Dancing on Broken Glass

by Ka Hancock

“Oh, right!” Priscilla barked.

  I was shaking when I turned to Mickey. “How many pills have you taken?” I yelled. “Mickey, what have you done?” I wanted to hit him and scream at him and tear his head off, but I was shaking so badly I couldn’t think.

  Ron took my wrist. “Focus, Lucy. Let’s just get him out of here.”

  I nodded and bent to help Lily, who had quietly begun dressing my husband. She was so gentle, seemingly oblivious to the circumstances as she carefully guided Mickey’s feet into his shoes.

  “C’mon, buddy, help us out,” Ron said as we tried to get Mickey to stand up.

  As we tended to Mickey, Priscilla was shouting that the woman was some piece of work. Mickey tried to turn toward the noise but couldn’t muster the strength, his head lolling to the side. I was afraid he was going to pass out. “Stay with me, Mic. Stay with me!” I whispered urgently. Despite his near unconsciousness, torture was in Mickey’s eyes, and I couldn’t read its meaning. I wanted to cry and slap him at the same time. What was he doing here?

  “Priscilla, let’s go,” Lily shouted from the door she had opened for us.

  “Get her purse, Lily,” Priscilla barked.

  My sister looked at Priss and then at me as she picked up the Louis Vuitton that was lying in the overstuffed armchair. “Take her wallet,” Priss ordered. Lily lifted the wallet from the bag, and when Hilary Wellington lunged at her, Priscilla grabbed at her robe, keeping her where she was. The silk slid off one lovely shoulder exposing one lovely breast, which the woman strove to cover while still keeping Lily from her valuables.

  “What exactly are we doing?” Lily asked.

  We’d gotten Mickey almost to the door when he tripped over his foot. As I helped him right himself, I noticed how dilated his eyes were. “Oh, lord. Mickey,” I said, panic rising in me. “Priscilla, we have to go. We have to get him to the hospital.”

  “Wait!” Hilary shouted. “Where are you going with my wallet?”

  Lily took a step toward her. “Look what you’ve done to my sister! She’s pregnant!”

  Priscilla shook the wallet in the woman’s face. “You can have this back when you get a blood test. HIV. Gonorrhea. Herpes. We have no idea how big a slut you are, so you’ll need to be checked out by our Dr. Barbee, here in Brinley. Her number’s in the book!”

  “You can’t do that! Who do you think you are?”

  “I’m her sister!”

  Ron and I were balancing Mickey between us. “Priss, we’re leaving,” I said. We were just out the door when Mickey nearly overwhelmed us with his leaden weight. Suddenly, Priscilla was at my side. She disengaged me and slid herself beneath Mickey’s shoulder. I took the wallet from under her arm. Again the woman moved for it, but this time Lily leaned right in her face. “We told you what you have to do! Call Charlotte Barbee.”

  Downstairs, Ron lowered Mickey into a chair and, digging for his keys, said, “I’ll pull around front.” He realized the same time I did that Lily was not with us and he quickly headed back for her, but she was on her way down the stairs.

  “What are you doing?” he said, walking toward her. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. She wanted to tell me something.” Lily looked at me. “She wanted me to know they didn’t have sex. She wanted you to know, Lu. Nothing happened.”

  “Oh, right,” Priscilla groaned.

  “I know,” I said wearily. “Lily, give this to Cory. Have him return it to her.”

  “What? How do you know that?” Lily said, dumbfounded, taking the wallet. The collective gaze of my family fell on me.

  “Believe it or not, that’s the line Mickey would never cross. And to make sure he didn’t, he took the pills. They were his safety net.” I shook my head. Reckless promiscuity was a trademark of many bipolars, but I’d been blessed not to be married to one like that. No, the woman was the least of my worries; my husband could die from his antics if we didn’t hurry. I stared at Mickey, slumped in the chair. I’d seen this train wreck in the making, but there was nothing I could do to prevent it.

  twenty-three

  DATE UNK—DICTATED FOR GLEASON

  I watched myself take the pills. One after the other, sometimes two at a time, swallowed down with wine I shouldn’t be drinking. I watched me through a perfectly rational mind’s eye. I watched, but I couldn’t stop what I was doing. Of course not. I had a point to make, I was sure of it. But the more pills I took, the harder it was to remember. All part of the plan. All part of the plan. What plan? The baby. Right. The baby. The baby? Everything melted together. Lucy’s sick again. Long shot. No abortion. Another pill, another drink. Just melt. What a good idea I’d had, just sleep away all the pain. Melt. Just melt. Another pill, more wine. It was almost over, I thought. I was almost over. Then the panic. What? Melting. Wait. Melting.

  Dear God, I thought, help me. What have I . . .

  And that’s the last thing I remember thinking.

  When I was finally allowed to see my husband, a physician I’d never met was listening to his chest. When he was finished, he slung his stethoscope around his neck and introduced himself. Dr. Harwood looked tired, but had a nice smile. He told me Mickey’s blood work showed an abundance of benzodiazepines and alcohol, and he explained that though Klonopin on its own wasn’t necessarily life-threatening, the combination could be deadly. I nodded, I knew. I just didn’t understand why Mickey would do it. The only other time he’d ever attempted suicide, he’d been grossly psychotic and so desperately insane that all he’d wanted was relief. But that wasn’t the case tonight, and I couldn’t believe he actually wanted to die.

  If he did, he’d chosen a good way to do it, Dr. Harwood informed me. He said that Mickey’s overdose had rendered his central nervous system so anesthetized that he wasn’t producing the stimulus to breathe. He was being placed on a respirator so he wouldn’t suffocate. The doctor was confident, however, that Mickey’s capacity to breathe would return as the toxins worked their way out of his system. He’d put an IV and a catheter in place to flush those toxins through him in a timely manner.

  As soon as Mickey was stabilized on the ventilator, Dr. Harwood transferred him to the intensive care unit. Ron, Lily, and Priscilla all left after that, but only because they weren’t allowed in the ICU. They’d only let me in there, and I’d promised I wouldn’t stay long. That was over two hours ago, and I still couldn’t leave. I just couldn’t wrap my head around what he’d done. A woman? An overdose? He’d never done anything like that before. I wanted to shake him awake and make him explain it.

  But he was asleep, unconscious. He looked so peaceful—the green tubing taped to his face notwithstanding. Sadly, this overdose-induced respite was the most at peace Mickey had been for weeks, and despite myself, tenderness welled up in me.

  As I stood there lost in my thoughts, I felt a soft hand on my shoulder and turned to find Lily standing next to me. “I thought you went home.”

  She ran a hand over my hair. “I came back. I had to make sure you were okay.”

  “I’m fine. How did you get in here?”

  “I told the nurse I was worried about you, and that I came to take you home.”

  “I’m leaving in a few minutes.”

  “Why don’t I believe you?” She kissed my forehead, then leveled her gaze at Mickey. She stared at him for a long moment, shaking her head. “Is he going to be okay, Lu?”

  “Yes.”

  She leaned on the bedrail and gazed down at my sleeping husband. My sister’s demeanor was so earnest with concern, so gentle, so nonjudgmental. She tenderly squeezed Mickey’s wrist. “What you must go through,” she said softly to me. “I don’t know how you do it, Lucy.”

  “Just one foot in front of the other, Lil. There’s no magic.” I stroked Mickey’s cheek and thought back to the day, many years ago, when Gleason had told me what life with Mickey would be like. It hadn’t taken me long to understand what he’d meant. Broken glass. At the moment, we were barefoot and dancing over
a sea of it. But as true as that was, Mickey knew I would dance with him forever if I could, bloody feet and all.

  “I love him so much, Lil. But I’m so mad at him. Why would he do this? Why now?”

  “Maybe it’s because he feels exactly the same way about you.”

  I looked at my sweet, wise sister and I couldn’t hold back the tears.

  “Let me take you home, honey.”

  “I just need to talk to the doctor once more, then I’m leaving.”

  Lily eyed me like I was lying. “Lucy, please don’t stay all night.”

  “I won’t, I promise.” I kissed her cheek.

  At about three fifteen, a young, acne-scarred intern checked Mickey’s vital signs. He then flipped a switch on the ventilator and evaluated Mickey’s respirations without the use of the machine. Apparently he was not pleased with the parameters, because he turned the machine back on and watched the monitor until it was clear Mickey was again being well oxygenated. The young doctor, who wore no name tag and hadn’t bothered to introduce himself, spoke in a loud voice, “Mr. Chandler, can you hear me? Mr. Chandler.” The doctor looked at me. “He’ll come around.”

  I nodded. “You know my husband has bipolar disorder.”

  “I didn’t know that, ma’am,” he said, preoccupied as he tapped something out on Mickey’s bedside computer.

  “Well, I’m letting you know because when he wakes up, he might be very angry.”

  “Really?” the boy doctor said, looking up from his documentation.

  “Yes. I don’t actually know if or why he tried to kill himself last night, but whatever he did do, and the reason he did it, will come flooding back the moment he wakes up. He’ll be mad at himself, and probably humiliated, which he doesn’t handle well.”

  “We’ll watch him, ma’am.”

  I nodded, hoping he understood my warning. “He’s been hypomanic for more than a month now. And very irritable. He’s been self-medicating. I gave a list of his pills to the nurse downstairs. I’m just letting you know.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Chandler. I’ll pass along the info.”

  “If you need any verification, call the psych unit. They know him well. His psychiatrist is Gleason Webb. I called him on our way here, but he wasn’t home, so I left a message. You might want to try again.”

  At this point, the intern scrounged up a piece of paper and took down Gleason’s number. He was suddenly quite attentive, and when he walked away, it was with an air of urgency. After he left, I leaned over the bedrail and watched Mickey’s even, automated breathing. Despite my determination to hate him right now, I couldn’t. I was truly sorry for what Mickey would face when he regained consciousness.

  When he woke up, he’d learn that his demons had betrayed him, yet again. He’d be livid. I couldn’t imagine anything more devastating for my husband than to look upon his naked reflection after he’d pulled a stunt like this. I knew that seeing my disappointment, my tired sadness at his antics, would only compound his pain and quite possibly motivate him to try again to hurt himself. I leaned over the bedrail and kissed his forehead, lingered there a moment. “I love you, babe. But I won’t be here when you wake up.”

  I stopped at the nurses’ station and told the same intern I was leaving. “I’d keep an eye on him if I were you,” I said. “When he starts to come around, you may need some restraints. He’s needed them in the past.”

  A nurse who’d taken care of Mickey before looked up from a medical chart she was reading and assured me she’d take care of it. I hoped she meant it. “I’ll call in a few hours to check on him,” I told her.

  “Call anytime, Mrs. Chandler,” the intern said as I walked out.

  It was nearly four o’clock in the morning by the time I got home and so quiet it was like the earth was holding her breath. Even my soft footsteps on the front path seemed a sacrilege to the silence. I sat down on the front step and closed my eyes against the sheer noiselessness. The air was the perfect weight and temperature and seemingly so compatible with my being that I felt simply absorbed into the night. I sighed as quietly as I could.

  The baby inside me stretched vigorously. Despite the ragged shelter I was able to offer, she felt strong and substantial. I rubbed my hard belly and took stock of everything immediately important: Mickey was safe, the baby was active, and I was finally home.

  I stood and yawned as I dug the key from my pocket. When I pushed open my front door, I found a large envelope in my foyer that had been dropped through the mail slot.

  I stared at it, knowing exactly what it was, and let out a strangled sigh. Then I picked up my airline tickets to Hawaii. As I held them, I became angry, irrationally angry. He’d promised! We’ll go for your birthday, he’d said. I’ll be good, he’d said. I won’t disappoint you, Lu. I dragged myself upstairs holding the envelope. In my bedroom, I fell onto my bed and stared at the blurred ceiling, growing more agitated by the minute. Marinating in my indignation, I decided to keep my end of the bargain and began packing my suitcase.

  At LAX, where I was scheduled to change planes, I was already having second thoughts. What was I doing here without Mickey? As I boarded, I honestly considered turning around and catching the next flight back to Connecticut. But I didn’t. When I got to my seat, I found a lovely sport coat draped over it, the owner carefully stuffing his carry-on into the overhead compartment. When he saw me, he apologized so nicely I’d have forgiven him for robbing me. He smiled and moved his coat and I slid in and buckled up. I prayed that the seat between us would not be occupied for the flight to Hawaii. I smiled stiffly at the tall, lanky man who smelled like Juicy Fruit gum.

  His cell phone rang and he answered it with a “Hi, sweetie.” He listened for a moment, then chuckled. “So you found them. Good.” He nodded awhile. “Let me talk to him. . . . Okay, I love you, too.” He glanced at me, embarrassed. “Scotty? . . . Hey, pal, you remember what I said, right? You’re the man this week. I’m depending on you. Don’t give Mom any grief, and don’t be scaring the girls about flying. Remember our deal: if I get a good report, then it’s just you and me. . . . I’m excited, too. I gotta go. Be good. I love you.”

  He turned his phone off and glanced over at me with a sheepish smile. “Kids.”

  “Sounds like you have a houseful,” I said.

  “Four.”

  “Wow.” I rubbed my bump. “I can barely imagine myself with one.”

  “They’re a full-time job, all right.” He grinned. “My boy’s a job all by himself.”

  I leaned over, enjoying this man’s easy company. “So what do just you and Scott get to do if he’s good?”

  “Paragliding.” He laughed. “To tell you the truth, I’m half hoping he acts up so I don’t have to go through with it.”

  The flight attendant asked for our attention and instructed us on where the exits were and what to do if we went down over the ocean. I wasn’t listening. I was standing at the gate of this man’s house spying on his family. His wife sounded lovely—she’d said “I love you” first, and I could easily picture his house full of kids. I laid my head back and thought of Mickey. If I squinted, I could imagine him talking on the phone to his daughter just like this man. In that lighthearted tone, telling her to be good, that he’d bring her a surprise if she went to bed on time.

  Mickey. Again I wondered what I was doing. I hadn’t even seen him since I’d left the hospital two nights ago. I just couldn’t go back. Not when Gleason called to tell me everything I’d predicted had in fact come true. After Mickey caused hell in the ICU, Gleason transferred him to the psychiatric ward and put him on suicide watch. He was calling Mickey’s benzo-and-booze ingestion a conscientious attempt, although he was quick to add that Mickey was not speaking to him and had not therefore actually admitted anything. He told me I probably did not want to see my husband in his current state of belligerence. I didn’t argue. Instead, I’d thrown my things together in a bit of a tantrum, feeling completely justified in my indignation. Until now.r />
  That I hadn’t had the strength or the desire to see Mickey before I left suddenly felt unconscionable to me. The little snippet of this man’s phone conversation—the glimpse I had seen of his life—made me suddenly ashamed of my behavior. But Mickey had overdosed, that was a fact, and I didn’t know how to make that fit into what was already happening to us. “We’ve been here before, Lucy,” Gleason had said. “He’ll even out.” I hoped he would. But I was so angry with him that I didn’t have the patience to watch it happen. So, I’d used the e-ticket Adam Piper had left for me and ignored the tongue-lashing from my sisters when I called them from the airport. Now I was sitting at a cruising altitude of thirty-six thousand feet above the Pacific Ocean, wallowing in guilt and second thoughts.

  I felt a tap on my arm. “Did you want something to drink?” the man said as the flight attendant looked at me.

  “Oh, water with lots of ice, please.” She handed me a glass and a bottle of Evian, and when she left, the man turned to me. “Are you all right?”

  “I think so. Why do you ask?”

  “You just look a little . . . upset.”

  “Really? No, I’m fine. Well, mostly fine.”

  The man smiled; he had the kindest eyes. “I’m Thomas Worthington,” he said, offering me his hand.

  “I’m Lucy Chandler. It’s nice to meet you.”

  We made mindless chitchat for a little while. I asked him about his work and was pleased to learn he’d been a school psychologist for years and also had a private practice in a little place called Alpine, Utah. He’d written a book called Raising Responsible Kids in an Irresponsible World and was speaking at a national conference for therapists in Honolulu. I was duly impressed and told him so, making a mental note of the title of his book. He graciously applauded my teaching high school, saying he admired educators of any kind. I smiled. “Utah, huh? Are you a Mormon?”

  “Guilty.” He grinned. “But I only have one wife, in spite of what you may have seen on TV.”

  “Duly noted.”