by Jo Ramsey
“Noah, you need to stop being disrespectful,” Mr. Silver said.
“I will when you do.”
“Noah.” His father’s face turned red. “We have guests.”
“Chris is my guest, not yours, and I don’t think he cares how I talk to you.”
I kind of did, actually. Listening to him argue with his father made me uncomfortable. But if I said so, Noah would think I was siding with his father, and I didn’t want that.
I looked at Dad, who said, “Mr. Silver, why don’t you and I go down to the cafeteria and have some coffee? Then Noah and Chris will have more of a chance to talk.”
Mr. Silver glanced from Dad to Noah a couple times. Finally he shrugged. “Fine.”
He followed Dad out of the room, and I sat down in the chair Mr. Silver had been in.
“Close the door,” Noah said. “I don’t want anyone listening.”
I didn’t think anyone would, but I got up and shut the door anyway. As soon as it clicked closed, Noah uncovered his eyes again and sat up. “I’m so glad my dad’s gone. I couldn’t deal with him sitting there glaring at me anymore. That’s all he’s been doing all day.”
“I don’t think he was glaring at you when I came in.” Mr. Silver had appeared upset. I wouldn’t have called his expression a glare.
“He’s been glaring at me since they brought me here. Even when they were putting the cast on my arm, Dad just kept glaring at me.” He pulled his other arm out from under the blanket. It was encased from shoulder to wrist in a white plaster cast. “They said I broke two bones. Just my luck. I have to have this thing on for two months, maybe more, and this is the hand I write with.”
“You won’t have to do your schoolwork, then,” I joked.
He apparently didn’t think it was funny. “Of course I will, because all of it’s online, so I don’t need to write. I don’t need both hands to type.” He frowned. “I’m inconveniencing Dad, and I embarrassed him in front of Wayne. Wayne told him I should be hospitalized. Like in a psycho hospital. He thinks I need medication or something. Dad said he told you about me.”
“You heard him telling me,” I reminded him. “That’s what upset you, isn’t it?”
“Dad trying to turn you against me is what upset me.” He kicked at the blanket. “He doesn’t want me to have any friends, because he doesn’t want anyone to find out about me. He thinks I’ll make him look bad. That’s why he told you about me, so you wouldn’t want to be my friend anymore.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I already knew Mr. Silver had been trying to con me into giving up the friendship, so I couldn’t argue with Noah about that. And I agreed that Mr. Silver believed Noah made him look bad. Just like Mom had always believed Cece made her seem like a crappy parent.
“They’re putting me in a hospital,” Noah said. “Wayne got his way. I’m going straight from here to the nut factory. Do you think I’m nuts?”
I had to be careful about how I answered that one. Jumping off the top of the stairs hadn’t exactly been a stable thing to do, and I didn’t want to lie to Noah. I didn’t think he was crazy. Bipolar just meant he needed help managing his mood swings and controlling himself. But he might not see the difference.
“I don’t think you’re nuts,” I said slowly. “I think some things are hard for you to deal with, and there’s nothing wrong with needing help. All of us need help sometimes, I think.”
“Yeah, like you’ve ever needed help with anything,” he snapped.
“My little sister’s autistic and might not ever be able to take care of herself, my dad works so much he can barely remember my name sometimes, and my mother just left us for some guy no one even knew she’d met.” I fought to keep my voice calm. I figured yelling at the guy in the hospital bed might get me thrown out. “Do you honestly think I’ve never needed help? As a matter of fact, before your dad called, my dad and I talked about having counseling to deal with Mom leaving.”
“No one’s sticking you in a psych ward and cramming pills down your throat,” he countered.
I shrugged. “Maybe you have more problems than me. I don’t know enough about you to know for sure. I don’t know what you want me to say, Noah. I’m sorry you’re pissed about what’s going on. Maybe you should have thought of that before you took a dive off your stairs.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I did that because Dad was trying to make you stop being my friend. It’s his fault, not mine.”
Right then, I knew nothing I said would make any difference. Obviously they hadn’t given Noah any medication yet, and until they did, he would just keep having the mood swings and being pissed off about the hospital and his father and everything else in the world. If I kept arguing with him, we definitely wouldn’t be friends anymore, because he would probably throw me out.
Then again, I wasn’t sure if we were still friends anyway.
“You chose to do it,” I said. “You can give me whatever excuse you want, and I’ll still say the same thing. You jumped, and now you’re in the hospital because of it.”
A tear trickled out of one of his eyes. “I thought you were my boyfriend. You said you cared about me.”
I didn’t know if the tear was genuine or just a guilt trip. If it was the second one, it worked way too well. I knew how it felt to believe no one cared.
“I do care about you,” I said quietly. “That’s why I’m saying all this. You scared the hell out of me when you did that. When you landed, I didn’t know if you were alive or dead, you know that? And now I’m pissed at you because you’re trying to blame it on everyone else, and you know as well as I do that you did not have to jump off those stairs!”
So much for not yelling at the guy in the hospital bed.
He sniffled. I handed him the box of tissues from the little table beside his bed.
“Thanks.” He turned the box over and over in his hands. He didn’t take a tissue. “I felt like I had to. I know it doesn’t make any sense to you. I just figured if I jumped, Dad would know that he was hurting me. Or I’d die and I wouldn’t have to worry about anything anymore. Sometimes I feel like I have to do something, and that was one of those times. Don’t you ever feel that way?”
“Sure. And I stop myself from doing things that might hurt me.” I pulled the chair a little closer to the bed. “That’s why you need help, Noah. So you don’t keep hurting yourself. They’ll teach you how to control it when you feel like you have to do something.” I didn’t know if they would or not, but it sounded logical. If he had to be in a hospital because of the bipolar, they should help him learn to manage it. “Medication might help too.”
He shook his head. “Wayne tried to get Dad to drug me before. I looked it up. There’s all these side effects, and you don’t act like yourself when you’re on meds.”
“I’m not going to argue, because I don’t know anything about medications.” Really, I didn’t want to argue because debating with him had started to exhaust me. “I don’t think they’d deliberately give you something that would mess you up. Wayne and your dad want to help you, and the doctors at the hospital will too.”
“What about you?” He stared at me. “Don’t you want to help me? You can help me get out of here right now, and then I wouldn’t have to go to the nuthouse.”
“Not a chance.” I folded my arms over my chest. “First of all, you have a broken arm and broken ribs. You would be nuts if you tried to leave right now. Second of all, I think it’s against the law or something to take a minor out of a hospital without their parent knowing, and I’m not in the mood to be arrested.”
“You said you cared about me,” he said in a warning tone.
I refused to let him intimidate me. There wasn’t much he could do to me or himself in a hospital room. If he tried, all I would have to do was open the door and yell for help. “I do care. That’s why I’m saying this. You’re going to get better, physically and mentally, whether you want to or not.”
As soon as I said it, I knew that
was bullshit. Of course he wouldn’t get better if he didn’t want to. Even if they put him on meds and forced him to go to therapy, he still had to want to be healthier in order for anything to work. Maybe he wouldn’t figure that out.
“No one can make me do anything I don’t want to do.” He laughed. “I sound like a little kid. I used to say that to my mother. It pissed her off.”
“Yeah, I don’t think parents like it when their kids say things like that.” I glanced at the door, hoping it would open and Mr. Silver would walk in and say it was time for me to leave. This conversation was going around in circles, and I was starting to feel even more uncomfortable. I had no idea whether I was saying any of the right things to him, or if I was making everything worse.
“I do want to get better,” he said. “Having broken bones sucks. So does being crazy.”
“You aren’t crazy,” I said. “Bipolar isn’t crazy. It just means there’s a glitch in your brain.” That was sort of how Dad had described autism to me after Cece’s diagnosis. I figured it applied just as well to bipolar as it did to autism. “That’s what the medication is for, to fix the glitch.”
“Mom won’t come to see me.” Another couple of tears headed down his cheeks. “Dad said she told him she’s tired of me playing games, and she isn’t going to let me manipulate her.”
It ticked me off that Noah’s father had told him that. Bad enough that his mother had said it. Noah didn’t need to know. Mr. Silver should have kept it to himself. I didn’t think either of Noah’s parents understood what was going on. All they knew was their kid had something wrong with him. That made them feel like bad parents, and they couldn’t see how hard it was for Noah.
Just the way Mom had always been with Cece.
“Maybe she’ll come see you while you’re in the other hospital,” I said.
He shook his head. “She thinks I’m faking all this. That I just jumped off the stairs to get attention, and that there’s nothing wrong with me. She wants Dad to bring me home and keep a better eye on me or something.”
“That stinks.”
“Yeah.” He looked like he was close to crying. “Mom and I’ve never gotten along anyway. She always complains about how much work I am. That’s why she doesn’t always travel with Dad and me.” He sighed. “You don’t want to hear all that anyway. I’m going to be in the hospital for probably a couple months, Wayne said. Are you and I still…?” He trailed off, like he didn’t know what to call our relationship.
Neither did I anymore. “We’re still friends,” I said. “Other than that, I can’t answer you. I don’t know.”
“Yeah, I figured that’s what you’d say.” He forced a smile. “That’s okay. When I’m all sane again, we can talk about it, right?”
“Sure.” I didn’t know if talking would change anything. Getting rid of the mental image of him falling to the floor would take a long time. Even if he got the help he needed, I doubted I’d ever be able to trust that he wouldn’t do something like that again.
I already had a sister who needed me to help take care of her. I couldn’t handle having to take care of a boyfriend too. But I didn’t tell Noah that. I didn’t want to set him off again.
“Cool.”
The door opened and Mr. Silver came back in. “Noah, you should get some rest. Chris, thank you for stopping by.”
He sounded kind of pissed, so I guessed Dad’s conversation with him hadn’t had any effect. I was grateful that he’d interrupted, anyway. “No problem. Noah, I’ll talk to you sometime, okay?” That was the most commitment I was willing to make. I didn’t know when he’d be out of the hospital, or whether he’d go back to Wellfleet afterward. Or whether I would get past what he’d done enough to be around him again where there weren’t doctors and nurses ready to step in if something happened.
“Yeah, sometime.” Noah lay back and closed his eyes.
I left. I had nothing more to say.
Chapter Fourteen
THINGS DIDN’T exactly go back to normal. Then again, I’d begun to doubt normal even existed.
I missed Noah for the first few days he was hospitalized, especially when the weekend rolled around, and I didn’t have anywhere to go. I didn’t feel like hanging out with any of the people around the cove, even though Brad repeated his movie invitation. I was just too bummed out to be around anyone else.
That was the first weekend without Mom too, so my being home was probably a good thing. Dad had learned pretty fast how to take care of Cece, but it still wasn’t easy for him, and being with her all day without another adult to take over was kind of hard on him. He didn’t ask me to do anything, but a couple times, I took Cece for walks or played games with her anyway to give him a break. Being able to do that by choice instead of because I had to was a nice change.
For a few mornings the following week, the bus stop talk was all about what Noah had done. I didn’t know how people had found out that he’d deliberately hurt himself, since I hadn’t told anyone and I knew Mr. Silver hadn’t. But everyone in the neighborhood seemed to know about Noah’s dive off the stairs. Some of them had seen the ambulance, but that alone wouldn’t have told them that Noah had jumped on purpose or even that Noah had been the one the ambulance had come for. I hadn’t leaked the details, but someone definitely had.
By the week after that, other rumors about people at school took over. No one knew Noah well enough to talk about him behind his back for long. Since I was the only one who’d hung out with him and I refused to give them any information, they finally gave up and found other things to talk about.
The week after Mom left, Dad made a few calls and found counselors nearby for him and me. I liked my counselor, who let me set the pace of the sessions and didn’t push me to talk about things I didn’t want to talk about. Dad’s counselor became our family counselor too, and involved Cece in some of the sessions. Dad talked to some people about putting Cece into individual counseling and finally found someone through the agency Kadie and Nina worked for. I didn’t see how counseling would help someone who barely talked, but Cece didn’t seem to mind going.
Cece seemed to adjust to Mom being gone. That surprised me, because usually Cece couldn’t cope when anything changed even a little bit. But after asking for Mom a couple times, my sister just went about her usual routine, which Dad and I were careful to stick to. We didn’t need any more meltdowns.
Jillian kept coming over to help with Cece, and on Kadie’s suggestion, Dad hired a respite caregiver to come in a couple nights and one weekend day every week. The respite worker, Sally, was about Dad’s age. She’d been working with kids like Cece for years, and she was good with my sister. And with Dad. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought there were some sparks there.
Thanks in part to interrogating me about Noah, Brad and a few other kids started talking to me more and inviting me to hang around with them. I made friends and had something to do on weekends besides helping Dad.
By the time April rolled around, Dad had filed for divorce from Mom and for custody of Cece and me. Mom put up a stink about the custody issue, at least when it came to me. She didn’t seem to want custody of Cece.
She called and ranted at Dad a bunch of times. Each time, she ordered him to put me on the phone. Each time, I refused to talk to her. I knew Dad was probably right when he said I shouldn’t hate her forever, but I sure hated her right then, and I didn’t plan on talking to her any time soon. Dad hired a lawyer, who assured him that if I had strong feelings about where I wanted to live, the judge would take that into account.
I started playing baseball, which was where I met Colin. He was a senior, he had black hair and brown eyes, and best of all, he didn’t have much baggage. We started as friends, and by April vacation, we’d begun moving toward being more. He had a great sense of humor and didn’t mind listening to me bitch about my mother, since he’d been through his parents’ nasty divorce a few years earlier.
In May, we had the divorce hearing. Da
d had tried to persuade Mom to work something out through mediation, but she’d insisted on going to court. The day of the hearing, she didn’t show up, which meant Dad won by default. She never called to explain why she hadn’t been there, and by the time my junior year of high school ended, we hadn’t heard from her in over a month. Despite all my work with my counselor, I was still furious with Mom. Even so, I kind of missed her phone calls. I’d never talked to her during them, but her making them had meant she still cared about me, at least a little.
Just before school let out in June, Colin and I became an official couple. He would be leaving for college in August, but he was only going to Boston, so we would still be able to see each other. Or at least we would try to. Summer vacation started, which for me, aside from giving me more time with Colin, meant working at an ice cream place on the main road. Brad worked there too, which made the job a lot more fun.
For Cece, vacation didn’t mean anything, because she didn’t have one. Her school had classes year-round to make sure the kids didn’t lose any progress they’d made. They kept the same daily schedule as during the school year, and Jillian took over getting Cece off the van and settled at home on the days that I worked.
One Saturday morning in July, I woke up late and stumbled into the living room to find Dad and Cece watching TV together. “Doph!” Cece said when I sat down on the couch beside her.
I turned to the TV. A pod of dolphins had wandered into Wellfleet Harbor, and they’d begun stranding themselves on the beach. The same teams that had come out to Drummer Cove back in March had shown up and were trying to move the dolphins back into the water.
“Why are we just sitting here?” I asked Dad.
“What do you mean?” He looked at the clock. “What time do you work today?”
“Not till three.” It was only ten. “I think we should take a trip down to the harbor.”
