Charlie thanked his friend, and the two exchanged a quick hug good-bye. One of the best traits about Monte was that he wouldn’t care when Charlie got home, just that he did. Besides his furry little friend, the only thing waiting for Charlie back home had a thin neck, six strings, and spoke only when his fingers did the talking. At that moment a warm body would have felt a lot better than another drink. He thought about Gwen. That she came to mind, given that they hadn’t spoken since he left California, was more than a little surprising. Briefly, Charlie flirted with the idea of calling her but resisted the impulse. Gwen’s number in his BlackBerry might have changed, and he wasn’t in the mood to explain the real reason behind the call if it hadn’t.
Charlie opted to stay in the bar. He’d parked in a garage. He already had too much of a buzz to drive home. He’d rather pay Brenda double her standard rate to take Monte for an evening walk than go home to his empty apartment. He pulled out his cell phone to call his dog walker—making another resolve that he wouldn’t break down and dial Gwen, anyway.
He noticed that he had missed a call and saw that he had a voice mail waiting for him. The number from the missed caller came up as restricted. Charlie dialed his voice mail and then entered his code. The message was marked urgent, and voice mail said it had arrived this morning. Charlie didn’t know how he’d missed the call. His blood turned icy cold when the caller’s message played.
“Charlie, it’s me, Joe,” his brother said, speaking with quick, breathless urgency. “You have to come to Mount Auburn soon as you get this. Mom’s had a stroke, and I don’t know how long she can hold on.”
Chapter 12
Joe Giles sat by his mother’s bedside. His eyes were fixed to the floor; his chin was resting on the knuckles of his hands. To the nurse standing behind him, he appeared merely deep in thought, but his insides were roiling from the private war he waged. Though Joe could not see his enemy, he could readily sense its dark presence. His adversary was as merciless as it was shapeless, relentless as it was cunning. Blessedly, years of treatment had made it possible to detect his foe’s advancement. Early detection—that was the preferred weapon Joe had learned to wield; it was the key to defeating this scourge before it could consume him.
Inside his mother’s equipment-jammed hospital room, Joe felt the enemy creeping steadily forward, searching for holes in his defenses to exploit. Stress and fear were fuel for this adversary. With his mother comatose, both emotions were in ready supply. If he was less vigilant, cracks in his barricade would widen, allowing the enemy to push deeper within. He had to stay mindful of its presence. For his mother’s sake, he had to stay sane.
Joe looked to fortify his defenses with a sound—some specific noise in the room that he could focus on. It would help, he knew, to ground him in the reality of his mother’s condition, painful as that reality was to face. In the early years after the onset of his disorder, Joe’s hallucinations were a constant threat. To combat them required not only increasingly high doses of antipsychotic drugs but also constant engagement and stimulation. An idle mind was an invitation for his adversary to enter his house and tear apart reality with the thoroughness of a demolition team. Thanks to Walderman, Joe was learning new ways to stay episode free. Right now he needed every trick in the book.
It took a moment for Joe to lock onto a useful sound, but it was there, a soft, rhythmic rise and fall of a machine breathing steadily in the stillness of the room like a sleeping animal. The ventilator that kept his mother alive could help keep Joe present with her as well. He concentrated on each mechanical breath as though it were his own.
The nurse tending to his mother’s needs touched Joe’s broad, muscled shoulders with a practiced tenderness. Her touch surprised Joe, and for a moment he let his concentration wane. Joe clenched his eyes tighter, demanding more of himself in the process.
Focus!
Focus! he commanded himself again.
It was too late. Soon as he unclenched his eyes, he saw that his mother had miraculously shifted position. It was a startling sight, because he knew it was an impossible one as well. She had turned her head and was now facing him. Her eyes, shuttered before, were open wide and golden yellow, like those of a wolf. He could smell her, too, a sharp and pungent odor, as though she had been bathed in some medicinal antiseptic. The stench filled his nostrils and made him gag. The noise of her ventilator rose, too, in a crescendo so deafening Joe had to cover his ears.
His mother’s mouth, framed by thin lips that were cracked and raw, somehow had been freed from the repressive oxygen mask. As she began to speak, all color in the room faded to shades of gray, except for her eyes, which stayed that disturbing yellow.
“Help me,” his mother wheezed in a breathy whisper. “Pleeaassse, Joe. Help me.”
His mother’s bony, veined hand reached out from her hospital bed and touched Joe on the leg. He leapt to his feet, startling the nurse standing behind him, who in turn cried out in fright. With a shake of his head, Joe made a furtive glance about the room, relieved but also saddened to see his mother’s gaze as it had been before, fixed to the ceiling, her eyes again closed, the oxygen mask back in place.
It was a dream perhaps, he thought. Maybe he had fallen asleep and had a dream, nothing more. But it could be more. It could be the enemy, the schizophrenia that had plagued his adult years creeping up on him, craftily beating back the drugs, which formed only part of his defenses.
Schizophrenia.
Joe settled himself back onto the vinyl-covered armchair. His breathing grew shallower and more rapid. The nurse came around to face him. She kneeled low, perhaps to make her presence less threatening.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
She touched him on his knee, and this time Joe did not flinch. He nodded that he was fine, but did not feel ready to speak.
“You gave me quite a fright,” the nurse said.
Joe knew better than to ask if she had seen his mother open her eyes or heard her speak to him. Whether it was a dream or a waking nightmare, the moment was his alone to experience. If it was the schizophrenia baring its teeth, Joe reminded himself that it was simply a chemical reaction in his brain, something to do with too much dopamine in the nerve cell synapses and D2 receptors, or so he’d been told.
Despite the nurse’s continued attempts to reassure him, Joe still felt ill at ease. He wasn’t sure if he had been dreaming or not, and decided the experience might make for an interesting post on his blog, the aptly titled Divided Mind, taken from the Greek roots of schizophrenia. Comparing dreams to a schizophrenic episode would get his readers chatting, Joe suspected.
Over the years Joe’s blog had garnered a loyal readership, and its popularity had been growing steadily among mental health patients and professionals alike. There was a powerful sense of community that Joe had unwittingly tapped into with his entertaining, often self-deprecating prose. Heartrending comments from readers claiming their lives had been changed in positive ways because of Joe’s informal community motivated him to keep updating the blog regularly. It was as healing for Joe to write and interact with his virtual friends as it was for them to read and interact with each other. He felt he needed them now more than ever.
“When will she wake up?” Joe asked the nurse.
“I don’t know,” the nurse replied. “You must be tired.”
“A little. I’m more afraid of what will happen to Mom.”
“Of course you are. I understand.”
No, you don’t understand, Joe wanted to say. I need her more than you can imagine. Instead, he kept silent.
“Would you like me to get you a drink of water?”
“That would be nice,” Joe said.
After she left the room, Joe reached out to take hold of his mother’s limp hand. Intellectually, he knew her hand was cold and clammy to the touch, but at that moment it felt as warm as an August sun.
Chapter 13
The automatic doors to the main lobby of Mount Auburn Hospital opened the moment
Charlie stepped in front of the sensor.
Inside, he took one short breath of the antiseptic hospital smell and shuddered. He found it strange that a smell, so innocuous at that, could trigger such powerful memories. But hard as he tried, those times were not easily forgotten. When he was a boy, just turned seven, his father had driven the family station wagon through the storefront window of a popular boutique clothing store in downtown Belmont. Charlie didn’t know it at the time, but the explanation he gave to the arresting officer was that the mannequins were looking at him funny. From that moment on hospitals became Charlie’s second home—a blur of lockdown floors in the mental health ward, inpatient treatment centers, and emergency rooms. He’d first visited his father, then soon after his brother, too. He’d spent so many hours breathing in the ammonium vapors of hospital antiseptic that the smell alone was like a return trip into a nightmare.
Awash in the sickly glow of the overhead fluorescents, Charlie walked down the long corridors to the elevators that would take him to Ellision 5, the hospital’s critical care floor.
Inside the crowded elevator, Charlie waited with the others. He positioned himself in a spot toward the back right corner. He found the cramped quarters of an elevator bad enough under normal circumstances, but in a hospital, jammed together with the sick, it was almost unbearably claustrophobic. Doctors and nurses were mixed in with patients and visitors. Charlie wondered if any of them were tending to his mother.
The reality of her stroke was just beginning to set in. He wanted to ask a doctor standing beside him how a woman in such excellent health could have suffered a stroke, but he refrained. He didn’t know exactly what caused a stroke. What he did know was that his mother was the least likely candidate for one. Her refrigerator was a Prevention magazine poster child for wholesomeness. If food at the grocery store was stocked on a shelf even near a trans fat, she’d think twice before buying it. She walked five miles a day, in part because walking was less stressful on the joints than running. She, like Charlie, shared a constitution that most Americans would buy on eBay for a good part of their 401(k) if they could.
The years hadn’t been easy for his mother. As the elevator ascended, he took some comfort in that fact. If anything, she was stronger than most women half her age. She would pull through this just fine, he assured himself. After all, she had survived a philandering, mentally ill husband who’d snuck out of the house with only a note good-bye, then single-handedly raised both her sons to be independent and self-reliant. That was, at least, until Joe got sick. If anything, the years spent caring for Joe had made her stronger, not weaker.
The doors opened on seven, and Charlie exited alone. Two large glass doors secured access to the ICU. Through the glass Charlie could see inside. The floor was bright blue linoleum. Nurses and doctors raced about, but none took notice of him. Charlie buzzed the intercom outside and waited.
A few seconds later a nurse answered. “Can I help you?”
“Alison Giles?” he asked.
“She’s here,” the nurse said. “Are you family?”
“I’m her son,” he said.
There was a brief pause and then a buzz. Charlie opened the door and stepped inside. The lights in the ICU were less diffused than in any other part of the hospital. In the center of the floor was the nurses’ station. It was a large open space cluttered with monitors and an array of computers, separated from the main floor by a wide hexagonal counter. Charlie couldn’t help but take notice of the ICU’s technical sophistication. From that observation alone, he was certain his mother was in the best possible hands.
Along the perimeter wall were the patient rooms. They were spacious cubicles with sliding glass doors for privacy, a dozen or so. He was prepared to check them all when a nurse approached him.
“Who are you looking for?” she asked.
“Alison Giles,” Charlie said. “Someone buzzed me in and—”
She held up her hand to stop him. She pointed to a corner room. “She’s in seven-oh-six A.” She turned and left without another word.
Charlie quickened his pace as he drew closer. Through the glass doors of 706A he could see that his brother, Joe, was inside. Joe was seated by his mother’s bedside.
It wasn’t until he stepped into the room and saw his mother for the first time that the gravity of the situation became real. A large mask covered her mouth. He assumed it was delivering oxygen. His mother’s normally porcelain skin was ashen and sagging. There was a red mark on her cheek. Had she fallen when she had her stroke?
Her eyes were closed and surrounded by dark, haunting circles. It was difficult to reconcile the woman lying on the bed with the vivacious and spirited woman he knew. But it was her. She was still his mother.
The mark on her cheek was the only indication that she was gravely ill. Her gray hair, which she refused to dye, was tousled. Charlie’s first instinct was to straighten it out. The appearance of control and put-togetherness would be something she would want for herself, no matter her condition. She always kept the house immaculate, her clothes perfectly wrinkle free. She never let anyone know how hard life had become for her. Not in words or in appearance. It was her way, Charlie assumed, of confronting and controlling circumstances that were beyond her control.
He walked around the bed and stood on the other side, facing his brother. He used his hand to straighten his mother’s hair. There was no television set in her room. Only monitors, IV drips, and several machines that dispensed medicine.
“Joe, what’s going on?” Charlie asked.
Joe didn’t bother to look up. He hadn’t acknowledged that Charlie had even entered the room. Joe kept his gaze fixed to the floor while he held his mother’s hand. He kept muttering, “I’m holding Mom’s hand. I’m stroking her hand. I’m holding her hand. Now I’m stroking it.”
“Joe, what is going on?” Charlie asked again. He could hear the patience in his voice fast fading.
At last Joe looked up at Charlie. Joe’s eyes were red from crying, his plump cheeks streaked and splotched. He was dressed in a short-sleeved white button-down shirt that was sprinkled with food stains. He barely fit into the small green vinyl armchair by the side of the bed. With his free hand he ran his fingers through his bushy, curly hair, brushing it away from his reddened eyes. Then he wiped at his running nose with the back of his hand.
“Joe!” Charlie shouted. “What’s going on with Mom? What have the doctors told you?”
His brother stopped muttering and let go of their mother’s hand. He gave Charlie a doleful, bewildered stare.
“What is going on with Mom?” Charlie asked again. He made no effort to hide his irritation. “Where is the doctor?”
“Hi to you, too,” Joe said. “And no, I’m not having a good day. Thanks for asking.” Joe went back to holding his mother’s hand and talking to himself.
Charlie took a deep breath. This was familiar. You know how to handle this. It’s the stress, that’s all. There were plenty of nurses around for Charlie to speak with. He could easily leave to find somebody capable of giving him the answers, but he felt obligated to hear the news from family first.
“Joe, I’m sorry,” Charlie said, softening his tone. “I know this is difficult for you. It’s hard for me, too. But I’m in the dark here. Please. Tell me what’s going on with Mom.”
Joe looked up at his brother. His expression changed, as though Charlie’s arrival was a blessing and source of strength.
“Mom’s not lost to us, Charlie,” Joe said. “She suffered a massive stroke. She can’t talk. She can’t move. The doctors don’t know when or if she’ll come to. I’ve just been sitting here holding her hand. It was awful. I came downstairs for breakfast, and she was passed out on the kitchen floor.” Joe breathed in deeply, trying his best to hold his composure. He took a few shorter breaths, but there was no way he could stifle his tears. “I didn’t know what to do,” Joe blurted out between sobs. “I called nine-one-one, and then I called you.”
&nb
sp; “It’s going to be all right, Joe,” Charlie said. “Mom’s going to pull through this fine.”
“And what if she’s not fine?” Joe shouted as he stood up. His fierceness made Charlie extremely uncomfortable. At six foot four, 245 pounds, Joe could destroy the room in seconds if he went into a rage.
“I know you need her, Joe. I know that this is very hard for you,” Charlie said.
“You don’t know that!” Joe cried. “You don’t know anything! I can’t make it without her, Charlie. I’ll die without her! I don’t know what I’ll do. She’s all I have.”
Charlie stepped around behind Joe. He rested both hands on his brother’s massive shoulders. Everything Charlie did next was pure instinct. First was getting Joe to sit down; then it was having him focus on a sound—a machine beeping in the room. After a few minutes Joe started to calm down.
It was all ingrained in Charlie from years of living with him. He never forgot the lessons his mother had reinforced. Help him to find a reality he can relate to. Remind him of his routines. Help him get grounded again.
“Listen, Joe. Mom’s going to pull through, and you’re going to help her. And when she comes through, everything will return to the way it was. What was she doing for you before all this happened? You said she was making you breakfast? What were you going to have?”
“Eggs and bacon,” Joe said, taking deep breaths.
It was working, Charlie thought.
Joe began to regain his composure. “Mom always makes me eggs and bacon on Tuesday.”
Charlie shook his head as if he’d been slapped. Tuesday? It can’t be. He braced himself against the back of the armchair. Given everything that had already happened today, Charlie wasn’t certain he’d be able to remain calm. He had to remember that this wasn’t entirely Joe’s fault. His brother had a disease.
“Joe,” Charlie said, doing his best to disguise his rising anger, “you said Mom had a stroke after breakfast. That you came down, saw her on the floor, and then you called nine-one-one.”
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