Day Nine

by Amanda Munday

  “We are going to figure this out, babe. I don’t think you’re meant to be in the hospital. I can take care of you. I want to believe you’re not supposed to be in that place at all. I want to do everything I can to get you out of there. No doctor ever said you were insane before. You’ve never been diagnosed with a mental illness. It has to be a chemical imbalance from childbirth or pregnancy. It’s a medical illness and not self-inflicted. Do you understand me? I don’t have all the answers. I wish I knew when you’d be better. I wish none of this happened.”

  All I can do is cry. I feel so guilty for putting us in this situ-ation. I want to take it all back. But I also don’t trust myself alone with the baby. It feels too big a risk, even if I can’t articulate how real the risk is. Gordon stands up and paces. Then he stops in front of me and says, “Why don’t you let me take you for a walk? A short one around the block and we’ll come right back.”

  “I don’t want to go,” I say. But I need to break this darkness. Silently, I stand up, walk to our enclosed porch, and slide on my sandals before heading outside, making sure to keep my head down so I don’t spot and make eye contact with any of my neighbours. I love them, but this isn’t the time for friendly banter. I’m embarrassed at the thought of any of them seeing me in this unravelled state. My dirty clothes hang off my body and my hair hasn’t been brushed in days. When I step onto the driveway I feel the familiar ache in my breasts, the ones that have endured weeks of physical assault. My nipples bleed regularly through bruised, cracked, and very sore skin. I’ve rarely worn a bra since I delivered the baby, because the constricting nature of any undergarments adds a layer of claustrophobia to my new, unfamiliar body. If I release my body parts, maybe my old self will find me. Maybe my mind will return.

  I’ve been standing in the same spot on our driveway for a while. Gordon stands behind me, watching me as I stand in place, trapped by my circular thoughts, trapped by the fog. I look over and meet his eyes.

  “Ready?” he says with a faint smile as he walks toward me and takes my hand. As we walk, I look to the end of our street where the most beautiful wrap-around ivy plant weaves in and out of a grey picket fence. The spring and summer seasons in Toronto are short. The warm-but-not-too-hot days are even shorter. It’s always around this time of year when I’d usually opt to walk instead of taking the subway around town, breathing in big gulps of warm air as I admire the green leaves that envelop our city streets. In summer, Toronto often seems to transform from grey concrete to flourishing lush foliage overnight. Sometimes it still snows in spring, but summer is when everything comes alive. Those first few days where I become aware of the change of season are special. I love seeing the green trees sparkle against periwinkle blue skies. It’s hard to be upset when the weather is nice in Toronto.

  There is a very old oak tree near our house, and when the spring buds turn into full green foliage I always think about how it’s healing itself after a harsh winter. Why can’t I find the path to healing myself after childbirth? Why can’t I heal my own dark thoughts? I usually enjoy the sequin-like sparkles that flicker on the sidewalk when the sun shines down through the leaves of the tall trees. Not today.

  None of these summer signals are intended for me; the sequins are for someone else. I don’t deserve to enjoy any of it. I’m a terrible person to have caused this much harm to my family. My mind is stuck in a darkness better suited for deep February winters. I bring my hand up to my mouth and sob while we walk.

  “Am I dying?” I look up to my husband with tears soaking my cheeks.

  “I don’t think you’re dying, but I do think you’re sick. Maybe something really wrong has happened. Maybe the doctors are right that you need to stay in the hospital.” The way he says this last sentence sounds suspicious, like he doesn’t trust his words either. He sounds as unsure as I am. But if he thinks the doctors might be right, that I really have lost my way, then maybe I really am sick. His uncertainty is unsettling.

  A little while later we’re all back in my living room and my mother is continuing her persistent questioning about what I should be doing. “Why don’t you put a TV show on? There must be something better to do than sit here on the couch not doing anything.” I don’t respond and am intentionally not making eye contact. I can’t mother, and I don’t want to be mothered.

  Gordon’s in another room folding laundry, so I yell a little too loud, “When can we go back to the hospital? I want to go back. I think they’re waiting for me. Please, I think we should just go back. There might be traffic and we could be late.” I’m curled up in a ball avoiding my mother’s gaze and shielding my face from my husband, who has walked back into the room looking like he hasn’t heard me correctly.

  My mom interjects. “There won’t be traffic, Amanda. It’s the middle of the afternoon. No one is worried about you there.” Gordon nods his head and I don’t bother looking for a reaction from him. No one is asking for my opinion.

  Gordon returns me to the hospital not a minute before we’re supposed to be back — eight o’clock at night — and it might as well be 3:00 a.m. for how long it felt. I’m sick about how I behaved earlier, but I can’t apologize for any of it. My mother pulls up behind us in the parking lot in her white SUV. She has demanded to stay with me again tonight in the hospital and didn’t ask my permission. I’d say I allowed it, but earlier attempts to maintain independence have been taken away along with most of my own autonomous decision-making powers. Baby Fiona is sleeping quietly in the back seat. She has been shuffled around so often through the ins and outs of this hospital stay. I’ve caused harm to so many people. I need to go back to my locked room and stay quiet. The voices haven’t left me.

  July 10–11, 2014

  A NEW DAY brings an overnight pass home and a chance to  sleep in my own bed. But my house doesn’t bring me calm. I feel a heavy anxiety about spending the night in this house. I do not feel safe here.

  Although I go to bed feeling like a stranger in my home, in the morning I wake up happy. I slept through the night in my own bed, uninterrupted without a single bed check. I spent a night without the threat of people coming into my room or IV machines beeping behind my head. I slept truly alone. Gordon stayed downstairs with the baby while he and my mother took feeding shifts. The house didn’t harm me and I didn’t harm myself.

  I have not been discharged from the hospital; I remain a patient of the psychiatric ward. I know there’s been suggestion that I not be left alone with my daughter, even if I am sent home permanently. Even if my family trusts me to be alone with or with--out the baby, I feel more in control knowing I went hours without someone asking me if I’ve had any new dark thoughts.

  I walk downstairs and scoop the baby from Gordon’s arms. The baby swing I ordered from Amazon sits unassembled in our living room. What once seemed like such a simple answer is now another thing on our supposed-to-have-done list. I have a new feeling about parenting this morning. There is little I can control. I can’t fix everything myself, and I can’t online-shop my way through the hard times. I need to try to nourish myself in the calm moments, knowing maybe they will return if I rest. This beautiful baby is of my own creation. I can stare at her tiny little face for hours, and today I want to drink her in. She has the most perfect indent on her upper lip, a line that draws my eyes along the swoop of her curved nose. She has the kind of eyelashes many women spend a great deal of money to acquire. They are long and luscious, and make her eyes seem as big as the possibilities the world offers to her. I run my fingertips along her closed lashes while she sleeps, reminding myself she is real.

  I hope she knows how much I love her, and how I will live to make sure she can thrive. How will I explain this time to her? I whisper, “My darling daughter, my love, we will talk about this when you’re older, and you will understand that although this happened when you arrived, it didn’t happen because you arrived.” I’m shaking. “It was in me, this darkness. When you came out of me, it followed. This is not because of you.”
The baby coos the softest coo.

  My mother walks in the door bright and cheery with coffee for Gordon and a soy tea latte for me. When she joins us in the kitchen I want to thank her for showing up alone and for showing up at all, but I decide not to. Gordon has to take me back to the hospital today; I’m due to be examined by the doctors and given my new psychiatric sentence.

  The plan was for my mom, Gordon, and the baby to accompany me back to the hospital, but the more I think about it, the more I feel like I’m exposing everyone to more pain than they need.

  “Gordon, why don’t you just drive me and drop me off? I can do this alone now.”

  “No way,” he says. “You don’t have to do this by yourself. I want to come with you.”

  “But I want you to be here with the baby and my mom. Nothing will happen to me there. I’m safe under their watch.” I look over to my mother who is smiling at the baby. Even with all this stress, she finds joy.

  When Gordon pulls up to the hospital entrance, I tell him to just let me walk in alone. This is my second home now, the security guards at the entrance like inefficient concierges. When I walk through the doors, I see them spot my white patient bracelet. They must know I belong here. They’re watching me to make sure I don’t make a run for the exit. I’ve done what I was told to and returned to my keepers in the psychiatric ward, walking up alone to a new nurse at the check-in station. Given how many hours I’ve logged here, I’m surprised by the unfamiliar face.

  She doesn’t look up as I enter and says only, “Oh, Munday, yes? You’re back. Good.”

  I offer a health update, assuming this nurse would want to make note of my escape experience for my medical files. I’ve been wondering whether they report all my answers to their questions to the doctors, or whether they’re just asking how I’m feeling out of curiosity about the inner workings of a postpartum depression brain.

  “It was a good visit, I went to the park with the baby,” I say. She doesn’t look at me; she just nods and continues working at her computer station. She looks like she could be a warm person; she’s short, with a cropped blond bob and big eyes. She reminds me of my friends’ mothers. That homemaker vibe.

  “When should I come back over to get my meds?” I ask with as soft a tone as I can pull out of myself, hoping she will engage in a conversation and realize I’m not a permanent resident.

  “Be back in the line at 10:00 p.m. like everyone else.” Her tone tells me everything I need to know. This woman does not want to be my friend.

  One of the things I’ve always been really good at in my professional life is building strong relationships with the colleagues and partners I work with. I resist small talk, preferring to dive into people’s personal lives, sleep patterns, or current workplace conflicts than to talk again about the weather. I’ve seen this type of personality before, the hesitant professional, unsure of who I am to them, unwilling to warm up to my friendly dis-position. In the past it’s served me well to approach strangers with a friendly demeanour and try as quickly as possible to bring their guard down. I used to have a work life. My professional A-type personality and bubbly demeanour have been replaced by an unkempt hazard of a woman. Will I ever be able to blend my two identities into something manageable?

  I return to my room. Dusk lingers over the city. I hate dusk. The evening sunset and darkening skies outside my window bring nervous, unsettling anxiety. I’m afraid of what the night will bring, regardless of whether I’m sleeping exposed in the hospital or alone in my own bed. At home, I’d be worried about how much sleep I might be able to get before the baby wakes up, calculating the maximum amount of rest possible before I’m disturbed.

  Here, I anticipate being disturbed in any number of ways — nurses who will wake me up; patients who could. There isn’t anything to do right now but wait, so I sit up cross-legged in my bed and listen to the seconds and minutes pass. I figure it’ll take at least thirty seconds to a minute to walk back over to the nurses’ station, so at 9:59 p.m., I head back to get in the meds line.

  The bobbed-hair nurse lady is nowhere to be seen. Neither are any other patients, so I stand by the glass window and wait fifteen minutes, occasionally peeking over the counter to signal to no one that I’ve arrived on time and am ready for my allotted dispersal. No one says a word to me. After another ten or twelve minutes, I walk over to the other side of the nurses’ station and ask, “What’s happening with meds tonight?”

  A young male staffer who doesn’t work directly with patients, or so he reminds me, approaches and says, “Your nurse had to deal with an emergency patient. Return to your room please.”

  Nothing irritates me more than when people don’t stick to the plan. This nurse and I had a meeting, a set agreement for our time together, and she didn’t hold up her end. I want to let this dude know that I intend to try to sleep tonight and demand to know how long I’ll have to wait before coming back for my pills … but I can hear the words before they’re out of me, and I know they won’t serve me well. I head back to my room in the dark. Thankfully, the hospital’s centre-of-town placement means the street lamps are so bright I barely notice nighttime at all.

  When unfriendly bob-haired nurse shows up in my room, I’m unsure what time it is. I must have fallen asleep. She pulls up one of the green lounge chairs and sits down beside me in the dark. The only light is coming through a crack under my door and the glowing city lights protruding through the cracks in the blinds.

  “So, you were out today? How did you manage?” She’s firm in her line of questioning.

  “I managed just fine thank you. I can sense the real me coming back.” I sit up to appear pleasant.

  “But you’re still having dark thoughts, right? Do you still think people are trying to hurt you?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer. What response will get her to unload the meds and let me sleep? She’s holding a travel mug from David’s Tea, my favourite tea shop. I see an opportunity. I pull out some charm in the darkness, and hope she at least respects the attempt.

  “Oh, I love that tea. Have you tried the ice blends?”

  “Oh, this?” She looks down at the mug, then she spots my water bottle that’s been with me since I started my breastfeeding journey, the one with the same David’s Tea logo on the side.

  “Hey, look at that!” I say. We both like David’s Tea. I’m well like her. I try again to win her affection. “They really are a great shop. When I worked downtown, not far from here actually, I would often go there for lunch breaks, especially when it was hot like today.” I’m bringing the small-talk weather chat back in full force; it seems safer than asking her to reveal her true opinion of me, the sick mother.

  “Huh,” she says with a small grin. “What do you do for work?”

  “I work in marketing and technology. I like start-ups.” I feel like I’m lying, telling a story of a person I used to be.

  “Wow, you have a full life. Sorry I missed you earlier. I heard you were looking for your medication. I brought it with me.” She hands me a small white paper cup with the anti-depressants. Maybe she senses I’m not a lifer. Or feels guilty that I might be.

  “Do you want something to help you sleep? The doctors ordered it for you, but I see you haven’t taken it once since you’ve been here.” A motherly tone is emerging. Reserved, but evident.

  “I’m breastfeeding,” I explain. “I’m worried about what medications I’m putting in my body.”

  “Well, the doctors definitely know what they’re doing and they wouldn’t put you in harm’s way.” She waits to see me react. Maybe she can hear my thoughts?

  “I think I can sleep on my own. I really want to get better and go home. I want to be a good mother.”

  She takes a deep breath in and a sip from her mug. “I get it. I know. Listen, being a mother is so hard. Clearly sleep affects you significantly, so it’s going to be your job to protect your sleep so you can stay healthy. I think you know exactly how you are going to get better. It just
takes time.”

  I did it. I won over the reserved nurse through David’s Tea and mom chat.

  “Thank you,” I say. “I’m worried that my family will be ashamed of me because of this. Do people come back here often?” I figure this is a good opportunity to get more intel, something I’ve been afraid to try when my family is in the room.

  “Don’t worry about that tonight. Get some sleep. That’s the way you’re going to get better. I’ll note in your file that you didn’t have any intrusive thoughts while you were on your day pass. The doctors will want to know that tomorrow. Make sure that if you’re pumping, you bring me the breastmilk in a bottle so you keep up your supply. That is, if that’s what you want to do.”

  I lay my head down on my pillow and pull up the blankets. It’s not a major milestone, but given how cold this new nurse seemed when I got here, it feels significant enough that she made any effort beyond dropping off the pills and leaving.

  “Goodnight. And thank you,” I say as she walks out the door.

  July 14, 2014

  TODAY IS THE DAY I get to leave the hospital. I’m not coming back here. How many days has it been since I arrived? Eighteen. Eighteen days in this place. I loathe the idea that I caused so much pain to my family. I gross myself out. But asking to go to the hospital may have saved my life. It took away that 1 percent chance I could hurt myself, which existed no matter how much cognitive behavioural work I did to convince myself it was unlikely. There was always a chance. Maybe if I’d gone alone to a hotel somewhere for a few nights I might have finally slept, but I don’t think that level of dark thinking would have gone away on its own. I needed the hospital teams to take it away from me.