If

by Nina G. Jones

  Miller might have been trying to comfort me, but all I could hear in his words were the insurmountable obstacles. I understood the depths of Ash’s guilt. I understood that what I loved about him was how deeply he felt. That could be great when it came to the way he loved me, but it could be dangerous in the way he felt remorse, or despair.

  Just then Miller’s phone rang.

  “Miller Thoreau . . . Okay . . . How? . . . Jesus . . . Okay. Yes. I am an attorney so you don’t have to explain . . . I’ll be there soon.” Miller looked up. “Well, they arrested Ash for throwing a brick through an art store window. Fucking-A. My contact with the LAPD has him en route to the hospital.”

  ASH

  I was going to pay them back. I just needed some paint and nothing was open. Why do these stores close? Don’t they understand brilliance doesn’t have office hours?

  I tried to tell the officers the owners would understand. The mayor would be seeing my installations and they would be in trouble if they took me in because I had a lot of work to do. Important work.

  “You’re making me taste stale animal crackers,” I told the officer. “And your voice looks like floating turds.” He had this awful accent that sounded like a hybrid of the worst the East Coast had to offer and I wondered what the hell he was doing in the LAPD instead of some East Coast PD.

  I was calm. I was so fucking calm until they tried to cuff me. Because I knew what was next. I couldn’t be put in one of those fucking places.

  “I am an artist! You can’t do this! You should frame that window, it’s going to be worth millions!” I shouted as they cuffed my arms to my legs like a sow and lifted me into the back of the car.

  I flailed and screamed and shouted my name so the people in the street knew if I disappeared, they could tell the news who I was. The international manhunt would begin.

  “I have to tell Bird,” I appealed to the fatter cop with the less ugly voice from the back of the cruiser.

  “Yup, I am sure the birds would love to hear your story. Tell that to the doctor.”

  “No, moron, Bird is a person who speaks, not a bird who speaks.” I took a big inhale, thinking of ways I could explain to this simple man that I should be freed. “Listen, listen, I am not crazy.” Sweat beaded down my forehead and into my eyes, stinging and blurring my vision. I was thirsty and the salty trickle of it onto my lips was welcome hydration. “Bird is a very important person. You won’t see it, but she glows and her voice is like an aurora and . . .” I stopped myself and took another deep breath, because I was trying hard to sound sane, but I was too fast for these imbeciles. I needed to speak to them slowly, as if they were children. But it was hard to stay at their snail’s pace because I had work to do and I needed to get back home fast. “Listen. Okay. Listen. Bird’s name is Annalise Robin Campbell. And I can’t lose her. So okay, wait. Wait, here’s something. Miller Thoreau is my brother and he knows people. So just call him and then I can go back to my installation.”

  “Buddy, you threw a brick through a store window.”

  I had forgotten about that.

  I began to get angry, feeling trapped in these cuffs, in the confines of the back of the cruiser. Once I was no longer distracted by my own pleading, it all started to feel small so that I couldn’t breathe.

  “The car is shrinking,” I told the officer as calmly as possible. But him and poop-voice were laughing about something and chatting away. They had decided I wasn’t worth talking to anymore. It became hard to fill my lungs with air. My face and chest were pressed down onto the seat and each panicked breath seemed to yield less oxygen.

  “Flip me . . . better yet, uncuff me. I won’t fight. I just need to breathe,” I gasped.

  They had forgotten about me. I would be forgotten and die back here.

  Sorry officers, but my life is at stake. Didn’t they know cars were dangerous? If we crashed, I wouldn’t be able to help myself out. I didn’t care if it pissed them off, I needed air. I fucking needed air.

  “Open the window. I can’t breathe!” I shouted. If I could just get some oxygen, I could think clearer. I could breathe.

  I slammed my my forehead at the door just in front of me. “Let me out! Let me out!” I felt myself turning blue, I could see blue splashes before my eyes.

  Thud. Thud. Thud.

  I thrashed harder each time. I would get them to listen. Even better, I would pass out so I wouldn’t feel the painful clenching around my chest. The racing thoughts of death would stop and I could get some quiet. I didn’t care that with each thud, more warmth trickled down my forehead until I could see hardly anything but my own blood. “Let me out! Let me the fuck out!”

  BIRD

  I TRAILED BEHIND Miller as he approached the nurses’ desk.

  As he filled out paperwork and talked to the intake nurse, Jordan and Trevor came rushing in through the entrance to the psych ward.

  “Thank god,” I sighed. I felt like I had been thrown into an alternate reality and seeing my guys grounded me again.

  “Is he okay?” Jordan asked.

  “I don’t know, we just got here.”

  Jordan hugged me and Trevor rested a comforting hand on my shoulder.

  “Bird, I’d been so busy with the show and I’d been staying at Trevor’s so much, I didn’t even notice.”

  “How do you think I feel? Like an idiot. How could I let it get this far?”

  “Don’t blame yourself,” Trevor said. “You have no experience with these types of things. Mental illness goes undiagnosed a lot.”

  But it wasn’t undiagnosed. Ash knew, and he didn’t tell me.

  Miller made his way over to our huddle, and I gave a round of introductions.

  “I thought he was a loner. He didn’t tell me about his friends. Maybe that’s why he stopped coming around as often,” Miller said. It wasn’t a good time to tell him that Ash had overheard the things Ella had said.

  “Can I talk to you for sec?” Miller asked me.

  “Sure.”

  Miller pulled me a few feet away. “He was being belligerent when they brought him here, so they had to sedate him. That and the fact that he likely hasn’t slept for more than a couple of hours in the past week or more means he likely won’t even be up until tomorrow. Then they are going to have to administer the meds which will take at least a few days to kick in. They might even do some other stuff.”

  “Other stuff?”

  “I don’t want to freak you out.”

  “It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”

  “ECT. I know it sounds archaic, but basically shock therapy.”

  “No,” I cried under my breath. “They’re going to shock his brain?”

  “I just spoke with the doctor a bit. That’s what they did in New York. It’s not as bad as it sounds. In really acute cases, especially when hallucinations may have set in, it’s just a way to kind of reset his brain a bit and let the medicine take hold faster. The shocks are very low voltage.”

  I knew Miller had Ash’s best interest in mind, and he was his brother, and I was just his new girlfriend, but my heart still wrenched with images I had seen on TV of people being tortured this way: tongue depressors, thick leather belt buckles tied to hands and feet, the violent convulsing. I just couldn’t imagine my Ash this way.

  “Bird, thank you for everything. But you should go home. Rest. I have your number, and when he’s in a state to talk, I’ll call you. Knowing Ash, I don’t think he would want you to see him like this. And I have to put him first. I hope you understand.”

  I did. But I couldn’t help feeling that Miller didn’t understand what Ash and I shared. We were younger than him, and he had just learned about me. For all Miller knew, I wouldn’t even be here next week. But he was right about Ash not wanting me to see him manic in the hospital. That time when he was “sick” and disappeared made so much more sense now.

  “Okay, but please call me. I won’t be able to think straight until I see him myself and know he�
�s okay.”

  “I promise I’ll keep you updated every day if you want.”

  “Please.”

  I got a deep look into Miller’s eyes and saw how tired he really was. Not just from this night, but from being the sole person in his family to deal with Ash.

  I gave Miller an awkward hug, and just as I was about to turn and leave, he spoke again.

  “Wait, one more thing . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “Shit. I don’t know if what I am about to say is the right thing. I don’t even know how long you have been seeing Ash. But, I just feel compelled to say this to you.”

  Whatever he was about to say did not sound good and it made my heart go heavy.

  Miller sighed. “I know Ash can be fun and enigmatic and his brilliance—his genius—is seductive. But he’s sick. He’s very sick. And I have to deal with it. That’s my job. I’m his big brother. But you are young and you should think about what it means to be with someone like Ash. Just by how you met, the way you jumped in to help him and put yourself at risk, I know that means you are the type of person who would stick around for him. And I would love that for Ash. I know I can’t save him. But please think about it now. Because if you get in deeper with him, and then you leave, I don’t know if he could cope with it. All this shit got so bad after Sarah died. I don’t know if he can take another hit like that. For you to get him out of his shell again, that has to mean he really cares about you.”

  Miller was so cool until this point, and I was taken aback by the vulnerability in his statement. For some reason I didn’t take any offense in him suggesting I might want to go and never come back. I understood he was doing his best to protect Ash and me in the process.

  “I know my relationship with Ash is new to you. But I just need you to understand, that this is not some silly thing. We have really been in this. I love him. And it was so hard to get to him, but I thought I was getting there, and now it seems like I haven’t even scratched the surface.”

  Miller sighed and leaned in. “Bird, you got him painting again. He’s always said painting is his soul. You’ve gotten deeper than any of us could dream of reaching. I just had to make sure.”

  “Of course.”

  I turned around to face Jordan and Trevor’s concerned faces. I didn’t know what would come next, but I knew things had changed and were never going back to the way they were.

  BIRD

  The car ride home was solemn. It felt a lot like I was returning home from a funeral. I was tired, overwhelmed, and I had rehearsal tomorrow that could not be canceled because of my love life. Trevor dropped us off and went home. I think he wanted to give Jordan and me some time for me to do what I needed: scream, cry, shout. But I didn’t feel like talking.

  We ended up at my place. Jordan quietly made some tea and brought me a cup.

  I fumbled with the tea bag, pulling it by its string so that it rose just above the water, and then I let it plop back in. I focused on that repetitive gesture for a while until Jordan spoke.

  “So what are you going to do?” Jordan asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean . . .” I could tell he was trying to put it gently. Are you going to stay with someone who’s crazy? Is what he wanted to ask. Hell, Ash’s own brother even asked. “Do you think he’s going to get better? Are you going to see this through with him?”

  I blew away the steam from the top of the tea, but it came back. I wondered if this is what it would be like with Ash, always trying to make the issue go away, only for it to reemerge.

  “Miller said it’s highly treatable. There are many good medications that keep people stable. The issue is Ash goes off of them. I think he hates that it dulls his synesthesia, and his art, and that’s such an important part of who he is. Can you imagine taking medicine that made you twitchy and unable to dance? That’s what he’s been dealing with.”

  “So then he’ll never stay on the meds?”

  “Well, again, Miller says that there are so many things they can try, but Ash, I don’t know. I guess he doesn’t want to. Part of me feels like he thinks he doesn’t deserve to get better.”

  “Why?”

  I threaded my fingers through my hair. Because he blames himself for his sister’s death. He blames himself for destroying his parent’s lives. He blames himself for destroying his family.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Your career is just starting to take off. Do you think this is a good time to have to deal with all this?”

  “So what should I do? Abandon him?”

  “No, but you’re not married to him. You can be there for him, but I don’t want you to get caught up in him. What if this is just the beginning? Do you want to make sure he’s on his meds, make sure he gets sleep, or that he eats enough? That’s a lot for someone who should be enjoying the prime of her life.”

  “I don’t want to be his friend, Jordan. I love him . . . so much.” The gravity of the choice I would have to make finally became clear to me and I couldn’t fight the tears. I was so tired of crying already.

  “You haven’t even really been with other guys. Maybe you are putting a lot of weight on this because you lost your virginity to him.”

  Jordan’s comment peeved me. He was going back to that older brother thing, talking to me like I was some high schooler who would just fawn over someone because he kissed her.

  “Don’t you put that virginity bullshit on this. This has nothing to do with it. I lost it to him because I love him, not the other way around. And the fact that I lost it later does not make me naive or cloud my decisions. That’s just a tiny piece of what we share.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jordan replied sympathetically.

  “I just I can’t leave him when he needs me the most. I don’t want to.”

  “I love your fierce loyalty, but sometimes you can be loyal to a fault.”

  “I have to give him a chance. I know he didn’t tell me precisely because he was scared I would leave.”

  “I’m just saying, this is his second time being hospitalized. This is really serious.”

  “Jordan, he took a stabbing for me. So now that things are hard, I am supposed to walk away? He saved my life.”

  “So now you owe him yours?”

  “I know. I know what it looks like. I should just move on. Find someone else who doesn’t have the baggage. But that’s not love. Love is accepting someone, flaws and all.”

  As those words came out, I knew I had made my decision. I wasn’t leaving Ash. I was going to help him through this.

  BIRD

  THE WAITING GAME. It might be the most socially acceptable form of mental torture. Waiting to hear back about a casting call. Waiting for a much needed check to clear.

  Waiting for your boyfriend to be sane again.

  The excitement of the impending show should have distracted me. It should have made the time pass quickly. But it didn’t ease the tension that sat heavy in every cell of my body as I waited to be reunited with Ash. As promised, Miller stayed in touch, but Ash was not himself yet, he told me. It would take weeks. The ECT made his short term memory foggy, it frustrated him, and he was still coming down off the mania. He was still not my Ash. I respected the fact that Miller was family and he thought I should wait to see Ash, but that didn’t mean it was easy. I wanted to tell Miller to shove it, and tell Ash I didn’t care if he was embarrassed for me to see him in that state. That’s what I wanted to do, but I knew they were right.

  It had only been a week, but with each day that passed since I last saw Ash, I only grew more heartsick.

  “Come on, Bird!” Jordan snapped as I missed a step. He knew where my mind was, but that didn’t lower his expectations of me. It was his job to make his act the best it could be and he saved his mercy for our time outside of the rehearsal.

  “He lowers you, then one and two and three . . .” He demonstrated the pique to jeté I was to execute.

  I wiped the sweat from my brow. �
��Shit. Okay. I got it. Let’s go.”

  My partner thrust me into the air and lowered me. I executed the moves and completed the sequence.

  “There you go! Finally!” Jordan clapped. “Give me that five more times and we’ll break for lunch.” I’ll admit, during moments like these, I wanted to high kick Jordan in the head. He was a great friend but he was a demanding choreographer. He expected perfection from everyone, and I didn’t get a pass.

  By the end of that day, I was ready to soak in Epsom salts and the misery of missing Ash. Trevor’s family was out of town and I passed on his and Jordan’s invitation to tag along. I waited for an Uber with Marley, when a car pulled up.

  “Bird, come in. I’m taking you to dinner.” The unmistakable accent floated out from the darkness of the vehicle. Of course I had to go, but I looked over at Marley apologetically.

  “It’s okay girl. I’ll see you tomorrow.” We hugged and I crawled into the back of the Mercedes.

  “Hi Alana,” I said nervously. She insisted I call her by her first name, but it always felt like I was not revering her accomplishments when I did.

  “You don’t have plans, do you?”

  “No, just a night alone, soaking in the bathtub.”

  “I thought you had a boyfriend.”

  “I do . . . he’s . . . out of town.”

  “What does he do?”

  “He’s an artist.”

  “Hmmm,” she said with a sly grin. “My second husband was an artist. A bastard when he wanted to be, but they are very passionate. Not just the sex, but they love with fire.” I watched as she recalled something, coiling her lips into an impish smile.

  I nodded, afraid to continue down this line of conversation. I wasn’t ashamed of Ash, but now that I loved someone with a mental illness, I learned how little people understood about them.

  “What is his name? I know many local artists.”

  “Well, he’s um, yet to be discovered.”

  She raised her chin and peered down towards me as if seeing my words from another perspective. “Well, I’d be interested in seeing his work. Let us arrange for that.”