Leaving the World

by Douglas Kennedy

  Dr Ireland was also strictly business. She was a diminutive woman in her mid-forties, with a lean athletic frame and long red hair that was carefully braided. She always dressed smartly in black suits and never wore the white coat favored by the other residents. Only once did she mention that we shared the same alma mater, as she had done her undergraduate work at Harvard before going on to Dartmouth Medical School. Unlike Dr Menzel, she never spoke of her life outside of her ‘drop-ins’ twice a week at Mountain Falls Regional. But she was very tenacious when it came to getting me to talk about my current state of play . . . even though I fought her hard every step of the way.

  During our first session she informed me that she was very well briefed on my ‘case’; that she had been in contact with New England State, with my lawyer, even with Christy (Professor Sanders told her where I was).

  ‘I do hope you understand that what happened to your daughter was in no way your fault.’

  ‘Think that if you wish,’ I said.

  ‘It’s the truth. I requisitioned the police report, the autopsy report, the eyewitness accounts. Nothing, nothing, you did caused this.’

  ‘And nothing I did stopped this.’

  ‘Accidents happen, Jane. The circumstances that cause them are inherently irregular and unselective. Try as we might we cannot control their trajectory. They just are . . . and we have to live with the consequences, as terrible as that might be. But it doesn’t mean that we should crucify ourselves for that over which we have little control.’

  ‘Think that if you wish.’

  ‘That’s the second time you’ve used that phrase.’

  ‘I often repeat myself.’

  ‘Even if it causes you agony to hold on to such guilty feelings?’

  ‘My guilt is my own business.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree with you more. The problem is, “your own business” turned so toxic and lethal that you saw no way out but to try to kill yourself. Now does that strike you as a sensible way out of hell?’

  ‘Actually, yes, it does.’

  ‘Do you still think that ending it all is the only solution to the grief you feel?’

  Careful here.

  ‘No . . . I feel somewhat . . . OK. Not totally OK, given all the injuries I suffered . . . but certainly OK about having made it through.’

  ‘So . . . you want to live.’

  ‘Yes. I want to live.’

  ‘You are one terrible liar.’

  ‘Think that if you wish.’

  ‘That’s the third time you’ve used that phrase.’

  ‘Then I really am even more repetitive than I thought.’

  ‘You haven’t known much in the way of happiness in your life, have you?’

  This stopped me short.

  ‘There have been moments . . .’ I eventually said.

  ‘With Emily. That was her name, wasn’t it? Emily?’

  ‘I don’t want to—’

  ‘I’m sure you don’t. But this is exactly what we do need to talk about. Emily. The one person in your life who—’

  ‘You know shit.’

  ‘Do I? All right then. Tell me who ever brought you happiness in your life? The father who was always absent and abandoned you, and then cost you your career in financial services? Or the mother who was hyper-critical and could not help but undermine you at every step along the way? Or maybe it was the first great love of your life, a married man who happened to be your thesis advisor and—’

  ‘Who told you all this?’ I shouted.

  ‘Is that important?’

  ‘I don’t like being betrayed.’

  ‘Quite. Knowing what I have found out about your background, I don’t blame you. Your life has been one long sequence of betrayals, culminating in your partner Theo running off with—’

  ‘That’s it,’ I said, grabbing the spokes of my wheelchair and steering myself around in a 180-degree turn towards the door. ‘This conversation is finished.’

  ‘Not until you tell me about your drive out here.’

  ‘Trying to change the subject, are we?’

  ‘You were found in a snowbank on Route 202 just over five days ago. Before that . . . what?’

  ‘I don’t have to tell you anything.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I could easily have you committed as someone who is a danger to the community.’

  ‘I’ve harmed nobody.’

  ‘Not this time. But say we let you go and you suddenly get the same suicidal urge again – only this time you decide to cross the central median on a highway and plow into a family of four . . .’

  ‘I’d never do that.’

  ‘So you say. But what proof do I have of that? None actually. Which makes you a suitable case for incarceration unless you are willing to—’

  ‘I ended up in Montana because I ended up in Montana.’

  ‘I need to know more than that.’

  ‘I walked out on my job, my apartment, my life – and I started to drive.’

  ‘This was how long after the . . . accident?’

  ‘Three, four weeks.’

  ‘And at the time had you been prescribed any medication to help you deal with—’

  ‘Zopiclone . . . to help me sleep. Because I wasn’t sleeping. Because I couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘The same Zopiclone found in your car?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Prescribed by a Dr Dean Staunton – who also happens to be the staff doctor at New England State University?’

  ‘No doubt you’ve already spoken to him.’

  ‘He said that when you came to see him – in the wake of the accident – you were in a very bad place, but trying desperately hard not to show it. You insisted on returning to work just five days after the funeral and would not listen to his recommendation that you take compassionate leave. What disturbed him the most was how controlled you were. Your colleagues were also astounded by this – and by the steely insistence you had about carrying on as normal.

  ‘Until, that is, you attacked a certain Adrienne Clegg. Would you mind explaining to me what happened?’

  ‘You know what happened – because no doubt somebody at New England State told you what happened.’

  ‘I need to hear it from you.’

  ‘I don’t feel like talking about it.’

  ‘Because . . . ?’

  ‘Because I don’t feel like talking about it.’

  ‘You don’t have to worry. Your lawyer, Mr Alkan, informed us that Ms Clegg decided not to press charges against you.’

  ‘Lucky me.’

  ‘Was there good cause why you attacked Adrienne Clegg?’

  ‘I think so. The woman was my partner’s business associate. Then she became his lover. Then they ran through a large financial windfall – and landed me with all the debt, then conveniently vanished from view. I was hyper-stressed because of this. I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t thinking too clearly. The insomnia was making me vertiginous. I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t negotiate even the simplest things. Which is why . . .’

  The sentence fell away. Dr Ireland completed it.

  ‘Which is why you blame yourself for what happened?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Do you also blame Adrienne Clegg?’

  ‘Cause and effect.’

  ‘And that’s why – when she did come back to Boston – you attacked her?’

  ‘Cause and effect.’

  ‘You said that already.’

  ‘I’m saying it again. And now I’m not saying anything more.’

  There was a pause – and I could see the doctor sizing me up, wondering just how hard she could push me.

  ‘We’ll continue this again in three days’ time. Meanwhile, don’t you think it’s important to contact your department chairman, your lawyer, your friends . . .’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We could contact them for you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I
s that definitive?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Depression is a normal response after—’

  ‘Being clumsy enough not to kill yourself?’

  Dr Ireland tapped her pencil against her clipboard.

  ‘I’d like to put you on an antidepressant called Mirtazapine. It’s largely to ensure that you sleep.’

  ‘Will it stop me looking in the mirror and seeing the catastrophe that is my face?’

  ‘All that will heal.’

  ‘And then . . . What? . . . I’ll eventually learn to come to terms with my “loss”, and will find a way out of the “grieving process”? Is that the crap you’re going to hit me with?’

  Dr Ireland stood up and began to gather her things.

  ‘I can be consoling when asked to be consoling,’ she said. ‘And I can be brutal when I need to be brutal.’

  ‘I don’t need consoling, Doctor.’

  ‘Then here’s the brutal truth of the matter: you are going to have to live with this every day for the rest of your life. Which is why you’re planning to kill yourself as soon as you are out of our clutches.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘We’ll continue this at the same time on Thursday.’

  I was started on the Mirtazapine that night. Nurse Rainier told me that she was giving me 15 milligrams of the stuff (‘Doctor’s orders’) because they wanted to ensure that I went under.

  ‘Dr Ireland told me you attacked a woman with a sharp object. Then she told me the circumstances why. Can’t say I blame you. Can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same.’

  Oh, stop trying to humor me . . . to make me feel that everything that transpired wasn’t my fault. I won’t give in to the great new American tradition of refusing to accept the blame. I am guilty. Guilty of so much.

  The Mirtazapine did help me sleep and I informed Nurse Rainier that I did feel the pills were smoothing out some edges.

  ‘By which you mean you’re actually feeling better?’ she asked around a week after I had been started on the pills.

  I knew this was a trick question. Antidepressants take weeks to gain purchase within the brain and the metabolism. Though they did knock me out I realized that they wouldn’t begin to have any serious effect for some time to come. Best therefore not to raise their suspicions by saying I was feeling ‘at one with myself’ or some such pharmaceutical Pollyanna crap. Best just to say: ‘They knock me out. They don’t deaden anything.’

  Nurse Rainier bought that one. Just as she also approved of the way I was starting to use a wheeled Zimmer frame to negotiate my way around the ward, and to my various appointments. I remained the only patient in the psych wing and though I was offered a television to keep me company I rejected it in favor of a radio on which I could listen to the local NPR station. I also discovered the limited resources of the Mountain Falls Hospital library. Still, the hundred or so books on their shelves did turn up some surprises – like a dog-eared copy of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, a novel that had greatly impressed me on my first reading around eight years ago, but whose themes of personal loss and the ongoing sentient echoes of the dead I now found hard to negotiate. Still I pressed on with re-reading it, trying to concentrate more on the precision of Greene’s language, his immense readability, his understanding that we are all doomed by our impulses and the human need for emotional possession at all costs. It reassured me in the way that all good literature reassures – by showing me that everything is flawed, damaged, transient, and that we are all prisoners of our need to impose order on the chaotic business of life.

  ‘Could we return to the accident in Cambridge?’ Dr Ireland asked at the start of our next session.

  ‘I’d rather not.’

  ‘I’m certain you wouldn’t. But it would be useful – for our work together – if I could hear from you exactly what happened.’

  I hesitated.

  ‘It’s too early,’ I finally said.

  ‘Will there ever be the right moment? I don’t need a big long story. Just a very simple recounting of what happened on that January afternoon five weeks ago.’

  I stared at the floor. This was not me pausing for effect. I could hardly bring myself to replay all the events in my head, even though my brain did that for me ceaselessly. But to speak about them? To verbalize them, to give them narrative shape? That was too much.

  ‘Please . . .’ I whispered.

  ‘Make it as fast as you want. Just tell me.’

  So I sucked in a deep lungful of air and exhaled and spoke. I must have spoken for only around two or three minutes. But I got through it all, right up to the moment in the hospital when they told me . . .

  ‘And then . . . ?’ Dr Ireland asked.

  ‘Then I came apart.’

  ‘Even though everyone spoke about how controlled and brave you were in the weeks that followed.’

  ‘I was operating on autopilot. I was trying to pretend . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pretend that I could cope.’

  ‘When did you realize you couldn’t?’

  ‘I knew it all along. But I kept telling myself: you somehow stick to your normal routine. You go to work. You give your classes. You grade your papers. You maintain your office hours for your students. And eventually – eventually . . .’

  ‘Eventually . . . what?’

  ‘Eventually . . . you’ll be able to somehow manage.’

  ‘Why this need to “manage”?’

  ‘Why the hell do you think? I felt if I could manage I could somehow stay afloat.’

  ‘Even though you knew you were coming apart?’

  ‘Even though . . . all the while I felt as if my head was splitting open and the thought gradually began to overtake me that I couldn’t endure the agony anymore.’

  ‘But you weren’t thinking of killing yourself at that time?’

  ‘Yes, I was starting to think about that.’

  ‘What stopped you?’

  ‘Cowardice.’

  ‘But when this Adrienne Clegg suddenly showed up again with your ex . . .’

  ‘That incident . . . it was all rage.’

  ‘I’m sure. Would you mind taking me through it, please?’

  ‘Yes, I would mind.’

  ‘I know it’s probably not something you want to revisit. Nonetheless, it would be useful if—’

  I raised my hand, like a traffic cop stopping traffic. Then I started to talk. Again I kept to the facts, determined to get through all this as quickly as possible. She only stopped me when I spoke about running off into the night after the attack.

  ‘Did you have any idea what you were going to do next?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Like the attack itself, it was completely spontaneous. Afterwards I raced into the street. The next thing I knew I was in a cab. We made my apartment in Somerville in ten minutes. I raced around the apartment, throwing stuff into a suitcase . . .’

  ‘Including all those Zopiclone . . .’

  ‘Including my passport, my laptop, as many changes of clothes as I could squeeze into a bag . . . and yes, my pills. I tossed everything into my car. I cranked up the engine. I roared away. Actually, “roared” is an inappropriate verb. I stuck to the speed limits. I drove in a very steady, inconspicuous manner . . .’

  ‘Because you thought . . .’

  ‘I thought there’d be an all-points bulletin out for me. I thought that if I stopped anywhere to spend the night, I’d be traced there. So . . . I just drove.’

  ‘Tell me exactly where you drove.’

  ‘I drove everywhere.’

  ‘What was the first road?’

  ‘The 90.’

  ‘Interstate 90?’

  ‘That’s right. I would only drive Interstates. I would only stay in Mom and Pop hotels – paying with cash, registering under an assumed name, not sleeping much.’

  ‘By not much you mean . . . ?’

  ‘One, two hours a night.’

  ‘The rest of the time?�
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  ‘I would sit in a grubby bathtub, soaking in scalding water. I’d watch crap all-night TV. I’d think about hanging myself from the shower rail . . .’

  ‘What stopped you?’

  ‘I was just so exhausted, so deranged, so not here . . . and so terrified of the prospect, even though I was determined to leave the world. And when you are dead set on doing this you don’t want to make contact with anyone who might convince you to do other wise . . .’

  ‘“Leaving the world ”,’ she repeated, trying out the expression. ‘I like it. It’s almost romantic.’

  ‘Suicide is often romantic.’

  ‘Except for the individual who actually commits it.’

  ‘Literature is riddled with romantic suicides.’

  ‘Was your attempt romantic?’

  ‘Look at my face and tell me if this is your idea of romance.’

  ‘I was being ironic.’

  ‘I know you were. But the road is romantic . . . especially for an American.’

  ‘And all roads eventually come to an end. Yours did in Montana. Why here?’

  ‘It’s all random, isn’t it? I must have clocked twenty-five hundred miles in all those days on the road and the one snowbank I chose is – was – here. Just think about that. Had I not decided, out of nowhere, to end my life at that one curve in Route 202 between Columbia Falls and Evergreen, Montana, you would never have known of my existence.’

  ‘There’s an old theory about people who get into their cars and head west. On one level they’re fleeing their past lives. On another level they’re heading towards a geographic extreme. The problem is, once they get to LA or San Francisco or Seattle, the only thing left for them to do is drive right off the edge.’

  ‘It’s a nice metaphor, hitting the Pacific Rim and having no other recourse but to fall off the precipice of the continent. Too bad Margaret Atwood already used it in one of her novels.’

  ‘Am I being accused of plagiarism?’ Dr Ireland asked mildly.

  ‘No – I’m just something of a fussy academic when it comes to sources.’