“Sure,” he said. “Give me a minute.”
Ten minutes later, I asked again, and again he said, “Sure. In a minute,” and it went on this way until it was all too clear that “in a minute” was all too likely to be sometime tomorrow.
It took tremendous effort, but I got myself dressed, and when I passed by the kitchen on my way out, Albie looked up and asked, “Where are you going?”
“To Rite Aid,” I told him, “to get NyQuil.”
He nodded, as if this were all news to him, and then he asked if I would pick up a quart of milk. “I think we’re about out,” which should suffice to explain the shock of it when, on that summer night, right then, as soon as I’d asked, he got up and went off to the kitchen to slice the cantaloupe.
Some minutes went by, too many minutes given the task at hand. I went to investigate. Albie was standing at the kitchen counter with the cantaloupe, which he had not cut in half and then half again. Rather, he had pared the rind from the melon the way you would pare an apple or peel a grape. Like a grape stripped of its skin, the flesh of the melon without its rind was wet and slippery, but a grape you pop into your mouth whole and that’s that. Not so with a cantaloupe. With one finger pressed firmly at the top, as if it were a globe set to spin, Albie kept the cantaloupe still, in place, while he contemplated how to remove the seeds from the core of a vulnerable melon.
Preferred Words
Dr. Grossman’s hands rest on Bunny’s file folder, and he says, “I’d like us all to go over everything together.” At the conference table, he and Dr. Fitzgerald are sitting directly opposite Bunny and Albie. “Bunny,” he asks, “are you comfortable having this discussion?”
In a whisper that is bracketed with whimpering, Bunny says, “I’m okay.”
Sounding exactly like a high school principal informing a parent that their fuck-up kid got busted smoking weed in the bathroom, Dr. Fitzgerald tells Albie, “You’re aware that your wife has refused medication.”
“Medication is off the table for now,” Dr. Grossman says.
Dr. Fitzgerald says she is well aware that medication is off the table for now, which could lead you to wonder why she brought it up in the first place.
“For now,” Dr. Grossman says, “Bunny has agreed to electroconvulsive therapy,” and Dr. Fitzgerald echoes, “Electroshock therapy,” which is not a precise echo, but it amounts to the same thing. Convulsive is the preferred word. Preferred words are not necessarily better words. If anything, the preferred word, however synonymous, can obfuscate rather than clarify. It’s the same truth swaddled in cotton, like how the preferred term for manic-depressive disorder is now bipolar disorder, which sounds like an Arctic expedition as opposed to someone gleefully pulling her hair out of her head. Although why electroconvulsive is preferred to electroshock is anyone’s guess. Both bring to mind images of mad doctors and the industrial revolution; the next step in medical science after bloodletting. But Dr. Grossman explains electroconvulsive therapy in a way appropriate to the twenty-first century. “Think of it like rebooting a computer. We perform the procedure under general anesthesia. The patient feels no discomfort.”
In response to Albie’s question about the side effects, Dr. Grossman concedes that some patients experience temporary short-term memory loss, but memory loss resulting from ECT does not compound the memory loss resulting from her depression. Memory loss resulting from depression is depression dependent. It’s more like forgetfulness that results from preoccupation, the depression being the preoccupation. All studies indicate that within six months, short-term memory loss is statistically nil. But Dr. Grossman does have to admit that the rate of success isn’t precise, in part because it can’t be quantified like blood pressure or tumor size. “But in cases of depressive melancholia with acute suicidal ideation,” he says, “my experience is that there is a dramatic improvement with the treatment.”
The way an echo reverberates from a distance, Albie repeats the doctor’s words, “Acute suicidal ideation?” It is unclear if Albie wants to console his wife, or is he expecting her to console him. Either way, Bunny just sits there, as if she were no more alive than an icicle before a thaw.
“Bunny,” Dr. Grossman’s voice has the effect of a hypnotist’s snap of the fingers. “Bunny, you have to pay attention, okay?”
Dr. Fitzgerald, however, seems not to be paying attention. She is doodling, three-dimensional cubes and stick figures and flowers that might be tulips, in the margins of her notepad.
Dr. Grossman is skeptical of reports claiming full recovery after a single treatment. “Twelve treatments is the usual course, three times a week for four weeks, but sometimes more are needed. Up to thirty-six.”
Before treatment can begin, should treatment begin, Bunny will need to undergo a thorough physical examination. Then, she’ll have to wait until there is an opening in the schedule. “A few days at most,” Dr. Grossman says, and from the breast pocket of his white coat he takes a ballpoint pen, which he clicks open before passing it to Bunny along with the consent form.
Despite that a person locked up in the psycho ward can’t leave until discharged by the doctors, that same person, apparently, is sufficiently compos mentis to agree to electroconvulsive therapy, in writing.
“Are you sure this is what you want do?” Albie asks, and Bunny asks, “What choice do I have?”
“Abilify,” Dr. Fitzgerald pipes in. “Abilify and Paxil,” and Bunny considers the possibility that Dr. Fitzgerald is concerned for her welfare; perhaps she knows that ECT is neither as effective nor as benign as Dr. Grossman contends. Wouldn’t that be something? It would be something, but it’s not. The expression on Dr. Fitzgerald’s face says it all: she has no respect for people like Bunny; the emotionally fragile, the psychically damaged—they might as well be fat, sexless, and dull.
And Bunny asks, “What’s the date today?”
The Idea Stage
In the hours before Creative Writing is set to begin, Bunny sits on the bench across from the Activities Board, where she pretends she is there to plan out her week, to commit her plans to paper. Her legal pad is open to where she’d left off last night. In the margin, she’d made a note: more Stella, which now she crosses out. She manages to write most of a paragraph before Howie interrupts her. “Mind if I join you?” he asks.
“Would it matter if I said yes? Yes, I do mind?”
“Good one,” Howie says.
Bunny begrudgingly admires Howie’s masterful deflection of rejection, his imperviousness to insults. A survival skill, he’s like that animal—Bunny can’t remember which one, but she can vaguely picture it—the one that plays dead to fool carnivores who prefer to kill their dinner themselves.
“I’ve been working on my novel a lot,” he tells Bunny.
“How’s that going?” Bunny asks, as if she didn’t know.
Other than Group Therapy sessions, which Howie attends with the regularity and solemnity of novitiate, he never skips Group Sing-along or Creative Writing. Howie hasn’t actually done any writing, but in Creative Writing, he talks a lot about his novel, the one set in “a place like this.” Howie’s novel is still in the “idea stage.” He is incapable of transferring his thoughts to paper, which is why he whines to Bunny about how the Creative Writing prompts do exactly the opposite of what they are supposed to do. According to the Creative Writing social worker, who isn’t really a social worker, but an MFA student from NYU, the prompts are designed to stimulate the creative process, but Howie claims that the prompts are too vague. “A shoebox. Who could be inspired by a shoebox? A shoebox isn’t creative. Who thinks a shoebox is creative?”
“Depends what’s in it,” Bunny says, which seems to stun Howie, as if he’d been slapped for no reason. He sits there sulking until he can no longer bear the quiet between them. “I’m still thinking it through,” he says. “A novel takes time.”
“So I’ve h
eard,” Bunny says. Then, she suggests to Howie that he write about Pam. “About your fateful night. That’d be a good story.”
As if inspiration has propelled him to his feet, Howie pops up and asks, “Can I borrow some paper? Just a couple of pages.”
Bunny tears away eight or ten sheets of paper from the back of the pad, which she gives to Howie along with her pen. He takes off for the living room. Bunny, yet again, finds herself staring up at the Activities Board when that new nurse, the one with a small tattoo of a butterfly on her neck, happens down the corridor. She stops and says to Bunny, “How about Yoga?”
Her Foot Jumps
Bunny is on her second cup of coffee when that aide who took her shoes comes to escort her downstairs.
“Downstairs where?” Bunny asks, “For what?”
Patricia—Bunny remembers her name—Patricia folds her arms and taps her foot. Because she is wearing sneakers for shoes, the tapping makes more of a patting sound; aggression that whispers forces Bunny to strain to take it in.
The ninth floor, the psych ward, has its own private elevator, which is, metaphorically speaking, no different than hiding the crazy people in the attic.
There is no gift shop on the ninth floor.
The elevator stops on the seventh floor, where Bunny follows Patricia out and then through a frosted glass door, which opens onto a deserted waiting room. Patricia points to one of the avocado-green pleather armchairs and tells Bunny to sit down. “Don’t move,” she says, and in the lackadaisical way that people walk when they have no destination in mind, Patricia moseys on over to the reception desk.
Bunny takes a magazine from the coffee table. People magazine; not a current issue, but a recent one. She doesn’t read the magazine. She doesn’t even glance at the pictures, but she turns the pages by rote, as if turning the pages were muscle memory, something she does, although she doesn’t know why. When she gets to the end of the magazine, she starts again at the beginning, but she doesn’t get very far into it before Patricia is back. “We got to wait.” Patricia drops into a chair seemingly exhausted, as if she could not mosey one more step.
“Wait for what?” Bunny asks, but Patricia doesn’t bother to answer.
What Bunny wants, right now, wants more than anything, is to keep from crying. A box of tissues is nowhere in sight, and unlike everyone else who works on the psych ward, Patricia does not carry a packet of tissues in her pocket. Bunny tears a page from the People magazine and blows her nose into Jennifer Aniston’s hair. Because a trash can is nowhere in sight, she crumples the glossy page into a ball and holds it in her fist.
After about a half hour, Bunny’s name is called, and Patricia says, “You make sure you come back here when you’re done.”
Bunny lets go of the crumpled magazine page of snot, and it falls at Patricia’s feet.
The first stop is a closet-sized room where a technician ties a tourniquet around Bunny’s arm. “You’ll feel a pinch,” she says, “but that’s all.”
As Bunny watches her blood run through the tubing and into the vial, she ideates: the bathtub, the warm water, and the vodka and cigarettes and the box-cutter and her blood draining out and her skin growing pale and how safe it seems until Jeffery comes in and ruins everything, which is the same moment when the technician says, “All done,” and she puts a Band-Aid over the puncture wound.
The examining room is unremarkable. There’s the black padded examining table covered with a fresh sheet of white paper, a black and steel scale for measuring weight and height, and a stainless steel sink. Only the medicine cabinet is dissimilar. Contrary to the medicine cabinets otherwise found in doctor’s offices, this medicine cabinet is without scissors, syringes, and stockpiled free samples from pharmaceutical salesmen. Other than a dusty box of gauze pads and a roll of adhesive tape, this cabinet is empty.
Presumably, this doctor is an intern or a resident. He’s too young to deliver bad news. However, the computer on his desk is old, very old, pre-wireless. The cables are twisted and tangled, and the keyboard has yellowed. “Please, have a seat.” He gestures to the chair set perpendicular to his chair. It is a friendly arrangement. He tells Bunny his name, which she promptly forgets. Then, he asks how she is feeling. Because his smile is kind, and surely he didn’t mean to ask a stupid question, Bunny says, “Okay, I guess. You know, considering.”
“Right, considering.” Then, as if he were asking her to do something like dance, he says, “Let’s step on the scale, shall we?”
He fiddles with the weights until the scale balances. “You could stand to put on a few pounds,” the boy doctor says. “If I prescribed a daily protein shake, would you drink it?”
“I don’t know,” Bunny says. “What does it taste like?”
“Chalk.” He’s honest. “It tastes like chalk. Forget I mentioned it.”
Bunny is five feet and four and a half inches tall. Only in this way, has she not diminished.
With her legs dangling over the side of the examination table, Bunny shifts to get comfortable. The white paper crinkles. The doctor wraps the blood pressure cuff around her arm, and Bunny says, “They did this already this morning. My temperature, too.”
He nods. He knows. He says, “They don’t tell me anything,” and he squeezes the pump. The cuff inflates. “One-ten over seventy,” he says. “Gorgeous. Your pressure is gorgeous,” and almost demurely Bunny says, “Thank you,” as if to be complimented on her blood pressure were the same as being complimented on her eyelashes. Next, he listens to her heart and her lungs. With a flashlight specifically designed for the purpose, he looks in her ears. He asks her to follow his finger with her eyes to the limit of her peripheral vision. Then, he taps her knee with a rubber hammer, and her foot jumps.
“Other than being shy of your ideal weight, you’ll be happy to know that you’re in excellent health,” the doctor says, and Bunny says, “Not really.”
Thirst
With a keen eye fixed on the door where the guard is posted, Bunny waits for Josh to get back from Treatment. She massages her fingers and her left foot jiggles on its own accord. Teacher, too, is at Treatment. Andrea and Jeanette are at Beauty getting their hair curled. Jeanette is getting her eyebrows tweezed, as well. Of all the people here, Josh is the only one whom Bunny could imagine having as a friend in normal life. But she knows that the people here are like the people you meet on vacation, people you meet when your life, your life as you know it, is on hold. They are people for whom there is no place in your life once you get home. They simply don’t fit.
When the door opens, she stands on her tiptoes, like she is about to wave. Except she doesn’t wave because it is Teacher who comes in. Not Josh, and her letdown goes as deep as if Josh were never coming back.
In his mad dash to the kitchen sink, Teacher doesn’t notice Bunny standing near to him. He fills a cup with water, and he guzzles it. Then another, and then one more. Bunny has observed that everyone returns from ECT hysterically thirsty, as if they were as desiccated as a resurrection plant, one like rose of Jericho or liverwort. It’s not the electro-treatment that causes dry mouth. It’s the dry flow of oxygen administered by the anesthesiologist that does it. Plus nothing to eat or drink after midnight the night before. Now that he is sufficiently hydrated, Teacher asks Bunny if she wants to hang out until lunch.
In the living room, three Anorexics are fixated on the television where a man wearing a chef’s hat is teaching Kathie Lee Gifford how to poach salmon.
One thing Bunny appreciates about her fellow campers is they rarely tell you to stop crying. They know that if you could stop crying, you would stop crying. The point is—you can’t. Teacher waits, and soon enough Bunny stops, and what would appear to be out of nowhere, she says, “Electroshock.” As if the word has no meaning, she says, “Electroshock,” as if instead of “electroshock,” she’d said “mailbox.”
“Convulsive,” Tea
cher corrects her. Then he says, “I don’t like salmon. I like other fish. But not salmon.”
“I start tomorrow,” Bunny tells him, and he asks, “Start what?”
But before she can respond Andrea and Jeanette are back from Beauty. Andrea flips her hair to show how it bounces like hair in a shampoo commercial, which it does, but without the healthy shine. Jeanette looks like she is wearing a bathing cap of tight curls. They both hold their hands out, bent at the wrists the way a dog holds its paws when begging for a biscuit. Jeanette’s fingernails are painted pearly pink. Andrea’s are fuchsia. They chide Bunny for not going to Beauty. But for Bunny, vanity has gone the way of dignity, and there is no dignity to be had in the psycho ward.
No vanity, no dignity; only something like unquenchable thirst.
Today is Monday, Maybe
If the days are delineated by breakfast, lunch and dinner, what’s to distinguish one day from another? Is today Wednesday or Thursday? Is it the twenty-third of January? Or the twelfth? Or the seventeenth? Who knows? Who cares?
Except today, Bunny knows, is January twenty-first, and she’s been here for nineteen days. Dinner on January twenty-first is roast chicken, mashed potatoes, string beans or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which, for reasons unexplored, Josh, as of late, has been referring to as a jelly and peanut butter sandwich. Bunny uses a spoon to fold the string beans into the mashed potatoes, which is the only way to make the string beans palatable. Then she puts down her spoon and asks Josh, “Does it hurt?” Because she realizes that everything hurts, she clarifies, “The ECT. Does it hurt?”
Rabbits for Food Page 19
