines he’d memorized pacing the hall the day before. Companionship, symbiotic, two souls on our own . . .
“Sit down.” His voice was somewhere between a plea and a command. CeCe sighed heavily. Set her planner on the table before her, took a long sip of tea. She released her head and shoulders into the headrest of the chair behind her, looking relieved to relinquish her take-charge church lady duties for a moment.
“I am going to be fine. I will return to work. And I’m going to continue seeing Sasha. We’ve become very close while I’ve been in the hospital.”
“Dad,” CeCe said apologetically—perhaps she could tell that this wasn’t easy for Rudy. “I’m sorry. I am so tired. I’m just. I hope you know, my reservations about your getting to know Sasha quickly, my reservations about your becoming close while so vulnerable—they have nothing to do with her personally. I can see that she’s special. I’m just scared. I’m scared for you. God, I sound like a dumb self-help book. I’m scared for me. For my marriage. Which also has nothing to do with you or Sasha. I want to be”—her voice caught in her throat—“good.”
Rudy laughed so suddenly and loudly that CeCe jumped, startled. “Darling, I’m so sorry, I’m not laughing at you. That’s just. I don’t know of a way you could be any more of a good person.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.” CeCe sighed with exasperation. “I don’t want to be a bumbling, bossy Goody Two-shoes. I want to be . . .” She was fighting back crying, still unable to speak (Lord, when they got out of here were they still all going to be crying messes?), and Rudy felt angry with his son-in-law for making his daughter feel anything but absolutely great about herself.
“I want to be a good daughter. And a good mother. I want to be a good wife.” Her face was pinched and red, as though she might sob, but she regained her composure. “I want to be a good, you know, lighthearted daughter of Sasha’s new guy. I want Mom to be proud. I want my husband to love me, my daughter to think I’m fun. The mom who doesn’t care that there’s cupcake frosting on her daughter’s elbows. Sometimes I feel like you’re the only one who thinks I’m okay the way I am.”
Rudy was so touched by this, he stood up and lurched toward his daughter to give her a hug. He had imagined himself to be an irritant to CeCe.
“I do think you are wonderful the way you are! And I feel angry with anyone who doesn’t agree.”
CeCe kicked off her shoes. She rubbed her eyes in a way that must be bad for them. Then she let out such a sigh that Rudy was grateful for the relief he heard.
The nurse came in to take Rudy’s vitals. CeCe complimented her on her scrubs, her shoes, her hair band. Although orderly and critical of the way so many things worked, CeCe was always compliment
ary of others. Demonstratively so. Just like her mother.
“Not sure if there are any harder workers out there,” Rudy said, shyly indicating the nurse, Lilly, among his favorites. When she was finished with Rudy, he followed her and the cart out into the hall.
“My daughter is so tired,” he told her. “May I ask you for a favor?”
“Shoot.”
“You know those blankets from the warmer . . . ?”
“Let me bring Cecilia one.”
And in less than a minute Lilly returned with one of the warm, nubby blankets that was an armful of comfort. Then she handed Rudy a cold can of ginger ale and a straw.
“I owe you one.” Rudy turned back into the room. CeCe’s eyes were closed and her legs hung over one arm of the chair. Rudy unfolded the blanket and enveloped her inside it. CeCe sighed again, even more deeply. He popped open the can of ginger ale, unwrapped the straw, and set the drink before her on the hospital table.
“We’ll be landing in Honolulu in approximately five hours and fifteen minutes,” he told her.
She sipped the ginger ale and closed her eyes again.
He tucked one of the pillows from his bed behind her neck, pushing it down so that it was level with the top of her ears and hairline, offering her the best neck support.
Rudy then took hold of the blue hospital curtain, which was pushed back and gathered along the ceiling at the head of his bed. He tugged it around to the window, creating a wall of privacy between them and the door. CeCe’s eyes remained closed.
“I have a proposal to make,” Rudy declared, knocking the edge of his small, institutional glass with the tines of his fork.
“But of course.” Sasha was nonplussed as she dove into her mashed potatoes. Tonight they were eating two hospital dinners. You would not think hospital salmon would be good, but it was among the nicest dishes. And Sasha was of the same opinion as Rudy: Food made by anyone else started two steps above the live-alone diet of toast and cereal for dinner.
Me for You Page 18