Composing Amelia

by Alison Strobel

  The social worker gave him a sympathetic look. “Actually, she told me she’d never started them.”

  “Oh.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes, overwhelmed. “Okay then.”

  “When she’s been cleared for discharge, I’ll come talk to you about transferring her to Omaha.” With a sympathetic smile and another handshake, the social worker left. Marcus dropped his head into his hands and continued to pray.

  The next morning Marcus arrived at the hospital to learn Amelia was ready to be discharged. As she had promised, the social worker returned to explain the details of the transfer, and after a ridiculous amount of paperwork, Amelia went on a gurney to an ambulance, which Marcus followed in his car.

  The drive was agony. He wanted to be with Amelia, not driving alone. The social worker had assured him he’d get the chance to spend some time with her once they arrived, but he couldn’t shake visions of her being torn away from him by thug-like orderlies and dragged down the hall through lockdown doors. He tried to convince himself such things only happened in movies, but the dubious side of his brain reminded him that the idea for those movie scenes had to come from somewhere.

  When they reached the hospital, he parked in the visitors’ lot and ran to the admissions desk. “My wife was brought in as a transfer from Wheatridge Medical,” he said. “She’s being admitted to the psych unit. Where would she be?”

  The attendant pointed him down the hall, and again he ran at full tilt, afraid she’d be hidden away before he could say good-bye. But no, there she was with a nurse at her side, sitting in a small waiting room outside the psych ward entrance.

  Marcus helped complete the admission papers, then the nurse stood aside so they could say their good-byes.

  Marcus pulled her into his arms and kissed her hair. “I love you, Amelia. I’m so sorry for whatever I might have done that contributed to all of this.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Amelia said, her voice muffled against his shoulder. “It’s me. I’m the one who’s broken.”

  Marcus sighed. “You’re not broken, babe.”

  “Of course I am.” The words were empty of emotion, spoken as simple fact. Marcus wanted to counter them but knew nothing he said would make a difference.

  “I’ll come up for visiting hours tomorrow.”

  “You have to work.”

  “I know. I’ll figure it out.”

  They stood, silent, until the nurse cleared her throat. “Amelia?” A note of sympathy underlined her tone. “We should get going.”

  “I love you.” Marcus released his wife and watched her walk through the door. Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he walked back to the car to start the lonely drive home.

  That afternoon Amelia met with a psychologist who made her detail again her family history and the events of the last few months. More questions followed, and by the end of the interview Amelia felt like her brain had been wrung out. The doctor completed his notes in her chart and then dropped the bombshell.

  “Amelia, I think you may have bipolar disorder.”

  She frowned. “Wait—like, manic depression?”

  “That’s a common term for it, yes.”

  “But … I didn’t have mania, did I? I mean, I thought people who were manic were all … I don’t know … giddy and thought they were God or something?”

  “That’s one way a mania manifests. But it’s not the only way. The period of time where your energy came back and you started meeting friends and getting involved at your church was the beginning of it.”

  “But that was a good time for me.”

  “Yes, but it devolved to a period of chronic irritation, binge shopping, and insomnia, among other things. It’s what we’d call a hypomanic state. It wasn’t as severe as a typical mania, but it was a mania nonetheless. The fact that you dropped into depression immediately after is another indicator.”

  Amelia’s already foggy head was spinning. “But … isn’t that sort of thing genetic? My mom wasn’t bipolar, or my dad.”

  The doctor’s eyebrows raised slightly. “Given the description you provided of your mother, I am fairly confident she would have been diagnosed as such had she sought help.”

  Not lazy. Not “creatively jammed.” Not just starved for attention. None of the things Amelia, or even Amelia’s father, might have guessed. Her view of her childhood took on a new cast. She’d come to terms with being the daughter of the town crazy. But having the label of “bipolar” applied to her mother’s condition created a significant shift in her heart. There really wasn’t anything she could have done, short of medication, to change herself. Her father’s demands that she grow up, snap out of it, and stop being so self-centered hadn’t stood a chance against the forces warring in her mother’s head. How different could things have been if she’d been evaluated? Could she have made her way back to the stage? Would her parents have stayed together? Would she still be alive? The thought of her mother’s lost years made Amelia want to cry.

  “We’re going to start you on a mood stabilizer and see how that works for you. Our options are limited, given the pregnancy, but we’ll work with what we have and focus as much as we can on behavioral therapy.”

  “How long will I be here?”

  “Well, that depends on a few things—how well the medication works, whether or not you do the work we prescribe in therapy, that sort of thing. Some of it you can control, some of it you can’t. Typically, pregnancy hormones tend to even out the moods of bipolar women, but in the rare case—like yours—it seems to exacerbate the symptoms instead.”

  Amelia went cold. “I could be here until the end of the pregnancy?”

  “No, no—unless you’re resistant to therapy or medication, which I doubt you’ll be, you should be out in a matter of days or weeks, not months.”

  She let out a sigh of relief. “All right then.”

  The doctor completed her chart and released Amelia back to the ward where dinner was just being served. Most of the other patients had congregated near each other to eat, but Amelia sat as far from everyone else as she could. The revelation about her mother was just starting to register, and she wanted to be alone while she tried to process it all.

  Mom was bipolar. Mom had a known disorder that could have been treated. Amelia had always assumed her mother was just different—to an extreme. When she was old enough to know the stereotypes of artistic people, she chalked up her mother’s unusual behavior and volatile personality to her artistic nature and to the fact that she was no longer pursuing her art as she once had. Her mother often spoke of her old life as an actress, and once Amelia began to follow in her performing footsteps, it made sense to her that someone who loved acting but couldn’t work at it would be frustrated.

  But the more she thought about it, the angrier Amelia became. Her father had tried to convince her mother to see a doctor, but she had refused. As Amelia had told Marcus, her mother believed medication would destroy her creativity. But what use had her creativity been anyway? She hadn’t been doing anything with it—so what did she care? Did she enjoy being out of control, in bed for days, thought of as crazy by her family? Hadn’t she known her behavior took a toll on the entire family, that her husband avoided her because she was so difficult to handle, that her children lived in fear of one of her outbursts? Memories long forgotten resurfaced as Amelia ate—of the perpetual knot in her stomach that only untied itself when she was immersed in her music, of the time she spent attempting to comfort her mother as she cried about how worthless she was to everyone, of the fights between her parents when her mother pulled another embarrassing stunt like driving to the market in nothing but her kimono or painting the living room red. She could have had a normal childhood—a normal mother. But her mother had been too … selfish? Misguided? Fearful? What had really stopped her?

  It didn’t matter. She couldn’t do anything about it now, other than deal with the aftermath—like the embarrassment and enormous self-loathing she felt from having failed to kill
herself and how she was ever going to face Marcus again. And that was plenty to deal with.

  CHAPTER 12

  The silence in the apartment was like a fog that hemmed Marcus in and threatened to suffocate him with its weight. It was dusk now, and though he’d been home for hours, he still hadn’t moved from the couch. The enormity of what the last twenty-four hours had revealed was too much for his already overloaded mind to handle; his brain was on tilt and his body shut down. But he couldn’t stay like this. He had a sermon to prepare. He had to visit Amelia in the hospital tomorrow. He had to make meals, and eat them, and sleep, and …

  Marcus’s gaze went to his cell phone that sat on the coffee table. He had to talk to someone. That was the only way to get out from under this pressure. But who? Normally he’d call Dane, but even his best friend didn’t seem fit for the task of helping Marcus haul his soul out of the pit in which it had settled. His wisdom was no greater than Marcus’s, his life experience no more varied. This was the kind of situation in which he should be able to call his father. How supremely unfair that he should have a father so many people went to for help, but to whom he could never turn for anything without getting crushed.

  A name came to mind. He owed the man a call, anyway, to let him know why he’d heard God telling Marcus to get home. He picked up his cell and dialed Ed’s number. Nerves made his hands tremble. What would the elder think of him when he knew the truth?

  “Marcus, hello! I’m glad you called. I’ve been wondering how things were.”

  Here goes nothing. “Things are actually pretty awful, Ed. I know it’s last-minute, but I don’t suppose you’ve got some time to get together this evening, do you?”

  “Of course, Marcus, of course. Name the time and place and I’ll be there.”

  “The diner on Main, at eight?”

  “You’ve got it. I’ll see you then.”

  The diner was virtually empty when Marcus arrived. The waitress sat him at a booth and brought him ice water while he waited for Ed to show up. His knee bounced beneath the table as he looked at the dessert menu, and when Ed clapped a hand on Marcus’s shoulder his heart just about stopped from the shock.

  “Sorry there, son,” Ed chuckled as he slid into the seat opposite Marcus. “Didn’t mean to startle you. You’re not normally the jumpy type, though. Things really must be bad off.”

  The waitress arrived and took their order, then Ed folded his weathered hands on the Formica and said, “So, tell me what’s wrong, and I’ll do my best to help.”

  Marcus took a deep breath. “First of all—you were right to send me home so fast yesterday. Amelia tried to kill herself.”

  Ed’s eyes went wide. “Oh no. Marcus, I’m so sorry. Is she all right?”

  “She’s at a hospital up in Omaha; the one here didn’t have the kind of program she needed to be in. They took her up this afternoon.”

  “How is the baby?”

  “Fine, apparently. And physically I think Amelia is all right, too. But … I just don’t know what to expect now. Hopefully I’ll get more information tomorrow, find out what her diagnosis actually is, all that stuff. But …”

  “It’s a lot to take in.”

  “Yes. And if it were just that, it would be overwhelming enough. But there’s something else, and …” Marcus fought to keep eye contact. “I’m concerned it might lead to my termination.”

  Marcus waited for Ed’s defenses to go up, but his face remained as kind and open as ever. “It would have to be pretty extreme for that to happen, Marcus, and somehow I don’t think you’re the extreme type. Tell me what it is.”

  Marcus took a deep breath to steady his nerves, then spilled the entire story about his father and their dysfunctional relationship. “And now,” he said in conclusion, “I don’t know what to think about myself anymore. I feel like I don’t know who I am. Everything I’ve done has been to try to win this man’s approval. I’ve never done anything, besides marrying Amelia, that wasn’t driven by some attempt to prove myself to him. Heck—even marrying Amelia was done with that motive, now that I think about it. Not that I don’t love her, but I knew my father valued family and—” He stopped, the irony of his words catching up with him. He let out a sardonic laugh. “He values family, but not his family. And you know what else is sick? I’ve been going down that same path. I’ve been working my tail off at the church and my side job, and I completely neglected Amelia and missed the signs that she was so depressed. I’ve put more time and energy into my jobs than into my marriage, and now my wife is in some mental-health ward …” His voice broke and he covered his eyes with his hand as grief and embarrassment overcame him.

  Ed was silent as Marcus’s shoulders shook. When Marcus finally had his emotions under control, he trained his eyes on his plate of untouched pie and continued. “The bottom line is, Ed, I don’t know if I’m even supposed to be a pastor. I’ve only pursued it because of him. And it makes me wonder if the reason I’ve struggled so much since taking this job is because it’s not where I’m really supposed to be.” He shrugged, unsure of what to say next, and took a chance with a quick glance at the elder to try to gauge his thoughts.

  Ed slowly nodded, his brow furrowed in thought. “That’s a lot of weight to carry. And a devastating discovery to make, I’m sure. I’m sorry you’ve been struggling with this, Marcus. I’m sorry I haven’t been more attentive to you and how difficult things have been.”

  “That’s not your responsibility, Ed. You’re not—” He chuckled. “You’re not my father.”

  Ed sat up tall. “Oh, on the contrary. As one of the elders, I’m a father figure to the whole church—including you. Especially you. A young husband, soon-to-be-father, first-time pastor—you shouldn’t be expected to find your way in all those roles on your own. But I’ve let you fly under the radar, so to speak, because you seemed so mature and capable. I shouldn’t have made such assumptions. Not that I don’t think you’re mature and capable.” He smiled. “But even if you are, it doesn’t mean you’re Superman.”

  Marcus felt the weight of his fear melting in the face of Ed’s understanding. “I … I don’t think I’ve ever heard the role of an elder described like that. At our church growing up, the elders were there to run the place, for the most part—take care of the details so the pastors could preach and take care of the people.”

  Ed shrugged. “I think many churches do operate like that. And we do too, to an extent. But the longer I’m a Christian the more I come to believe that the church isn’t just a place we’re supposed to come to once or twice a week and give money to and make a building for. It’s supposed to be a family. And not the kind of family you only talk to on holidays.” Elbows on the table, he tented his fingers and leaned in, his eyes locked on Marcus’s as he spoke. “You should have been able to come to me with all this when it first happened, because you should have known I was here to be a father in faith to you and Amelia.” The thought of Ed as his father threatened to pull Marcus’s concentration down a rabbit trail. He forced himself to focus on Ed as he continued. “But you didn’t know that because we—New Hope—haven’t embraced that paradigm yet. It’s something I’ve been praying a lot about lately, and now I know why. What other hurts are people in our congregation struggling with because they don’t have anyone to turn to? What kind of faith community are we if people don’t feel they have that kind of support here?”

  Marcus thought of all the meetings he’d had with parishioners the first few weeks he’d been on staff. He knew all sorts of hurts and struggles that the community was weathering. Who knew what others had gone unmentioned in those meetings, what circumstances were eating people up inside and making them miserable. It would explain why people weren’t engaging at church—they didn’t feel like they could be themselves, like they could open themselves up to the people sitting around them in the pews. Maybe the fix wasn’t in events and ministries, but in facilitating deeper friendships so that their community could become a true community of enco
uragement and support instead of a shallow weekly gathering of religiously likeminded people.

  Marcus rubbed a hand on his neck. “I think you may be on to something here, Ed.” A spark lit inside him and brought with it a thin ray of hope. “The idea of a family … of this church being more than just a bunch of people who know each other but only see each other on Sunday … Obviously I studied stuff like this in seminary, but it was usually house churches that were described as functioning that way, and there was definitely a bias against that approach. I remember one professor talking about how the tight community the first-century church formed was a means of self-protection against the anti-Christian sentiment of the time, and how the idealized view some Christians have of that kind of community isn’t really achievable in this day and age.” He gave Ed a genuine smile. “But I can see how we could pull it off—or, at least, a twenty-first-century version of it. I don’t know what else to say, other than it sounds amazing.”

  Ed returned the smile and clapped his hands together. “I knew you’d see it that way. When we interviewed you, I kept praying that God would bring us to agreement on this. I didn’t know when it would happen, but I knew it would eventually.”

  Marcus gave him a sheepish, lopsided smile. “So I’m not fired?”

  “Fired? Good heavens, son, not at all! We still need a teacher, and regardless of the doubts you may have about your ability, I can assure you you’re a good one. You may have come out here for what you think are all the wrong reasons, but God was guiding you, every step of the way.”

  It was humbling to think of God directing his path even when he was so headstrong in his own desires and so misguided in his pursuits. But when he thought about what New Hope could be if it gave itself wholeheartedly to the goal of being an intimate community—a family—the excitement he felt told him he was definitely in the right place. Even if he’d taken a crooked path to get there.