by Mark Lukach
“I’m going back outside, you guys, I just wanted to say hi.”
“Thanks for saying hi,” I said. “We’re just cleaning out the monsters from the house.” With Giulia back out in the yard, Jonas rushed over to the front door to prop it open, and I swept the monsters out, one at a time, making a big show of it, and then we closed the door and breathed sighs of relief and hope that the monsters were gone.
Over the weekend, Giulia told her doctor she wanted to return to work. Remarkably, her doctor agreed. She hadn’t slept in two weeks.
Our routine became unbearable. Giulia worked, I worked, Jonas went to day care. I was a nervous wreck the entire day. I couldn’t concentrate on my classes. I improvised my lessons as they were happening and didn’t grade any of the homework that I kept collecting. I picked up Jonas and took him on hikes with Goose. When Giulia came home, she disappeared into the backyard to be on her phone. Jonas and I watched the World Series, but it felt more like a chore than a treat. The two of us lived as if Giulia were out of town.
After spending an hour getting Jonas to sleep, I went into our room, to now try to achieve the same goal with Giulia. This took even longer and was never successful. Inevitably, I fell asleep first. In a desperate effort to stay on top of my schoolwork, I set an alarm for three a.m. so I could do some of the overdue grading and lesson planning. I slept so nervously and lightly that I was often awake before the alarm went off. Whether Giulia was awake or not, she didn’t acknowledge my departure as I tiptoed off to my office to work. I sat at my computer, blinking hard against the glare of the screen, until I woke up Jonas at six to get him ready for school. Then we launched into another day.
It was an unsustainable schedule. I couldn’t spend four hours each night trying to get my family to sleep and then wake up a few hours later to grade papers. Even my students noticed it. One day, after I e-mailed a round of graded essays back to my students in the middle of the night, one of them said to me after class, “I got your e-mail. You sent it at four a.m. Why are you grading papers at four in the morning? Is everything okay?”
Our plan had swung me from one end of the spectrum to the other. In Giulia’s previous episodes, I had been the forceful advocate, my hands in every decision, no matter how minute. In this new plan, I felt like a passive bystander, completely uninvolved, watching a psychotic episode explode around me.
Under the ruse that I was doing it for Giulia, that Jonas’s habit of coming to bed with us in the middle of the night was disruptive, I started to sleep in Jonas’s room. But I was really doing it for me. I liked his room, with all the life-affirming children’s books on the floor and the alphabet stickers on the wall, so much better than ours.
His bed was too small for me to lie comfortably in for too long, so I rolled out our family-sized sleeping bag on the floor. When Jonas woke up in the middle of the night, I pulled him close, and we snuggled on the floor until I woke up to do more grading. Those moments on the floor with Jonas were the only times I felt at ease.
Our plan collapsed the night before Halloween. The World Series was over by now. The Giants won game seven in what many commentators considered to be the best series of the past decade, but Jonas and I had mostly given up on watching. I couldn’t pretend to enjoy baseball while Giulia paced herself into a steadier stream of psychosis.
The Giants’ season over, we tried to go back to usual dinners, usual bedtimes, but Giulia still spent most of the evening by herself in the yard. Giulia and Jonas didn’t spend more than a few minutes in the same room together. She was very unsure of herself and nervous when she was in the room with Jonas, so she excused herself. I bathed Jonas and put him to sleep by myself, then lay with Giulia for a long while. When I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, I moved to my sleeping bag on Jonas’s floor.
A few minutes after I settled down on the floor, his bedroom door slowly opened.
“Get out of there, Mark. You can’t hurt Jonas,” Giulia hissed. “I won’t let you hurt him. Get out of his room right now.”
“I’m not going to hurt Jonas, Giulia,” I whispered. “I’m just here to make sure that he doesn’t wake you up if he comes to our bed. You remember, we’ve been doing this for a week.”
“Mark, I mean it, get out of there now.” She wasn’t whispering anymore, and I didn’t want her to wake him up. I crawled out of my sleeping bag and left his room. We stood in the hallway. “You can sleep with me, but not with Jonas,” she said.
At a loss, I did something that hadn’t occurred to me before: I called the hospital emergency room, which was staffed with an advice nurse. Giulia waited with me for a few minutes but then returned to our room after losing interest.
I was on hold for a long time. When I finally had a nurse on the phone, I explained the whole situation as quickly as I could—the two previous hospitalizations, the two and a half weeks of no sleep, the escalating psychosis. Giulia heard me on the phone, came into my office, and snatched the phone out of my hands. She told the nurse her own version of what was going on, but her explanation was slurred and full of delusions and exaggerations.
After Giulia’s ramblings, the nurse asked to speak with me again and told me to give Giulia another sleeping pill. Yes, even though she had already taken two, and two Risperdals, she should take one more. If she wasn’t asleep in two hours, call back.
I hung up, and Giulia reversed course. She now insisted that I had to sleep in Jonas’s bed and couldn’t stay in our room. She no longer feared what I might do to Jonas; she was scared of what she might do to me. I rolled my eyes and trudged back into Jonas’s room. I wasn’t concerned with her empty threats of danger. I knew she wouldn’t hurt me. I lay in my sleeping bag and zipped it up all the way to my chin and waited out the two hours.
When I woke up around three a.m., Giulia was standing in the hallway. “It’s time to call again,” she said, almost with glee. “To figure out what is happening.”
I spent another long wait on hold and spoke with a different nurse, reexplaining the situation, with Giulia constantly interrupting to chime in with her own delusional insights. As before, she lost interest after a while and left. With Giulia gone, the nurse immediately became very decisive.
“You have to hang up and call 911 and have the police bring your wife to the hospital,” he said to me.
“I’m not going to call the police on her,” I said. “We’ve been down this road before. She’s not going to hurt anyone.”
“Okay, so don’t call the police, but you need to bring her to the hospital.”
That phrase—“bring her to the hospital”—uttered from the lips of a medical professional, completed the final phase of our plan. I had done everything I could, we had done everything we could, to respect Giulia’s autonomy. We had kept her out of the hospital as long as we could. But now, someone finally gave us permission to not have to wage this war alone. It wasn’t because we weren’t strong enough. It wasn’t a defeat. We hadn’t given up on the plan. But this was where the plan brought us. Psychosis was too big to manage on our own.
Giulia returned for the tail end of the conversation and heard the last few details about going to the hospital in the morning. When we hung up, she thanked me for not calling the police and then went back into our room again. She fell asleep almost immediately, as if the knowledge of her impending hospitalization was somehow a relief for her, too.
It was now three thirty in the morning. My mind was fuzzy with the exhaustion from the past two weeks, but I knew it was lunchtime in Italy. I gritted my teeth and called my mother-in-law. Through tears, I explained that I had to take Giulia to the hospital, again. Suoc surprised me with her response. “I’m so sad for Giulia, but I’m more sad for you, Mark. I don’t know how you manage all of this by yourself, with Giulia and Jonas, too. We love you so much.”
Suoc offered yet again to come out and help, but by that point she and I both knew that wouldn’t do much. We agreed that it would be best for Jonas to stay in school, around h
is friends and in the upbeat environment. And without a grandson at home to watch, Suoc would have nothing to do all day. We were finally seeing eye to eye.
At four a.m. I got back into my sleeping bag, my alarm on my phone set for six a.m. so I could get Jonas ready for school. I fired off a quick e-mail to the parents of my students, time-stamped 4:17 am, yet more digital evidence of the chaos from my life. Parent-teacher conferences had been scheduled for the next day. I canceled the meetings, promising to hold them sometime later, no specifics provided.
It was odd, and strangely reassuring, to be awake in my sleeping bag at four a.m. and to know that Giulia would be in the psych ward the very next day. I had a vague sense of what the day would look like. I knew we would mostly be waiting—at the ER to see the psychiatrist and then to find out where she would be admitted. If I took her there after I dropped off Jonas, he would be fine at school all day, and if the wait wasn’t long, I might even be able to go with her to the admitting hospital before I had to pick him up. I thought ahead to the weekend: I would need a babysitter for a few hours on Saturday and Sunday so I could visit her, but then I could probably return to work on Monday, go straight from work to the hospital, and then get Jonas on the way home before his day care closed. The planning restored a semblance of control.
I mostly thought of how the day was going to feel. The ER would be an emotional tsunami. But this time, I knew it was coming. I could brace for the sadness and fear.
Or so I thought.
Jonas decided to be an elephant for Halloween. His favorite book was The Jungle Book, and he especially loved the scene when Mowgli tries to march with the elephants. We found an adorable elephant outfit online the week before and left it hanging in his room for the week leading up to Halloween, for Jonas to see and get excited about. He woke up with an eager smile on October 31 and squealed, “Daddy, I get to be an elephant today!”
We ate breakfast together as usual, his oatmeal and yogurt, my granola, and he stole a few spoonfuls of my granola, as always. It was all so beautifully ordinary, a whisper of joy on a day that was scheduled to be heart-wrenching. I didn’t say much as he talked on and on about his elephant costume. I mumbled in agreement through my mouthfuls of breakfast and couldn’t resist pulling him into my chest to kiss his head and tell him how much I loved him over and over again.
Giulia woke up as I fumbled through putting on his costume, the soft gray bodysuit, the hat with the big ears and trunk, unsure of the buttons to snap and knots to tie. He saw her come toward his room, and no one said anything. Giulia kept her distance in the doorway.
All week, Giulia and I had been promising Jonas that we would be coming to school for the schoolwide Halloween parade. I had even planned my parent conferences around seeing his parade. I knotted the laces on his elephant-feet shoes, and I was sluggish with the dread of telling him that we would miss the parade and that when he got home, Mommy wouldn’t be there.
Fully costumed, backpack in hand, Jonas was ready to go to school. Giulia still hadn’t said anything to him. I knelt down to be at his level and looked him in his full, brown eyes. “Jonas, Mommy is going on a business trip today. She will be gone for a little while.”
Jonas tilted his head quizzically. The few other times Giulia had to travel for work, we had talked about the trip weeks in advance, not the morning of. “Business trip?”
“Yeah, she’s going on a business trip, and I have to take her to the airport, so we can’t come to the parade today. We’re really sorry to miss it. But I promise I will still take you trick-or-treating tonight.”
Jonas was quiet as he processed this, but he nodded in relief at the mention of trick-or-treating.
Giulia followed my cue. “That’s right, Jonas, I’ll be on a business trip. I’ll miss you so much while I’m gone. Can you give me a kiss?”
Jonas approached her cautiously. He was so adorable in his elephant costume. He gave her a quick nervous kiss and backed away, grabbing my hand for comfort. I had to look away. I had expected a slower rising tide of emotion, but the sight of them kissing in his elephant suit was too much. A deep sadness overwhelmed me. My eyes welled with tears and my mouth quivered in an attempt to choke back a sob. I thought my head would explode with the effort as I stuffed it all back inside so I could get my boy off to school.
Jonas turned and rushed off to the door. I whispered to Giulia to please start packing for her business trip while I was dropping him off. I wondered if she might try to leave while we were gone.
I played the Colonel Hathi march song from The Jungle Book on repeat on the drive to his school, but I couldn’t sing along or tell the story like usual. I knew that if I made a single sound, all of my sorrow would pour out into the enclosed space of our car. I had prepared for the feelings of sending Giulia into the hospital, but I hadn’t anticipated breaking a promise to Jonas. I thought of him walking out into the crowd of parents, beaming with pride in his costume, looking for us, only to remember that we weren’t there. I wanted to scream and run and rip the guts out of these monsters that tormented us.
I wore my sunglasses into his classroom even though it was a drizzly morning and rushed my good-bye. I told Jonas again, in hushed tones, holding him close to my chest, that I would be taking Mommy to the airport and I would miss the parade. But don’t worry, buddy, we will go trick-or-treating tonight, you and me and Goose. He turned into the dizzying excitement of a class full of Halloween costumes and was quickly swept up in the frenzy. I waved good-bye to the flash of a gray elephant stomping around the classroom.
On my way to the parking lot, I flagged down the director of the preschool, who was racing around to relocate all the outdoor Halloween decorations that were about to get soaked in the rain. I could only croak out a whisper to ask if we could talk in her office. She looked at me—a dad who usually skipped and whistled when I was at school, now a dad slouched over, wearing sunglasses in the rain—and understood something was wrong.
The second that the office door closed, all of the sadness, regret, and uncertainty that I had been trying to hold together burst and flooded her overstuffed office. My body groaned through sobs that strained every muscle.
The stunned school director watched. I heaved for I don’t know how long. Then I finally pulled myself together enough to explain that Giulia had bipolar, she was in an episode of psychosis, I had to take her to the hospital, and she would probably be there a few weeks. I was telling her this because school was Jonas’s sanctuary. He spent most of his days with his teachers and classmates, and they needed to know about how vulnerable he was right now so they could carry him if I couldn’t. She nodded and hugged me, which felt so warm, and then I left to head home.
I shot my mom a quick phone call to explain what was going on but hung up as soon as I pulled in the driveway, leaving most of her questions unanswered. I promised updates throughout the day.
Giulia was pacing around our bedroom when I got home. She hadn’t packed a thing. Together we gathered a bag with the wisdom of experiences we wished we didn’t have: toiletries, comfortable clothes without drawstrings, one of Jonas’s blankets to sleep with. We drove to the ER, checked in, and went through the mechanics that had by now become familiar. Check-in at the front desk. Quick interview with a triage nurse. Placement in a room for vitals. They were waiting for us because of the phone call the night before.
Giuila’s psychiatrist came from her office to see us in the emergency room. She was the head of the department, so she had authority. “I’m going to try and get her into the best facility that I can,” she promised me. “One that’s close, too.”
I sat with Giulia in her assigned ER room, but she couldn’t settle down and asked me to leave. The security guard stationed outside her room looked at us with suspicion after hearing her ask me to leave. In the past, I would have been so offended for Giulia to give someone the impression that I wasn’t supporting her, but I just didn’t care anymore. There were such bigger things to worry about than
what a hospital security guard thought about us. I left to get food and make calls.
I spent a few hours on the phone out in front of the hospital—Giulia’s parents; my parents; Cas and Leslie, who cleared their weekend to come and stay with Jonas and me and provide the babysitting I would need so I could visit Giulia over the weekend; even the dad of one of Jonas’s day care friends, who invited me to piggyback on their Halloween plans that night. I didn’t know what to say, so I opened with, “I call you at a time of need.” I knew I wouldn’t be able to take Jonas trick-or-treating by myself.
I checked in on Giulia one more time, and she told me to leave her alone. The security guard said that she had been calm while I was gone and that she said several times that she didn’t want me to come back. So when she asked me to leave, I gave her a quick kiss on the forehead and left. We didn’t yet know what hospital she was going to, but it felt pointless to stay there with her.
I drove home and sank into the couch. I closed my eyes, and three hours vanished into a deep, unmoving sleep. At five thirty p.m. I was awake in an instant to pick up Jonas at day care. I brought Goose and we headed straight to the house of the dad I had called. He knew better than to ask anything. A few other families were there. I meekly introduced myself to the crowd and continued the farce that my wife was away on a business trip—“A business trip on Halloween? That is brutal!”—and mostly walked by myself, relying on the slow-moving Goose as an excuse to distance myself from the group.
Jonas was ecstatic. He skipped along with the rest of the kids, and at each house he sprinted from the sidewalk to the front door, undeterred by the bigger kids who elbowed him out of the way. Each time he returned to me smiling and out of breath, candy clenched in his fist to show me before he dropped it into his orange pumpkin pail.
We got home around eight p.m. and returned to the couch. I picked a random kids’ show on Netflix and was asleep within seconds. I woke up several hours later with Jonas, still in his elephant costume, asleep across my chest, Goose strewn across my legs, all of us smeared with sweat from the heat of the costume and one another’s bodies. Netflix was spinning out episode after episode of Rescue Bots, which Jonas had stayed up watching until who knows what time.