Elephant in the Sky

by Heather A. Clark

  “I know.”

  We said goodbye, and I downed the rest of my coffee before grabbing my coat and heading to the car to wait for my husband. The toast Pete had put in front of me before going upstairs remained untouched. I wasn’t hungry. And I couldn’t stay in our kitchen any longer. Everywhere I looked I saw the police officers who had been there less than twenty-four hours earlier … where they had stood, where they had sat … and it instantly took me back to the fear that had flooded through me when Nate was missing and I thought there was a chance we might not see him again.

  With Nate found, I just needed him to get better. To be healthy. Normal, and completely recovered.

  But I didn’t know when that would happen. Or if it even could happen. So despite the fact that Nate was no longer on the streets by himself, and was now lying safe in a hospital bed, I was still deathly afraid that we might not actually find my son.

  41

  Nate finally woke up the next day. He hadn’t stirred for over twenty-four hours. Pete and I had both slept in the hospital room, a favour called in by Addy before leaving her shift. Family members weren’t usually allowed to stay, but because Nate was so young, and still sleeping, the hospital had made an exception.

  Just before seven a.m., Nate opened his eyes. The straitjacket had been removed long before, once the meds had knocked him out, and Nate began to shift in his bed, lifting his arms to touch his face.

  “Nate? Baby? It’s Mommy. I’m here. Daddy, too. We’re here for you, sweetie. Are you … are you feeling alright?”

  “Mommy? My throat. It hurts. I’m thir-thir-thirsty,” Nate croaked. Pete instantly left the room to get some ice chips. Addy had warned us that Nate’s throat might be dry when he woke up, less from the meds and more from the dryness of the hospital.

  Pete returned with a cup full of ice chips, and I helped feed them to Nate. He seemed perfectly normal, as though he weren’t really sick and was just a bit weak from the flu. He tried to sit up, but lacked the energy he needed. Pete pressed the button to lift the bed.

  “Look, champ. One of the coolest things about being in the hospital is the super-awesome bed. You can press a button and it helps sit you up,” Pete said, continuing to press the button. I shot him a look and shook my head. I had no idea if we should be showing Nate things that he could “play with” while he was there. But then again, I didn’t know what we should be saying or not saying.

  “Hospital?” Nate asked. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re in the hospital, Bean. You gave us quite a scare last night. We couldn’t find you for a while, but the nice police officers helped us find you, and we brought you to the hospital to make sure you are okay.”

  “I’m not at the hospital,” Nate responded, matter-of-factly.

  “Where do you think we are, honey?” I asked.

  “We’re at the zoo. In a holding tank. The zookeeper is making sure we’re safe. All of us. You. Me. Daddy. Noah.” Nate spoke slowly, as if trying to force out each word.

  “Safe?” I asked.

  “Yes. From the elephants. They want to kill us. They’re mean. With huge teeth. And they growl, kind of like lions.” Nate paused, looking exhausted. Neither Pete nor I knew what to say.

  “Honey, Noah is not here. It’s just Daddy and Mommy.” I had no idea if I should be going along with what Nate was seeing or if I should tell him the truth.

  “Yes, he is,” Nate continued, appearing frustrated. “And the elephants are going to hurt him if he doesn’t stay safe. And they want to hurt you, too, Mommy. That’s why I had to find you. I had to find you in New York. Because the monsters were going to get you. To hurt you. Maybe even kill you.”

  “I … uh … I see. That’s awful.”

  “Can’t you hear that?” Nate asked in a groggy voice. I strained to hear, but there was nothing.

  “On the radio? Can you hear it? They’re talking about me. The zookeeper is being interviewed on the radio, and he’s talking about me. On the radio! Can you hear it? Listen …” Nate seemed almost excited.

  Pete and I paused, listening for the sake of our son.

  More silence.

  “See? He just said that I’m finally safe from the mean elephants! The ones that fly all around in the sky and want to kill us,” Nate continued. He had a sudden burst of energy, and seemed frustrated that Pete and I couldn’t seem to keep up or understand what he was saying.

  “Okay … what else is he saying?” I glanced at Pete. For the time being, I decided to go along with Nate’s delusions to try to avoid any agitated behaviour.

  “That they’re going to lock up the elephant monsters. To keep us safe. They’re doing it all for us. Isn’t that nice of them?” Nate’s response was starting to slow, and he slinked further into his bed.

  “Mommy? Can you pull the sheets up on me? I’m cold.” Nate’s eyes were beginning to close. I pulled the covers up over him, just as I had always done when he stayed home with the flu, and motioned for Pete to go and ask the nurse for an extra blanket.

  “I’m glad you’re safe, Mommy. I’m happy that you and Daddy and Noah are … here. That we’re at the zoo … together …” Nate’s voice trailed off as he went back to sleep. We were at the hospital, but my son was happy that we were at the zoo. He was so very sick.

  I was tucking him in as best I could when Pete returned with a blanket. Following directly behind him was Addy, who had returned for another shift.

  “So, our boy woke up, did he? That’s great!” Addy said, greeting me with a smile. “How long was he up for? And did he just fall back to sleep?”

  I nodded in response. “He was awake for about five minutes, but he was really groggy and then seemed to need to sleep again.”

  “That’s perfectly normal. I suspect he’ll be really sleepy for a while. Likely a few days.”

  I nodded, trying to muster the grit to admit, out loud, that my sweet and innocent boy was convinced monster elephants were about to kill us. And that we were in a zoo, seeking protection.

  “He, uh, he’s talking about flying elephant monsters still,” I said through a wavering voice. “He … he thinks they’re going to kill us.”

  Addy responded without missing a beat. “Was that what he was fixated on when he was going through the extreme psychosis?”

  “Yes,” Pete replied. “He talked about that a lot before he left the house. You know … when he went missing.”

  Addy nodded. “It’s not a surprise he’s still delusional and experiencing psychosis. Did the night-shift nurse tell you about Dr. Aldridge?”

  I shook my head. The nurse who had replaced Addy through the night hadn’t been anywhere near as good as our new favourite nurse. We’d barely talked to her when we’d returned to the hospital, and then we’d tried to get some sleep.

  “Dr. Aldridge is a psychiatrist who specializes in mental illness in children. She came to check on Nate yesterday while you were gone.”

  “Oh! We missed her?” Guilt filled the pit of my stomach as I realized I should have stayed at the hospital. I didn’t need a shower. Or sleep. Or food. I just needed to be there for my son.

  “It’s okay, Ashley. Don’t think for a second that you should have stayed here on the off chance that Dr. Aldridge visited Nate,” Addy said warmly as if reading my mind. “She said she would be back today. She also ordered more Lorazepam in case his agitation persists. So when Nate wakes again, if he’s still upset we’ll give him some more. Pills this time, though. No more needles, unless he refuses the meds.”

  “More meds?” My mind was reeling. In the wild and rabid state of the ER the first night we had been there, there had been no time to discuss giving Nate a shot of Lorazepam. And he had clearly needed something. But the thought of starting down the path of an overly medicated boy made my stomach churn.

  “We’ll see how he is when he wakes up. One day a
t a time, right? And sometimes, one hour at a time.” Addy smiled at us. “How are you both today? Ashley, are you feeling any better than you did yesterday?”

  “Me? Oh, I’ll be fine,” I responded.

  “Did you sleep much last night?”

  “Not really. I appreciate being able to stay, but the chair wasn’t the most comfortable sleep ever, and I’ve got a lot on my mind.” I refrained from saying that it wasn’t just the chair that had been uncomfortable. The all-night screaming from other hospital rooms had also kept me awake.

  “And Pete? What about you?”

  “I’ll be okay.” Pete’s answer was short. Vague and imprecise.

  “Okay, well I’ll leave you two alone. Let me know if you need anything at all, and I’ll be back to check on Nate in a bit.”

  Addy left the room, and I followed suit a few moments later. I headed to one of the courtesy rooms they reserved for private phone conversations. I picked up the receiver and dialed Tay’s number.

  “Hi,” I said, when she answered the phone. “It’s me.”

  “How’s Nate?”

  “Not great, to be honest. I don’t really want to talk about it right now, though. I’m worried about Grace.”

  “Yeah, I know. She was pretty upset when she got off the phone with you last night,” Tay responded gently. I knew she wanted to be honest with me about what was going on with my daughter, but was sensitive to doling out more worry when I was buried under the stress of what we were dealing with at the hospital.

  The night before, I’d had a long conversation with Grace, and I’d stuck to the story that I’d asked Tay to tell her. But it hadn’t gone well. Just as my always-knowing friend had predicted, Grace was unsatisfied with the explanation and desperate to know the whole truth. She was a bright girl, and accused me of knowing more, but I was adamant in my quest to protect both her and Nate.

  “Grace, honey, I really want to be with you again too,” I’d told her during our conversation. “But you’re the big sister. And you need to be brave at Tay’s house. For your brother’s sake. You won’t be there for long. I promise.”

  “You don’t mean that. You don’t love me! You aren’t even here with me. You love Nate more than me. You don’t even care about me,” Grace had retorted back emphatically. While I normally dismissed my daughter’s drama with annoyance, her words, at that moment, had broken my heart.

  “Sweetie, just because I’m not with you doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I love you and Nate equally. Always. And absolutely the same amount. Even when we’re not together. And I love you, Grace Marie Carter. Very, very much.” I was pleading with a twelve-year-old to understand the situation, which was unfair given that even I couldn’t grasp what was going on.

  There was silence on the other end.

  “Grace, I promise we’ll be together as soon as possible. But, right now, Dad and I need to be at the hospital so they can find out why Nate is sick.”

  Again, no answer came from Grace.

  “So can you be the big sister?” I asked her. “And be very brave? For your brother’s sake?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Grace, please … if not for your brother, then can you do it for me?”

  “I said, whatever.” Grace’s clipped voice sounded wounded.

  She’d dropped the phone quickly after that, saying she had to go do her word problem assignment. Always the bright girl who frequently used her cleverness to manipulate a situation, she’d deliberately chosen math as her exit strategy. She knew there was no way I’d refute the need to do homework.

  “Ashley? Are you still there?” Tay asked. Her voice on the other end of the line snapped me back to the present. “I asked if there was anything I can bring you today.”

  “Oh, sorry. No thanks. We’re good. We can grab food in the cafeteria. And I don’t think they allow visitors outside of the family in here anyway.” I had no idea if that was true or not. I felt terrible about lying to Tay but, more than that, I felt guilty for making up an excuse to keep her away because I was too embarrassed to let my lifelong, always-understanding best friend visit us in the psych ward where my son had been admitted.

  The truth was that I didn’t want Tay to see the place where the crazy lunatics stayed when they were too delusional to exist in society. The place where schizophrenics went when there was nowhere else for them to go. The place my son had to stay because it was where he belonged, so the doctors could help him get better. And to make him “normal” by the standards of the society we all live in.

  The moral compass that I’d followed my entire life, which had always fostered the complete acceptance of everyone for who they were, was in disarray. Of course, there was no chance I’d not accept Nate for everything that made him him, including any demons that might have jumped into his brain because of a chemical imbalance that was as uncontrollable as the colour of one’s skin. Or one’s sexuality. Or being diagnosed with cancer.

  But my pendulum was quickly swinging from the steadfast belief in a fused world of unique human beings to the side that flourished in the comfort of segregation and protection. When it was a minority person outside my family who needed acceptance and inclusion, I never stopped short in taking every measure possible to help them feel comfortable. Yet what I hadn’t stopped to realize before was the raw fear and overwhelming anxiety felt by a person when it is their turn to be integrated into “normal” society. I had in no way begun to realize the truth behind what it would feel like to be the one — or the mother of the one — who needed to suddenly blend in with our not-yet-fixed prejudiced world of cruelty and bigotry.

  I had been unaware of all of this. And as I tried to temper my overwhelming need to isolate my son and protect him from others, I realized there was nothing blissful about my ignorance.

  42

  Throughout the rest of the morning, Nate had stirred and woken a few times, but had always been groggy and would quickly fall back to sleep. While he remained fixated on being at the zoo with Pete, Noah, and me, he wasn’t overly agitated, and we were able to hold off on giving him any more Lorazepam.

  Shortly after lunch, Dr. Aldridge walked into the room. She brought with her a positive energy that filled the room, and she offered Pete and me a warm smile as she introduced herself and shook our hands. I could see why Addy had said everyone loved her.

  “I hear you’ve had a rough couple of days,” Dr. Aldridge sympathized. “Pretty scary too, I imagine.”

  “Yeah, it’s been tough. But thank God we found Nate and he was okay.”

  “Indeed. He’s a very lucky little boy. And he’s in good hands now. Addy’s one of our best nurses, and I can tell that she already cares a great deal about your son. I just spoke with her and she updated me on how Nate has been since I saw him yesterday.”

  Beside us Nate stirred, thrashing his head from side to side, as if to warn us that he’d soon wake up. Dr. Aldridge cleared her throat. “It’s not surprising that your son is still delusional and talking about monsters. We know there’s something going on in his brain that’s causing him to experience the psychosis that’s making him say those things. You have to remember that, in his mind, the elephants really exist, and he can see them all around him. It would be a very scary thing for a nine-year-old. So we’re going to work hard to figure out what’s going on, and provide him with the best treatment possible to make him well.”

  “Will he need more meds?” I asked.

  “Likely,” Dr. Aldridge replied. Her answers were honest and direct, which I appreciated. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet. What we need to do first is figure out what’s causing the psychosis.”

  “Wouldn’t it be bipolar disorder?” I asked. “Do you know that my father has it too?”

  “Yes. I saw that in Nate’s chart. I can see why you would say that, given bipolar disorder is genetic. And it could very well b
e what’s causing Nate’s psychosis. But first we need to rule out everything else.”

  “So it’s psychosis that Nate is having at this point? That’s how we refer to all of this?”

  Dr. Aldridge nodded as she glanced in Nate’s direction and observed how he was stirring in his sleep.

  “What causes it?” Pete asked.

  “To be honest, it isn’t fully understood. It can definitely be caused by a mental illness, such as bipolar disorder. But there are other contributing factors as well. A stressful event may trigger a psychotic episode, for example. Or psychosis can be brought on by drugs like marijuana or LSD, although I don’t suspect this in the case of Nate simply because of his age. It could also be brought on by another medical condition. There are many causes.”

  “Does it happen to a lot of people?” I asked. I felt myself holding my breath, hoping that Dr. Aldridge would tell me it happened all the time. My misery needed company.

  “More than you might think. About three in one hundred people will experience a psychotic episode at one point in their life. Some will have only a few episodes, or it could be one episode lasting just a few days or weeks. Others will experience symptoms more frequently, and some will have the condition for life.”

  “So Nate could be okay? This could be a fluke?” I asked, praying for Dr. Aldridge to say this could all just go away.

  “It’s a very small possibility. But with a family history of mental illness, we need to be certain of what’s going on.”

  “So what should we do now?” I asked.

  “Unfortunately, there is no specific test for psychosis. It’s more a matter of recognizing the behavioural and thought disorder patterns to make the diagnosis,” Dr. Aldridge explained. “I’d like to do a full physical examination on Nate, including a thorough history evaluation and blood tests. Based on what we find, further diagnostic tests may be warranted.”

  “What kind of history evaluation? We can begin pulling the information you need if it will help.”