“You’re quite welcome.” He let a beat pass. “Is there a reason you don’t want to tell me how you’re feeling?”
My fingernails scraped the blanket over and over. I stared at my legs. “I’m fine. I’m sorry I scared everyone.” I started to say it won’t happen again, but I stopped myself, fairly sure this guy would see through the lie.
“You don’t have to be nervous, Jeremey. You have nothing to fear here.”
I had plenty to fear. Despite the drugs, I felt a panic attack trying to claw its way out. I couldn’t lose Emmet after just getting him back.
A cool, slightly weathered hand closed over mine. “Talk to me about what is making you anxious. Let me help you.”
I shut my eyes and drew a deep breath, trying to push the fear down. I didn’t want to tell him what I feared, but not telling him ensured a panic attack, which seemed more likely to land me in a loony bin. “I don’t want to go to a mental institution.”
“This interview isn’t a screening for such a possibility. We’re dealing with right now, Jeremey. How are you feeling right now?”
Confused, and scared. Also stupid. I’d felt so good before. When Emmet was here. “I want to see Emmet.”
“You will. But first I need you to talk to me about your feelings.”
I didn’t want to. “I want to go home.” I didn’t really, but it was better than this. God only knew what this guy would find in my head if he started poking around.
Dr. North didn’t touch me, but he leaned forward in a way that made me feel as if he had. “I need you to listen carefully, Jeremey. What I’m about to say might upset you, but I want you to listen. Can you do that?”
My stomach knotted into a ball. I nodded stiffly and stared at my lap.
“Good. Thank you. What you’ve done is serious. You aren’t in trouble—no one is judging you or scolding you or sentencing you. But going home isn’t an option right now. In fact, shortly we’ll be leaving Intensive Care for the psychiatric unit, where you’ll stay for a minimum of several days for observation.”
He might as well have poured ice into my veins. I felt too heavy to panic, though I tried anyway. This time he did put a hand on my arm—gently, but it kept me in place as he looked me in the eye.
“This is not a punishment. This is treatment. It’s important you understand this.”
His eyes were blue, but so faded and soft they were almost grey. They were kind eyes, like a young grandfather’s. Except even with all his kindness, I wanted to cry. “I—I can’t— I won’t—”
He kept a hand on my arm, but it was his gentle voice that held me in place. “Please understand this isn’t something I decided to do to you. By attempting to harm yourself, you’ve triggered a powerful public health system. Your actions have dictated you are not in control of yourself, and neither you nor your family get to make decisions about where you go and what happens to you just yet. Deep breaths.”
He paused and waited while I tried to obey, to stop hyperventilating. Then he continued.
“I understand this is difficult. It isn’t easy for anyone. But put out of your head Hollywood visions of bleak hallways and insane asylums. You’ll be going to the psychiatric ward of a private hospital. It’s two floors above where we are right now. It looks much the same as this room, but with less glass and machines. You’re being admitted there not to be punished but to be observed and aided.”
I was thinking of Hollywood. In fact I was thinking of a ghost-hunting show where they toured an old asylum from the turn of the twentieth century. No ghosts had appeared, but the decayed, isolated imagery of that place still haunted my mind.
The idea that they could put me away so easily—no choice, no discussion—made me cold. It made me wish I’d done a better job of offing myself.
Except it wasn’t true. I didn’t want to die. Not if I got to see Emmet.
Dr. North withdrew his hand from my arm. “You aren’t being moved right now. Right now, in this second, Jeremey, I am talking to you. I’m asking you how you feel. I’m your doctor and I want to know. I want to help you, because helping people who feel overwhelmed is my job.”
I understood what he was trying to do, but it all was pointless if this was only going to end in me never seeing Emmet. “You’re trying to see if I’m crazy. And if I’m crazy, you’ll put me away. Not here. Somewhere else, for good.”
“No one is putting you away. You’ll have to stay here for a few days at the very least while my colleagues and I make sure you’re no longer a danger to yourself. If you or your parents tried to argue with me, I would get a court order keeping you here until we determined the danger had passed. But committing someone to a mental institution is a step we don’t take lightly. It isn’t something I’m entertaining for you. What I would like is to begin working on your therapy so you can return to society strong enough to face what life brings you.”
My nostrils flared, and I stared down at my lap. “Then you might as well send me away now. I’m never going to be strong.”
“Do you mean you won’t try, or you don’t believe you’ll succeed?”
Self-loathing curled like smoke inside me, choking out hope. “I don’t believe I’m not strong enough for the world. I know I’m not. Everyone wants me to be stronger, be normal, to stop being sad and overwhelmed, but I can’t be. I can’t change who I am. I can’t like girls, I can’t be happy, I can’t go into a crowded store without having a panic attack. I can’t drive in heavy traffic. I can barely drive at all. I can’t be strong enough for life. I can’t change who I am. I should know, because I’ve tried.”
I thought I’d put it pretty plainly, but Dr. North only smiled, his blue-gray eyes glittering as if he had a secret. “But I never said I wanted you to change who you are. I want to help you find a way to be strong. To help you be strong, as you are. To modify the way you approach the world and possibly the way the world approaches you, so you are able to cope with it.”
Was he crazy? “That’s not possible.”
“Then this is my first job, to convince you it is.” He held out his hands and raised his eyebrows. “But first. Let’s have one success today. One small start. I’m going to ask you two questions, and I ask you to answer each honestly. Even one word will do. I’m going to ask how you’re feeling, and what you want. Today that’s being strong, answering those questions even if you don’t want to or are afraid to. And remember practicing being strong is how you get to go home, not simply to leave the hospital but to have a good, happy life. Are you ready to try?”
That wasn’t strong at all, answering two questions, but I nodded.
He sat forward. “How are you feeling right now, Jeremey?”
So many emotions rolled around inside me I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t want to say anything, because I didn’t want to say the wrong thing, but he kept watching me. He’d keep me here all day until I said something. So I swallowed against my dry throat and said, “Scared.”
“Very good, and an understandable emotion. I would feel scared too right now, if I’d undergone your ordeal of the past day. I’ll tell you how I’m feeling right now: proud of you, and sad for you. I wish I could make you not scared. In fact, I’m doing my best to make it go away. But I also know I can’t take it all. So I want to sit here for a second and practice feeling with you. I’m going to count to ten silently in my head, and we’ll sit here together, feeling. I don’t want you to try and stop your feelings, or fix them, or change them. Only sit and feel. If your feelings shift, that’s fine, but try not to direct it. Give yourself ten seconds to feel. Are you ready?”
I wasn’t. I nodded anyway.
“Go.”
It was weird. I don’t know how good a job I did of not directing my feelings, because I kept thinking about them. But sometimes I thought maybe I did what he asked and just felt. It was like sinking into water. Deep and blue and fl
oating, but the sensation felt as if it could pull me down. Except the more times I let go, the more I wondered if I really could drown, or if I only feared I would.
“Ten seconds.”
I jolted, opening my eyes and blinking at Dr. North as if surprised to find he was there. He smiled at me.
“Very, very good, Jeremey. How did you find sitting with your feelings?”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about the experience yet. What did he want me to say? “It was okay.”
I kind of hoped we did the ten-seconds-of-feeling exercise again, though. I wondered if it was okay to do it on my own. Except how would I know when ten seconds were up?
“Now for my second question. Are you ready?” He waited for me to nod. “What is it you want, Jeremey? Right now? There’s no wrong answer. I’m not judging you for your answer. All I want is for you to practice identifying feelings and desires. What do you want right now?”
The question was so hard. Not because I didn’t want to tell him—though I didn’t—but because I didn’t know. I wanted out of here, but honestly, I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to go home, but to a place that didn’t exist. Somewhere soft and safe and good. That wasn’t my parents’ house.
I shoved the thought away and tried again. What did I want? I didn’t know. I started to panic.
He put his hand on my arm. “It doesn’t have to be complicated. You can tell me you want a bowl of ice cream.”
I didn’t want ice cream, though. I wanted something. I could feel it, almost see it. I shut my eyes and went back into the water of feelings. It felt horribly empty to not know what it was I wanted. I let go, let myself sink into the blue—and I knew.
Dr. North asked me again, “What do you want?”
I didn’t want to tell him, but down in the feeling water, it turned out, my worrying couldn’t reach me. “Emmet.” By speaking out loud, the spell broke, and I glanced at him nervously. “I…want to be with Emmet.”
I wasn’t sure what I expected from him, but it wasn’t softness and a smile that made my insides feel warm. “Excellent. And much better than a bowl of ice cream, I should think.” He rose, patting my arm. “Even more, it’s something I can give to you. Possibly very soon.”
I almost corrected him, to explain I didn’t mean I wanted to see him but that I wanted to be with him, like, with him, but my censors were all back in place now, and I stayed silent.
The way he winked at me made me think he understood what I’d meant anyway.
Chapter Eleven
Emmet
They didn’t let Jeremey go home from the ICU. On the second day he was in the hospital, he had to go to the psychiatric ward, which Mom says is what happens when someone tries to commit suicide. I was glad he had people to take care of him, but I was sad he had to stay there. I couldn’t see him as often as the day he’d been in the ICU. In fact for the first few days, I couldn’t see him at all.
I visited him on the third day, when Dr. North said Jeremey could have visitors again. He said Jeremey had been good and worked hard on his therapy and deserved a reward, and I was the reward he wanted. That made me happy. I’ve never been a reward before.
We met in a small white room with a couch and a window. Dr. North said if we needed him, we could flip the red light switch on the wall, which would send in a nurse. Otherwise he would come get me when our time was up.
Jeremey waited at the window when I arrived. He was wearing regular clothes, but no shoes. He turned to smile at me when I came in, and I smiled back. I even looked him in the eye for a few seconds because I wanted to show him how much I cared.
We hugged, but we didn’t kiss. Dr. North was still in the room.
“You have an hour,” he told us with a smile, and then he was gone.
“It’s so good to see you, Jeremey.” I flapped my hands a little because I was too excited not to. “Dr. North is a good doctor. My mom says he’s the best in the whole Midwest. Is he a good doctor for you?”
Jeremey made the embarrassed face. “Yes. I—” He bit his lip, glanced at me, then looked away again. “I’m…sorry. For what I did.”
I was confused. I didn’t know what he’d done. I hadn’t seen him for three days. “What did you do?”
His whole face went red. This means someone is very embarrassed. “I tried to kill myself and got myself locked up in here. That’s not…being a good boyfriend.”
I liked it when Jeremey talked about being my boyfriend. “You’re sick. It’s okay. It has nothing to do with being boyfriends.” I wanted to hold his hand, but that made me nervous so I flapped once instead. “Let’s sit on the couch and talk. I have paper and pencil in my pocket if you need to use code. But I had to leave my phone with Dr. North.”
We sat next to each other. I could smell and feel him, but I had room to rock. Since we sat side by side, I couldn’t look at him, so I didn’t have to feel bad about not meeting his gaze.
“What do you want to talk about?” I asked him.
He fidgeted his fingers in his lap. “I…don’t know.”
I laughed. “But you said you wanted to see me. That I was your reward for hard work. What work have you been doing?”
This was an okay thing to ask. Althea and I practice acceptable social questions all the time, so I was sure, but Jeremey’s shoulders hunched and he got embarrassed again. “It probably sounds silly. Basically my emotions make me feel like a big baby Dr. North has to retrain.”
I frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you said.”
He tugged at the hem of his shirt. “We talk about how I feel all the time. I have to practice feeling. Talking about what I feel and rehearse sitting with it. And explaining them out loud.”
I brightened. This I understood. “At home I have shirts for feelings. If I wear different clothes, it means I’m sitting with my specific feelings. It used to be only for anger and sadness, but now I have shirts for anything that feels too big for me to explain.”
He sighed. “You always make it sound so easy. I wish it could be that way for me so I didn’t have to end up in the hospital. I don’t want to be in the locked ward.”
“The locked ward is scary at first, but they take good care of you, and they’re good at patterns, which is comforting. I haven’t been to this locked ward, but Mom says they’re all pretty much the same.”
He stopped hunching and looked at me with a face I couldn’t understand. “You…you’ve been to the psych ward? As a patient?”
“Yes. When I was twelve.”
Now he had a surprised expression. Almost scared or upset. “When you were twelve? They locked you up?”
“No, they admitted me to the psychiatric ward. It was when I’d just started speaking again, and I got angry a lot. That was also when I had the bad therapy, and I had to go to the hospital until I could get control of myself.”
He kept looking at me with a complicated expression. “You say it like it’s no big deal. Wait—what do you mean you’d just started speaking?”
“I didn’t talk for a long time.” I could feel him staring at me, and I started to feel uncomfortable, so I rocked and flapped. “I could write, and I knew how to talk, but I wouldn’t. My brain octopus wouldn’t let me. I stopped talking when I was nine and didn’t start again until I was almost thirteen. But I enjoyed math. I did a lot of math.”
“I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t you talk?”
I tried to think of how to explain, and I had to hum a little first before I could. “It was a long time ago, and I don’t remember well, but I was angry and overwhelmed. I was still in regular school then, and the other students made me feel uncomfortable. It was a private school, but it wasn’t a good fit. The academics were good, but the students were not. When I started homeschooling, it was better, but I wanted to be quiet for a long time after I left. It made everyone upset. Then we had th
e bad therapy, and then I went to the hospital.”
“What do you mean, bad therapy?”
“I had a therapist who tried to fix me, like I was broken. It made me angry, and I hit her. It was a scary time. But then they put me in the hospital, and it was a good hospital. The Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. We lived in Iowa City then, but Minnesota is the best psychiatric hospital in the region. Dr. North worked there. He helped me the same way he’s going to help you.”
I rocked and smiled, remembering how Dr. North made the bad therapy go away. “He’s an important doctor in psychiatry, so I bet things will be the same here as they were at Mayo because he’s in charge. The ward at Mayo was good. Everything was clean and organized and punctual. I felt safe. We talked about me maybe living there for a while, but everyone said I should try to go home. So I did, and I practiced coping strategies. It was good. This is why we have to listen to doctors. Sometimes our brains make bad decisions, and we need to borrow the doctors’ brains.”
Now I felt nervous too. It made me uneasy to see how surprised Jeremey was I hadn’t spoken for four years.
When he spoke, though, he seemed less nervous. “I…I had no idea how much you understood.”
“I do understand.” I considered a moment. “Not about killing myself, though.”
He hunched. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sick. It’s okay. You don’t have to apologize. You have to do your work so you can get better and we can be together again.”
Jeremey didn’t say anything to that. But he took my hand, and he squeezed it.
It was a hard touch, so it was okay. Also, I’ve decided I like holding Jeremey’s hand. Touching him is always okay.
Originally Jeremey was only supposed to stay in the hospital for a few days, but he and Dr. North decided thirty days would be better. It upset Jeremey’s mom a lot when she found out. My mom tried to talk to her, but she didn’t want to discuss it, so we left her alone. Also I think my mom was still angry with Gabrielle, so she didn’t try very hard.
Carry the Ocean Page 11
