The Moment Between
Page 11
The fact that Hailey seemed to almost enjoy her hour-long meetings with the good doctor definitely helped the family accept them. Though the sessions were always private and no one had a clear idea of what went on behind the closed mahogany door, Hailey usually emerged with her shoulders relaxed and her mouth held in a thin little smile. Without fail, there would be a small period of calm after her time with Dr. Madsen. Sometimes the peace lasted days. Sometimes it had worn off by the time Hailey got in the car.
Once Dr. Madsen had tried to terminate his counseling with Hailey. They had been meeting for just over a year, and he insisted that she wasn’t making any progress. If something didn’t change, Dr. Madsen saw no point in continuing. He pushed medication hard then and gave Lou and Melody pamphlets about different mental disorders with nearly all of the symptoms circled in red.
“Hailey fits the demographic,” he insisted.
“Of all of these?” Lou fanned the papers and threw them back on Dr. Madsen’s desk.
“Well, definitely ADHD, though Hailey exhibits symptoms of some of these others, too.”
“And ADHD is . . . ?” Melody refused to take her eyes off Dr. Madsen, refused to follow her husband’s already-heated lead.
“Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder,” Dr. Madsen finished patiently. He rummaged through the discarded brochures in search of more evidence.
“Hailey’s not hyper.”
“Sometimes,” Melody whispered.
“All kids are,” Lou said darkly.
“It’s not just hyperactivity,” Dr. Madsen explained for the hundredth time. “If you’d just take the time to—”
But his entreaty was cut off by the sharp crack of Lou’s hand coming down on the enormous oak desk between them. Then Lou grabbed his wife’s arm and practically dragged her out of the office.
Hailey didn’t see Dr. Madsen again for nearly six weeks. And for six weeks life unraveled at the Bennett house. Hailey’s toxicity mounted and then crashed as she became needy, dependent, and unstable. She vacillated between fierce autonomy and an almost animal-like fear of separation. She went through brief phases of uncharacteristically productive multitasking and hard work, tempered by periods of laziness that required a huge effort to even coax her out of bed. It was all up and down, back and forth, until one night she threw an explosive fit in the kitchen and ended up slicing her arm with a paring knife.
The cut wasn’t intentional, nor did it seem to be her intent to harm anyone else, but the ferocity of her mindless rage left the entire family speechless. Whatever set Hailey off was inconsequential—no one could even remember why after the fact—but her reaction was blind and senseless fury. And in the midst of the flailing and screaming, she somehow managed to carve a deep little wedge out of her forearm with the knife that she had been using to peel carrots only moments ago.
Hailey was such a whirlwind of motion, such a loud and commanding presence, that at first no one even noticed the cut. Not even Hailey. But then suddenly there were dots of crimson on the counter and more on the floor. Lou moved to stop her, but before he could get a grip on her wrists, she flung her hands up and away, past her face. It was the miniature tracks of warm blood across her cheek that finally stunned Hailey out of her frenzy.
It took three stitches to knit the skin back together. It took no coaxing whatsoever to convince Lou that Hailey needed to spend more time with Dr. Madsen.
†
Hailey’s life had been chaotic up to the pivotal year that she officially became a teenager, but something about the momentous birthday seemed to herald a definitive change. It seemed as though Hailey had been holding her breath, and now that she had crossed a measurable milestone, it began to feel to the Bennetts that everything they had endured up to this point was merely a prelude to the cacophonous din that was Hailey’s personal soundtrack.
As if to highlight her special evolution, the morning after her thirteenth birthday—her induction into the exalted world of everything adolescent—Hailey announced at the breakfast table: “I want to go on the pill.”
There was no confusion over which pill she was referring to. Melody gasped and covered her mouth with the back of her hand in a theatrical gesture of shock. Abby sighed. And Lou choked on the steaming mouthful of coffee that he had just gulped.
Lou sputtered into a balled-up paper towel, his cheeks turning a mottled shade of bruised pink while his eyes watered. Abby looked up just in time to catch the pure confusion in his wounded face. Lou’s look whispered, “You did not say that. My baby could not have said that.” Because he couldn’t handle it, because he didn’t want to know, Lou left. He slid back his chair and melted out of the room almost unnoticed.
Only Abby watched him go, and as his back disappeared around the corner, a cold fury raked across her heart. Ignore it, she thought viciously. Ignore it if that’s the only way you can keep pretending.
Melody couldn’t ignore it, though. And by default neither could Abby.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Abby snarled, spearing her last bite of pancake and then abandoning it on her plate the very next second.
“I’m thirteen.”
“Exactly.” Abby pushed away from the table, making her chair legs screech in protest while Hailey flipped her long hair over her shoulder with a condescending flick.
“We don’t even believe in . . . that,” Melody whispered. She lifted her hand to the cross that didn’t exist at her narrow throat and ended up curling her fingers around the collar of her shirt as a tangible alternative. Her breath shuddered shallowly.
“What, are you telling me you’re not on it?” Hailey’s eyes darted between her mother and her sister, finally fixing on Abby with a look of artificial surprise.
“Of course I’m not.”
“Of course she’s not,” Melody echoed.
“I thought . . . I mean . . . you are eighteen, Abby.”
The room was silent, and Abby willed her mother the strength, for once, to stand up to Hailey. But then Hailey shrugged as if to say, “to each her own,” and Melody appeared to interpret her gesture as defeat. Melody watched her newly teenaged daughter finish her last few bites of yogurt, and seemingly satisfied that the subject had been dropped, she consulted Abby with a hopeful, pleading look that begged her to confirm that it was indeed over.
Abby knew it wasn’t over, knew that Hailey would demand much more than a few awkward words and the assurance that “we don’t even believe in that.” But she was also going through another season in her life when Hailey irritated her far more than she cared to admit. On the brink of high school graduation and ready to start her own life apart from the stifling atmosphere in the Bennett house, Abby didn’t have time to put out all of Hailey’s little fires. She simply didn’t feel like it.
Tradition dictated that Abby drop a kiss on her mother’s cheek before leaving, and she did so perfunctorily, extricating herself from the situation before Hailey could make things worse. But as she turned to go, she cast one last look in Hailey’s direction and noticed the incendiary purse of her sister’s lips. That mouth betrayed that Hailey considered Abby to be naive, maybe even somewhat ridiculous, and she had no intention of letting her request go unfulfilled.
“I just want to be prepared,” Hailey began.
Melody groaned. “Honey . . .”
“Keep your pants on,” Abby advised coolly.
“Abby!” Melody cautioned.
Abby skewered her mother with a hard look, then slung her backpack over her shoulder and stormed out of the kitchen. She had intervened with Hailey a hundred times. She had been the mediator, the counselor, the arbiter who doled out discipline when Melody couldn’t and Lou wouldn’t. This was the last straw. It was up to someone else to handle Hailey this time.
And astonishingly, Melody chose this particular opportunity to rally her flagging reserves and rise to the occasion. She finally gathered the courage to do what should have been done years before.
†
�
��I’m on the pill,” Hailey stated the moment Abby walked through the door that evening. She was sitting on a barstool at the counter in the kitchen, and indeed there was a bag in front of her bearing the distinctive graphic of the local pharmacy. A creased instruction sheet was spread out before her, but Hailey wasn’t reading it. She was fixated on Abby and unveiling a slow, sardonic smile.
Abby was too shocked to be angry, and she whipped around to confront her mother as she stood stirring something in a pot for supper.
Melody sighed in defeat and glanced around the kitchen to make sure Lou was nowhere to be seen. “Not the pill, Abby. A pill.”
Abby didn’t flinch.
“A pill from Dr. Madsen,” Melody explained.
“Ooh, but it’s the good stuff. No expense spared. ‘Possible side effects,’” Hailey read, clearing her throat. “‘Reduced appetite, headache, jittery feeling, gastrointestinal upset, sleep difficulty—’”
“Stop, Hailey. That’s enough,” Melody warned.
“‘—irritability, depression, anxiety, blood glucose changes, increased blood pressure, rebound . . .’” Hailey paused at that one. “What’s rebound?”
“Bounce back,” Abby said almost automatically.
“From what?”
“Feeling irritable, depressed, jittery, anxious . . . ?” Abby guessed.
“Makes sense. Where was I? . . . Oh yeah, the good part. Check out these last side effects: ‘tics and stereotyped movements, paranoia or psychosis, seizures, and—’ last but not least—’sudden death.’” Hailey slapped the papers down, her mouth twisted almost cruelly. “At least sexual side effects weren’t listed.”
Abby snorted, unable to stop herself from appreciating Hailey’s dark sense of humor.
Melody pursed her lips. “Honey . . .”
“I mean, seriously. Seizures? Sudden death?”
“Dr. Madsen said that the chances of you reacting like that are next to none. Zero. Zilch.” Melody pushed a strand of hair from her forehead, but when it fell right back over her eye, she ignored it. “Hailey, those things aren’t going to happen to you.”
“They happened to somebody.”
Although Abby had been livid only moments before, with Hailey across from her looking so furious and fragile, something inside Abby deflated. How could Hailey do that? How could she unveil her vulnerability at just the right moment and leave Abby feeling protective? She wanted to tell Hailey, “It’s about time. You should have been on meds years ago.” Then she would stomp off to
her room, leave Hailey to think about all she had done. But Abby couldn’t do it.
Sometimes Abby wanted to hate her sister. And sometimes she could admit that the tug of love she felt for Hailey was so acute, so taut that there were times it stung like loathing. Love for Abby was a slow revolution. There were two sides to her tenderness: a gentle, hopeful acknowledgment of Hailey as she was meant to be, and a sharp, painful knowledge of all she inflicted by falling so far short. Abby had felt herself orbit these two feelings with predictable accuracy for years. She was the hand and Hailey the flower: I love her; I love her not; I love her; I love her not. On and on, on and on, spinning the wheel ever tighter as each emotion cycled into the next. Abby was beginning to learn that the love she felt for Hailey was a circle without end.
“Those things won’t happen to you,” Abby parroted her mother with a sigh.
“You don’t know that,” Hailey accused. Her shoulders were rigid, her eyes afraid.
Abby shrugged off her backpack to cross the kitchen and stand behind her sister. A part of her wanted to hug Hailey, but the bitterness of their morning was a bad taste in her mouth. Abby reached around and took the medication sheets. “Sleep difficulty doesn’t sound so bad,” she said lightly, studying the effects. “Just think of all you’ll get done while the rest of the world is sawing logs.”
Hailey elbowed Abby in the stomach, but it was a gentle bump.
“And listen: ‘this problem can often be eliminated by using one of the more intermediate-length stimulants. Clonidine or guanfacine—’” Abby intentionally butchered the pronunciation—”‘may help decrease agitation and may also help facilitate sleep.’”
“Clonidine,” Hailey muttered, the word perfectly formed and fluid on her tongue. “Guanfacine. Whoop-de-do.” She twirled her index finger in the air halfheartedly.
“What about irritability? It says here that they can prescribe an SSRI or an alpha agonist to combat that symptom.” Abby thought her mild teasing would make Hailey laugh.
But all Abby got was a defeated little moan.
Giving in, she wrapped her arms around Hailey’s narrow frame and rested her chin on her sister’s shoulder. Within seconds, she could feel the warmth of a single tear mingling on their pressed cheeks. “Hey,” she whispered.
It was all Hailey needed. The slight girl spun around on her stool and buried her face in Abby’s chest. She tangled her arms around Abby’s waist and sobbed.
Abby wasn’t used to this sort of emotional frailty from her sister, and it was so sudden and so unexpected that tears sprang almost instantly to her eyes, too. She laid her cheek on the top of Hailey’s head and stroked her back, making quiet shushing noises as if Hailey were a very little girl. The tears didn’t abate, and Abby looked up to search out Melody. The older woman was still standing at the stove, and when Abby caught her gaze, it seemed to her as though her mother had been crying for hours. Her eyes were red-rimmed and weary. Broken.
“What should I do?” Abby asked wordlessly.
Melody shrugged as if to say, “I’ve been asking myself the same question for thirteen years.”
It seemed like ages passed, but Hailey finally calmed down, though even long after her sobs had subsided, she continued to hold on to Abby. For her part, Abby never slackened her grip, never stopped rubbing and hushing and doting, and at some point her actions became more than simply mechanical.
When Abby’s arms were tight around her sister in something other than obligation, it occurred to her that her ministrations were more for herself than Hailey. Against all odds, Hailey was helping her, not the other way around. For the first time, Abby felt able to grasp the depth of Hailey’s desperation—her hands were curled around all
one hundred pounds of it. Abby could admit that Hailey was not well.
Hailey was not well. It was an alarming thought. And yet it was freeing somehow, too, like someone had opened a window and the breeze was cool and cleansing. It was true, Abby knew it, and somehow accepting Hailey’s illness made it easier to accept Hailey.
When Hailey whispered against Abby’s collar, “Do you love me?” it was easy for Abby to respond.
“Yes,” she said, her voice low but fervent. “I do.”
Hailey pulled away and pinned her older sister with a look so scared and insistent that Abby’s breath caught in her throat. “Promise you’ll take care of me,” Hailey said, her voice crumbling around the raw edges of her fear.
Abby didn’t know if Hailey was simply afraid of the side effects of the new medication or if her oversensitive spirit trembled with a deeper foreboding, but she was seized with the desire to answer so definitively that Hailey would never doubt her devotion. But then the young girl smiled a crooked smile, a hint that maybe she was only joking around, and Abby was left wondering if she was serious or not.
Abby had intended to say, “I promise.” Instead, she smiled back hesitantly and assured Hailey, “You’re strong. You don’t need anyone to take care of you.”
Then Melody brought her a glass of water, and Hailey tipped a lone pill from the translucent, amber-colored bottle. She took it, and Melody and Abby watched her swallow.
I regained consciousness reluctantly; something deep inside me rebelled against the weight of waking and remembering where I was and why. When I came to, I found myself propped on Hailey’s bed. There were pillows stacked behind me and more under my bent knees. Since I was half-lying on the turned-down bedspread, someone h
ad grabbed the plush bathrobe from the hook on Hailey’s bedroom door and draped it over me like a blanket. It smelled like her. Like her favorite honeysuckle shampoo and the Calvin Klein perfume she had worn since she was sixteen.
I moved to push the fabric away and became aware of the fact that someone was holding my arm.
“Hey, she’s coming around.” He was middle-aged and sparrow-chested, but his eyes were as soft and comforting as his voice. A brief, sad smile crossed his lips. Then he consulted his watch and squeezed his fingers against the slender vessels in my wrist one last time. “Your heart rate is almost back to normal, too.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, surprising even myself by the apology. My voice was raspy and felt unused.
“Nothing to be sorry about. It happens all the time.”
“Shock?”
“You’re not in shock,” he assured me. “You experienced an acute stress response. A little rise in epinephrine that made you panic and hyperventilate. And pass out, but not for long.”
“You’re not taking me to the hospital?” I didn’t mean to sound so disappointed.
But my EMT savior patted my hand gently as if he understood. “No.”
There was a hush in the room when his voice fell, and I could hear the movement and bustle throughout the rest of the apartment. “I cleaned the bathroom,” I confessed, twin tears racing each other down my cheeks.
“We know. It doesn’t look like you tampered with anything important though.”
“I didn’t.”
“It’s okay.”
“She’s my sister,” I told him, something in my mind faltering over the words. What was wrong with that sentence? What made me pause? And then I had it: She’s my sister. As if she were merely asleep in the bathtub. As if there were still a place carved out for her in my present and future reality. I should have said, “She was my sister.”