Painting Sage

by Rachael K Hannah

  Chapter 14

  Sea Change

  Julia

  I couldn’t help but begin to wonder: What was going on with Sage? What was going on with Mike? After seeing his missed call, I had called and texted them both. But neither had answered. On any other day, it wouldn’t strike me as strange. But on her birthday? Something must have been wrong.

  After signing out of St. Martha’s visitor registry and making my way through its outdoor parking lot, I took a few moments to gather my thoughts before returning to my car. Out of habit, with my car key already clenched firmly in my hand (its jagged blade pointed outward before me), I swiftly made my way into the driver’s side, buckled up, and locked the doors. Although St. Martha’s was probably as safe as could possibly be, I always used a little extra caution while walking alone in a parking lot. I knew full well that such spaces tended to attract an element looking for trouble and an easy target. Scanning my surroundings from within the car—front windshield to back and then from side to side—all I detected were a few harmless regulars who were obviously there to visit their friends and family members.

  I had no choice but to laugh a little at my own paranoia. Breathing a little more easily, I returned my full attention to my to-do list, which sat on the passenger seat of my car. As I rummaged in my tote, searching to find my cell, it began to ring. Looking down, I realized it was Mike. I didn’t even give the phone’s second ring a chance to finish before I snatched it in my hand and picked the call up.

  “Mike, where were you? You called, and then just vanish with no explanation at all? Is it really that hard to send a tex—”

  “Julia,” he interrupted, speaking a little too cautiously, “before I even say anything, you need to know that Sage is okay now. She’s here with me in the car.”

  Admittedly, I was somewhat taken aback by the comment. Even though I had suspected something wasn’t quite right to begin with, I could instantly tell that there was more to this—whatever it was—then I ultimately had been ready for. I wasn’t fooled by Mike’s oddly placid tone, not for a single second. You need to know that Sage is okay now. Why would Mike choose to preface a conversation by making a comment like that—unless, of course, it was serious?

  “Mike, what happened?” I asked. My hand circled the rim of the steering wheel, around and around. It’s rough, rubbery surface felt oddly soothing against the smoothness of my soft fingers.

  “She’s okay. There’s no need to worry. However, Julia, you have to listen to me before you get all bent out of shape—”

  “What happened, Michael?” I demanded more forcefully. “By telling me not to worry, you’re essentially telling me that I need to worry. And are you talking on your phone while driving? Seriously?”

  “Bluetooth, Julia.” Then there was a painfully long pause, followed by a very deliberate deep breath on his end that was obviously more for show than out of genuine exasperation on his part. “We’re coming back from the hospital.”

  For a moment, there, it felt as if my heart had abruptly stopped in its place, and my entire body went still. This was then immediately followed by the sudden sensation of very rapid, very fearful pounding against my weakening chest. Hospital. Why? My mouth softly dropped wide open, but no sound could find its way out. Was it even worse than I had expected? If so, how could he possibly be so nonchalant about something like this? Also, more importantly, why hadn’t he called me earlier?

  “Julia?”

  I swallowed hard, somehow managing to force the words out shakily. “What happened?” I asked a third time, only at this point my voice barely registered above a whisper.

  “Oh, my God! You’re both being sooooooo dramaaaaaatic,” I heard Sage’s unmistakable whine in the background. But there was something about her voice that didn’t sound quite right to me. She had slurred her words to the point that she sounded heavily drugged—tranquilized even.

  “Why does she sound like that?” I asked.

  “Julia, just listen—”

  “Listen? Listen to what? What happened to her, Mike? I mean, seriously? I’m always running around the entire city… I’m a complete and total maniac over here.”

  Unable to go on, my voice simply trailed off. And then it happened. I completely broke down sobbing. The heavy, heaving, unrelenting sobs seemed to take on an interminable life of their own. I didn’t even know what I was crying about, but I knew that it had to have been bad, whatever it was, and there was nothing I could do to fix it because it had already happened. Without me.

  “Julia. Julia, listen to me. Don’t cry, please. This is exactly what I was talking about before… Don’t cry. Just listen.”

  But the tears kept flowing despite Mike’s pleas for reason.

  “Sage passed out earlier while she was in the city,” he continued. “Dehydration and exhaustion. Fortunately, she was with a friend who called 911—”

  It took a few moments for my mind to fully register what Mike had said. Unable to find a tissue of some sort while rummaging through my tote bag, I wiped away furiously at my stinging and soaked face with the sleeve of my jacket.

  “What do you mean?” I asked between hiccups. “Dehydration? Exhaustion? And they just discharged her? Just like that? Shouldn’t they have kept her?” I located a few extra fast food napkins shoved in the back of my glove compartment, and used two or three of them to blow my nose.

  “They’re supposed to keep someone in that condition overnight.”

  “They didn’t think she needed to stay,” Mike replied.

  “Was it that she’s feeling well enough to come home, or were they too swamped in the ER to take her seriously? You can’t just take an ER doctor’s word, Mike. You know that. You must ask questions. You must demand answers. Doctors and nurses make mistakes, too.”

  “Julia, please! According to the doctor, it wasn’t necessary to hold her. Why are you making this into something it’s not?”

  “What doctor? Was she or he any good?” Holding up the crumpled, used napkins, I searched my car for anything that could be used as a makeshift trash receptacle for them. Unfortunately, I found nothing that would adequately suffice. Wrinkling my nose in disgust at my apparent messiness, I carefully wrapped them inside the one clean napkin I had left and begrudgingly stuck them in the driver’s side cup holder.

  Mike paused before trying to state his case once again. “Yes, he, the doctor, seemed good. Anyway, Sage felt comfortable with him. She apparently confided in him that she hasn’t been taking her medication, but that’s completely unrelated to why she fainted—whole separate issue there. They did have her on an intravenous for a bit and managed to stabilize her. That’s when she admitted that she’s on meds but hasn’t been taking them for about two weeks. But they cleared her. She’s not an imminent danger to herself, she’s been discharged, and we’re headed to your place right now—”

  “Whoa, hold right there. Not taking her medication? Did I hear you right? Haven’t you been watching her?”

  My mind was racing. How could Mike so casually stick that one little detail in there as if it were some sort of insignificant afterthought? And if it were true, how could he not notice? It would be so glaringly obvious, at least to me, it would. But to not know, not even suspect anything… Was he even paying attention to her?

  All I heard on his end was deafening silence. It seemed as if a full minute had passed without a response—until Sage started again.

  “Mom, stop worrying, I’m fiiine. They let me gooo…” Sage sleepily interjected before her voice trailed off and dissipated completely.

  Unbelievable.

  “Mike, you promised that you would monitor Sage’s medication every morning. You promised.”

  My hands returned to the steering wheel. Only this time they were clenched so tightly. My fingers wrapped around it entirely, dug fiercely into the fleshy palms of my hands, and yet I hardly felt any pain. “The only way this could have happened is if you weren’t paying attention in the first place. You woul
d know if something was wrong, but you didn’t. And that’s because you’re completely wrapped up in nothing but yourself!”

  “That is not true—”

  “All you’ve been focused on is your career and advancing your agenda!” Mike could protest all he wanted, but I wasn’t having any of it. “You should have noticed, Mike! I WOULD HAVE NOTICED!” The full magnitude of my voice rose to such proportions that some of the people who passed by stopped to stare at me. They could hear me through the locked car doors, but I didn’t care. They could stand there and gawk all they wanted to because this was beyond unconscionable on Mike’s part. There was a clear, distinct difference between Sage—the typical moody teenager—and the manic highs and lows of Sage suffering from this unrelenting illness. And if he couldn’t see that, couldn’t recognize it when it was right in front of him…

  “I have been watching her — every morning. Every morning, I hand her the pill myself, and I watch her take it. Julia, I don’t know how this could even be possible, but I have been watching her, and I take this every bit as seriously as you do. I even make her wiggle her tongue, lift it up to show me—”

  “What about the gum line?” I interrupted. “Between the underside of her lip and gum? She tried hiding it in that spot when she first came home from Sherwood Pines. Did you check there?”

  Mike was silent once again, and I realized immediately that he had never even considered examining that particular spot before.

  “Gum line?” he eventually asked quietly.

  “Oh, Mike! You’re supposed to check everything! Her whole mouth. And that’s beside the point. Her behavior. Didn’t you notice anything at all? Mood swings? Mania? Depression? Anything?”

  “You never told me about her gum line.”

  “I didn’t realize I had to!” I shook my head in disbelief, completely floored by everything I heard from his end.

  “What was I supposed to do—literally stand there and check all the contents of her mouth like she’s some sort of prisoner? That’s crazy, Julia.”

  “Oh, so now I’m crazy?” The nerve of him.

  “Yes. Yes, you are crazy! Besides, who even thinks about a gum line? Not to mention, it’s hard to tell with her sometimes. She gets in these… these moods. How am I supposed to know the difference between the medical stuff and the regular moody teenage stuff? I was ten times worse when we were her age. You remember that. No one hospitalized me. No one labeled me. This whole situation is just so ridiculous to begin with. It’s impossible to recognize or manage anything. She’s a kid, and kids act out. IT’S WHAT THEY DO!” he exclaimed.

  “I did! I recognized it. I managed it. Mike, there’s no manual that comes along with this stuff. You just have to know. And, yes, that’s exactly what you have to do! You have to literally stand there and check her entire mouth. She will try to get away with anything for the simple sake of pulling one over on you because it’s Sage—and that’s what she does!”

  Mike let out an exasperated groan. It sounded as if it were half-fueled by rage and half-fueled by simple annoyance. “Which proves my point. Where does Sage just being herself end and this alleged illness begin—”

  “Alleged?” That was probably the exact point where I completely lost it. I hammered my clenched fist into the steering wheel with such incredible, seemingly insurmountable force, over and over again. But I was so inflamed by the word—so immersed in seeing nothing in front of me but pure red—that I couldn’t even perceive the excruciating pain as it shot through my knuckles, my hand, and up through my entire arm before settling deep into the muscles of my already throbbing shoulder. “There is nothing alleged about this,” I choked through my tightening throat.

  He realized what he had done.

  “Julia, I’m sorry—”

  “You didn’t grow up without a mother,” I spat bitterly. “There was nothing alleged about that either.”

  Mike sighed heavily before attempting to speak again. Only this time, his voice had surprisingly deepened with the intensity of his own biting, caustic anger. There was nothing apologetic about it. “Right. What would I know, Julia? I just grew up without a no-good alcoholic father who left us. What would I know about anything?”

  “It’s not the same,” I insisted.

  “No, no, Julia you’re right. It’s not the same. Because my parent made a choice to leave, right? That’s what you think—that he chose his illness because he wanted to be that way. He wanted to be knee deep and lost in his drinking and his depression—”

  “Mike, I didn’t say that—”

  “But you were thinking it. You’re thinking that your mother was a victim of her illness, so what she did wasn’t really her fault. Right? But my father… oh, he knew what he was doing. He wanted to be that way. I read you loud and clear. It’s not what you say, Julia. Damn it. You think you know better than everyone and have all the answers. Well, you know what? Some people believe that my father had an illness, too. That he was in too deep himself, too deep to turn back and get better without some serious medical attention and help. But you don’t see it that way, do you?”

  There were those words of pure accusation, again: It’s not what you say. They struck me so fiercely, cutting through the walls I had so expertly put up and sent an explicit message. It wasn’t what I said… It was what I thought—and what I was communicating without even meaning to. But what did they seriously expect from me? Was I supposed to come out full-force, abrasively, with flat-out offensive statements? What good would that do? For a moment there, I would have felt a tiny bit of shame, if I hadn’t been so angry with Mike in the first place.

  “Look, I’m sorry. I know it wasn’t easy for you growing up either. But you need to understand why I’d be upset about all this and what a comment like that does to me. This isn’t exactly the phone call I wanted to receive from you, Michael.”

  I closed my eyes and rested against the soft, plush cushion of my seat’s headrest. A low, yet high-pitched whistle escaped my lightly pursed lips.

  “I guess you can add this to the list of all the many ways I’ve screwed up. They said she was fine to come home, so I decided to take her home.”

  “This whole mess… I don’t know, Mike. What are we going to do with her?”

  “I don’t know, Julia. Maybe she thought she was getting better. Maybe she thought she didn’t need her medication anymore.”

  “I know.” I turned over so that my cheek rested comfortably against the seat. It was so tempting to close my eyes and fall asleep right there at that moment.

  “I’m doing the best I can here. I can’t keep her on lockdown and monitor her every move. At some point, Sage must be responsible for herself, and we need to trust her. You said so yourself.”

  I had said that, but that was before Mike had decided to move halfway across the country. Realistically, he wouldn’t be the one left in the aftermath of all this. It fell completely on my shoulders now. I held my burning fist in my other hand, gently massaging the raw, tender skin that was in the process of turning deep shades of purple and blue. I had punched the wheel harder than I’d realized.

  “Julia, it won’t help if you get on her case about this. I’m surprised she’s still asleep right now.”

  “They probably gave her a hefty dose of something incredibly strong. It’ll be on her discharge papers… We can look at it together when you get here. Well, not here. There. You might actually beat me home—”

  “Don’t worry about that. We can go out to dinner locally instead. Or, judging by the look of her right now, order in.”

  “Okay then. I’ll see you both back at the apartment.” I opened my eyes and straightened myself up in my seat. It was time to go home.

  “Look, Julia, I’m sorry about this. I really did try. There’s a lot going on lately.”

  What more was there to say? In a way, I couldn’t blame him. Who would want to admit their child into the hospital, and on her birthday, no less? Sage was not an easy kid to manage. Yes, she wa
sn’t into drugs or some of the more serious problems other teenagers managed to get themselves into—thankfully—but she had this stubborn, sarcastic streak, this moody, defiant way about her.

  Sage always knew how to play just within the parameters of the rules, never quite crossing a boundary but stretching the lines just enough to cause others discomfort. And she was smart. If Mike had been distracted by all the plans and phone calls involved with his transition into a new position in a new state, Sage would have known just how to manipulate and take advantage of that weakness. Normally, Mike could have run circles around her, but these had been special circumstances.

  “I know. You don’t need to explain. I’ll see you soon, Mike.”

  “Yes, Julia. See you soon.”

  Chapter 15

  The Tire Iron

  Sage

  Five months ago, I came very close to the end.

  There’s not much else to say about the matter, except that at the time, it had felt as if there was this inescapable, darkening fog steadily closing in on me. Sadly, it was an all too familiar aperture—one I had fought so desperately hard to ignore. The hole would not mend itself for my benefit, though. And as much as I had tried to turn away from its grip, I found that it remained there, waiting for me, so that I might become trapped and lost within it. And for a time, I had truly believed that I belonged in that unforgiving place where sunshine is gone, and dark, somber clouds offer no promise of reprieve.

  Driving back home with my Dad late the afternoon of my birthday, I found myself trying to make sense of everything around me. Lost in my thoughts, confused by my direction, and honestly still incredibly tired, I found myself drifting in and out of sleep against the background noise of my parents’ incessant arguing. Entangled in yet another ridiculous battle that, of course, led to nowhere, they fought over the fact that I had not stayed overnight in a hospital.