by Anna Jarzab
“That sounds great,” I tell her.
She laughs like she doesn’t buy it. I know how full of false cheer I sound, but I’m reeling from the shock of all this. With Harry not speaking to me, Jessa drifting away and Amber leaving GAC, my list of allies in the pool has narrowed to one: Beth. What will I do if she disappears, too?
But there’s also a weird feeling in my stomach, a tiny black hole that opens up and whispers: I wish I could quit, too. I stifle it immediately. There’s a possibility that I have already lost Harry. If I lose my Olympic dream, I won’t have anything left.
“You’re taking this better than I expected,” Amber says.
“You’ve clearly given this a lot of thought. If you’re happy, that should be enough for me. Would you like me to tear my clothes and wail inconsolably?” I joke.
Amber smiles. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
Swimming is our lives, which means that life as she knows it is over for Amber—that seems like a big deal to me, even if she is happy about it. But that is one hundred percent not my business.
“Harry will come around,” Amber assures me.
“I hope you’re right,” I say.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
42 days until US Olympic Team Trials
IT’S A WEEK before I hear from Harry. He skips practice, which pisses Dave off. He hauls me into his office on Thursday after practice to grill me about where Harry’s at and just what the hell he’s up to.
“I don’t know,” I say, fists clenched at my sides. I don’t want to be in the same room as Dave. “He won’t talk to me. I asked his best friend what’s going on, but he hasn’t heard from Harry, either.”
I’m not sure I believe Tucker. He has no reason to be loyal to me. I don’t even know whether Tucker would tell me if something was wrong with Harry beyond what happened between us, which is what I’m really worried about. When he didn’t show up for practice, or school, I became increasingly frantic. What if it’s worse than our fight?
“When you hear from him, you tell that kid if he doesn’t get his ass back into this pool ASAP he’s off the team,” Dave says. “I’m not going to tolerate any crybabies. I mean, look at you.”
“What about me?”
If he’s calling me a crybaby, I’m going to straight up punch him. Practice without Harry and Amber has made me feel especially on edge. Jessa only makes things worse. There are so few weeks left before Trials, and there’s so very much at stake—she’s constantly reminding me of that. It’s gotten to the point where we’re pretty much not speaking.
The pressure is crushing. I used to think I carried my burdens alone, but now I realize my friends were holding some of the weight. I’ve never felt so grateful, or missed them so much.
I miss Harry so, so much.
“Even after everything, you’re still here,” Dave says with a shrug. Then he walks off, and I can almost see the last remaining shreds of my dignity clinging to his shoes like toilet paper.
Even after everything, I’m still here, taking what he dishes out, swimming through the pain. What is it about this dream that makes me willing to endure it all? I can’t rationalize it anymore, even to myself. It’s gone beyond reason, a logic only the heart knows.
Not, actually, unlike my love for Harry. I can’t explain it. It just is.
What I still can’t figure out is how many loves you’re allowed to have before you run the risk of losing them all.
* * *
Finally, on Sunday, over a week after the Battle of the Sexes meet, my phone rings and Harry’s name pops up on the screen. I stare at it, stunned both by the fact that he’s calling me and the realization that I’d resigned myself to the possibility he never would. I feel relieved and anxious all at the same time. I answer the call before it clicks over to voice mail.
“Hello?”
I wait for Harry to speak. There’s a long pause, then his voice crackles through the phone. It sounds strained. A rope tightens around my heart. Something is wrong.
“Susie?”
“Harry.” I exhale his name. “I’m so sorry. Please don’t hate me. I’ve been calling and texting—I even came by your house. I left messages. I’ve been so...” A thousand different words get stuck in my throat. Distraught. Worried. Anguished. Sorry, so sorry... I don’t think I’ll ever be able to say it enough.
“Uh—” He hitches in a deep, ragged breath. I brace myself, certain I know what’s coming. He’s calling to break up with me. It’s over.
But after all the agonizing I’ve done in the last nine months over whether or not I should be with Harry, I don’t feel anything close to relief. I feel terrified. I don’t want to lose him.
“Susie,” he says. His voice is horribly flat. “I did a bad thing.”
“With who?” I ask, picturing Fee.
“No—I—” Another deep breath. “I didn’t mean to do it.”
“Harry, what happened?”
“I didn’t mean to. I was just trying—” he sounds like he’s fighting for every word “—to make it better. But I cut too deep,” he says, and it’s like I’ve suddenly walked off a cliff, or been yanked from the safety of a beach by a strong and vicious current. Falling, sinking.
“Too deep?” I repeat. My whole body goes numb.
“There’s blood,” he says. His voice is getting softer, like a fading radio signal. “I need...help.”
I snap into crisis mode. “I’m going to call 911 and then I’m coming over. Okay?”
“Yes,” he whispers.
“I’m going to stay on the phone the whole time—don’t hang up.”
We have a house line—it came with our cable package—but we never use it. Right now, it’s as if this is the reason we have it, because the universe knew one day I would need it. I dial 911. It feels like my hands should be shaking, but they’re steady as I punch in the numbers. A strange sense of calm floats down over me. My mind is sharp and clear, focused on this critical task.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
“I think my boyfriend might have hurt himself,” I tell the operator.
“What is your current location?”
“I’m not with him. I’m at my house, but I’m heading over there now.” I rattle off Harry’s home address. “He cut himself, and he said he did it too deep. He called me and he sounded weak on the phone. He’s afraid.”
My voice breaks on the last two words, shattering the calm feeling. She tells me to stay on the line as I run to the car, but I tell her I can’t—it’s a landline, and I’m leaving—then hang up. My parents are out, and Nina’s with Amber somewhere. Part of me is grateful there’s nobody to ask questions and slow me down. Another part wishes there were someone, anyone, here—someone more capable than me.
There’s nobody to talk to now but Harry, who only says, “Yes,” when I ask if he’s still there.
I reach Harry’s house before the ambulance arrives. Paula must be on shift—her car is gone—and Bruce isn’t home, either. The front door is locked, but Harry told me once where their spare key was hidden. I reach into the mouth of a large ceramic frog near the door and feel around with my fingers until I find it.
“Harry?” I call as I enter the house. There’s no answer.
I climb the stairs and peer into his bedroom. He isn’t there, but it’s been ransacked: lamps overturned, sheets torn off the bed, books everywhere. His laptop is sitting half-open on its side in a corner of the room. It’s like he tore the place apart. There are travel-size bottles of alcohol scattered underneath Harry’s desk. Understanding creeps over me like a cold shadow.
The bathroom door is open, and I can see Harry inside, slumped against the toilet. His skin is pale and translucent as velum, and his eyes are closed.
“Harry?” I swallow hard against rising bile. It burns my throat. My vision begin
s to waver as panic puts me in a choke hold, but I dig my nails into my palm and the dizziness recedes.
“Susie?” His eyes flutter open. They’re bloodshot and red, unfocused.
Adrenaline focuses my mind the way the strong smell of peppermint can clear the sinuses. Like most swimmers, I’ve taken lifeguarding courses, so I’m CPR and first-aid certified. I tend to him the way I’ve been taught, forcing myself to stay calm.
“I’m here,” I tell him, because when I was afraid and hurt the thing that made it all so much worse was how alone I felt, how isolated by the pain. I brush the hair off his sweat-drenched forehead and caress his hot skin with my thumb. “I’m here, Harry. You’re going to be okay.”
An ambulance wails in the distance. Please be for us, I think as the sirens grow louder, entering Harry’s neighborhood, turning down the street.
Anticipating the paramedics, I left the front door wide open when I came in. I call out our location as they rush into the house and up the stairs. I stand aside while they carry him on a gurney down the stairs. It takes me a second to realize I should go after them, that I can even move. Nobody gives me permission to go with him in the ambulance, but nobody tries to stop me as I climb in. I spend the ride frozen in my seat, watching through a tiny window as they work on him. There’s a burning in my fingers and toes, like I’ve been electrocuted.
When we get to the hospital they wheel him through a set of swinging doors. I try to follow, but someone stops me with a gentle hand on my chest—a woman dressed in scrubs, who has obviously vacated the spot behind the empty intake desk. Harry sits up on the gurney like a jack-in-the-box, and our eyes lock from all the way down the long hallway before the doors completely shut.
Desperate to get to him, I feint left in an attempt to get past the woman who kept me from following him, but she grabs me and pulls me back firmly.
“You have to stay out here,” she tells me.
She guides me to a waiting room, where I fall into one of the hard plastic chairs. The woman returns to her desk to fetch a clipboard stuffed with forms, which she brings over to me. She sits beside me and asks me questions, only some of which I can answer. Harry—no, Harrison Matthews, his mom is a nurse here, you have to call her. I tell her his address, his birth date, but there are things I don’t know: his social security number, his insurance provider, the medications he’s taking, his middle name. Why don’t I know his middle name?
She writes down what I give her, then gets up to notify Paula.
“Can I call someone for you?” she asks.
Sometime later—I’m not sure how much, it passes both quickly and slowly, and I lost my phone somewhere along the way so I can’t even check it—Mom appears. She wraps her arms around me and rocks me as I sob into her shoulder, muttering over and over, “It’s all my fault, it’s all my fault.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Mom whispers, rubbing my back in wide, slow circles. “It’s not.”
I wipe snot and tears off my face with the sleeve of my sweatshirt. “I hurt him.”
“People fight,” she says. She pulls back to look in my eyes, taking my chin in her palm. “Couples fight all the time. We say awful things to each other out of frustration and fear and even love. You didn’t know that this was what would happen.”
I didn’t know for sure, but I should’ve anticipated it. I knew he’d done it before, when he was under stress. He’d told me his doctor had been adjusting his medication. That was why he was sick back in October, why he didn’t come to California with the rest of us. He could have been struggling all this time without me knowing, for the same reason I didn’t realize swimming made Amber so unhappy or that she was falling in love with my sister: I wasn’t paying attention.
I’ve been so consumed with my own problems that I failed to see or wonder what was going on in the lives of the people I love. Shame and fear pour over me. I gulp air like I’ve just resurfaced from the deep, dark bottom of a lake, but there’s no relief in filling my lungs. Breathing feels like drowning. I have no control over anything.
I stare at my hands like I don’t remember how to use them. They feel heavy in my lap.
* * *
“It’s going to be all right.”
I raise my eyes to meet Paula’s. “Is it?” I ask, blinking away tears.
My eyes feel like they’ve been scrubbed with sandpaper. I’m exhausted. It’s been hours since I discovered Harry in that upstairs bathroom, since the ambulance delivered us to the emergency room doors. Mom hasn’t left my side. Harry’s parents got here as soon as they could.
“Yes,” Paula assures me with the confidence of someone who’s been through this before. But beneath the bravado, I can glimpse the fear of a mother whose training and rationalizations fail her when the patient is her son. “He’s stable now. They’ve stitched him up. There was a lot of blood, but the cuts were mostly superficial. They have him on some mild tranquilizers. He’s sleeping.”
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. These are the exact sorts of situations in which I do not shine. Give me a crisis, an urgent need for my assistance, and I’ll immediately spring into action, do what needs to be done to the best of my ability. But when the dust has settled and it’s time to sort through the rubble, all that resolve and focus crumbles, and I dissolve into a pathetic, worthless mess.
I force my attention back to Paula. “Do you think he did this because of our fight?” Mom’s arms tighten around me.
“I don’t know everything that went on between the two of you,” she says. “But I could see that whatever happened at that meet put him under a tremendous amount of stress. He may have walked away from your argument thinking that you blamed him for things he has no control over, even if that wasn’t your intention. Your good opinion is so important to him. If he thought he’d lost that, he may have felt the need to rely on coping methods that made sense to him once before.”
Bruce walks into the waiting room looking like someone’s hit him over the head, which is how I know he’s come from Harry’s room. He was on a business trip in New York, but he took the next flight out as soon as Paula called him. He’s still wearing a suit, but it’s rumpled and creased.
“What happens now?” I ask.
“We’re moving Harry tomorrow,” Bruce explains, taking Paula’s hand. “They found a bed for him at a hospital that specializes in more long-term care. It’s a place he’s been before. They’ll get him back on his feet.”
This isn’t what I expected. I thought that once he was okay, he would get to go home. “How long will he be there?”
“As long as he needs,” Paula says. She looks as though she hasn’t slept in days. “One of the drugs Harry was taking had some very unpleasant side effects, and he wanted to go off it. We were working with his doctor to find a more palatable solution, but it’s been a challenge. For the last few months, Harry’s medication has been less effective at controlling his moods.”
“We’re going to set him up at Regency,” Bruce tells me. “It’s a psychiatric hospital for minors. There will be other kids for him to talk to, and doctors who understand the way bipolar disorder manifests in teenagers. They’ll help him there.”
I’m out of my depth here. All I can do is nod and trust that they’re doing what’s best for Harry.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
30 days until US Olympic Team Trials
FOR THE FIRST week and a half of his inpatient treatment, there’s no opportunity for me to visit Harry. His days are scheduled from morning until night with recreational and group therapies, medication management sessions, consultations with his psychiatrist and meetings with his social worker—all tailored to his specific needs. I talk to Paula every day after I get home from practice, eager to know how he’s doing. Given everything that happened, I’m grateful he’s given her permission to discuss his progress with me.
“When you enter inpati
ent hospitalization, a case manager evaluates the severity of your situation,” Paula explains. “Harry’s case manager doesn’t believe he poses further danger to himself, and he’s been taking his medication and following the program. We’re hoping that at our next family therapy session, the doctors will tell us he’s recovered enough to start outpatient treatment.”
This means that Harry will be able to go home at night, but he’ll still spend his day at Regency, learning how to cope with his symptoms and manage his illness. He’ll also receive daily psychiatric evaluation, to track how the new medications are working.
“Harry spent most of that weekend you found him in a mixed state,” Paula tells me. “In the daytime, when I was home, he was significantly depressed. He’d sleep a lot, wasn’t eating much, and now I know he was drinking. At night, after I left for my shifts, he became hypomanic. Bruce was traveling for work, so there was nobody home with him. He was journaling frantically. He wrote all over that swimming notebook you got him for Christmas.”
I ask what he wrote, but Paula tells me most of it is illegible. I wonder if she knows that the notebook isn’t his, it’s mine, and if that means anything, but I don’t want to interrupt her. She says Harry also engaged in other hypomanic behaviors. He spent hundreds of dollars online and took long runs around town in the dark to quiet his racing thoughts.
“You have to understand, Susannah,” she says. “In the time you’ve known him, Harry’s been more stable than I’ve ever seen him. He has learned to manage his illness quite capably, and what to do if things get bad, if he thinks he might hurt himself or need medical intervention. He seemed in control of his situation, even though he was feeling depressed. But that all changes if he’s not sober.”
I remember what Harry told me, how alcohol impairs the effectiveness of his medication.
“If I’d known he was drinking,” Paula continues, “I never would have left him alone.”
