“Get out and go to Mommy,” I tell Jani.
“Where are you going?” she asks, looking at me, worried.
I don’t immediately know what to say. “I need some time.”
Jani gets out and runs over to Susan, leaving the car door open. I reach over and pull it closed. Out the windshield I see Susan talking to Jani.
Susan comes over, holding Bodhi in her arms. I lower the window.
“I asked Jani if you hurt Honey,” she says, looking disturbed. “She said you yelled but you didn’t.”
But I did. Jani saw me. She doesn’t remember. It doesn’t matter what I do anymore. Jani won’t remember.
“I yanked her out of the car pretty hard,” I confess. I could have lied. But I don’t want to. I know hurting Honey will make Susan angry, and I want her to be angry. It will make it easier to leave.
Susan’s face screws up in fear.
“Jani or Honey?”
“Honey.”
“Why?” Her voice is breaking. “Why did you do that? She’s a defenseless animal.” She looks at me like I’m a monster.
“I overdosed on my Lexapro,” I softly say.
Susan just stares at me.
“Why would you do that?” she finally manages to say.
I realize I don’t have an answer. “I don’t know. I just did.”
She shakes her head sadly. “You just made our lives even harder.”
“I just tried to kill myself and that is all you can say?”
“What do you want me to say?” she replies. “Am I upset? Yes, but I have to take care of Jani and Bodhi.”
And that is what it comes down to, I realize. It’s not that we don’t love each other. We can’t. There is no energy to muster love after Jani. What was I expecting? Her to take me in her arms and beg for me to live? She can’t do that. She has to take care of Bodhi. And Jani.
“You need to go to the hospital.”
“No. I’m going to drive into the desert and let the pills do their thing.”
Susan looks away again. For the first time in my life, I see what love and hate look like in the same face. That’s it. That is what we’ve both felt ever since Jani was born, love and hate at the same time.
Bodhi starts to cry.
“I can’t deal with this now,” Susan says and turns away, heading for Jani.
I drive away.
I drive up Valencia Boulevard and turn right on Westridge Parkway. I wonder if Susan will call the police. I have no idea. I’m going to take this road until it dead-ends at the top of a canyon and then leave the car. I have to leave the car so they don’t find me. I will hike down into the canyon as far as I can go. I hiked down there once before, with Jani. We went farther than I expected, until Jani stopped and wanted to go back. I stood there for a minute, knowing she would go back without me, so I ran after her. I’ve been chasing after her her whole life.
I take my foot off the gas and the car gradually eases to a stop in the middle of the road.
What will they do when I’m gone? What will Susan do? What will Jani do? What will Bodhi do?
The car continues idling in the middle of the road.
I’m abandoning them to find their own way without me just because I can’t deal with the fact that I don’t know what to do.
I sigh.
I can’t do this. I have to go back.
I step on the gas again and spin the wheel, turning the car around.
SUSAN IS SITTING on the stairwell, talking on the phone, when I walk up.
“He just came back,” she says into the phone.
I sit down next to her.
“Where’s Jani and Bo … Bodhi?” I slur, as the pills start taking their effect.
“Dave took them to the pool. They’re fine.”
“Can we … can we talk?”
“I’ll call you back,” she says into the phone. “Yes, he’s here now. I don’t know if he needs to go to the hospital.”
She looks up at me. “Do you need to go to the hospital?”
“I can’t.” I’m very tired now. “If I go … if I go … tif igo …” Shit. I can’t get a sentence out.
“He’s slurring his speech,” Susan says into the phone. “Tracy says you need to go to the hospital so they can pump your stomach.”
I have to focus on my words. “If I go to the hospital, they’ll put me on a … on a three-day hold.… because I attempted suicide. I will … be there at least three days, maybe longer. What … will you do? You … will be alone with the … kids.”
“I will be alone with the kids anyway if you die.” She is not scared. She is angry. Angry at me. I understand.
“I have to … try and walk it off.”
“Is that possible?”
I smile. Or at least I think I smile. I can’t feel my face. “I hope so.”
“But you need to be with Bodhi tonight!”
“I don’t … I don’t think I should.… I think I should be with Jani tonight. Bodhi wakes up and I might not wake up. I don’t want him to wake up screaming for a bottle and I can’t respond. Jani sleeps through the … night now.” I pause, struck by the fact that that used to be my biggest concern. “I have to stay up as long as I can … to give the Lexapro time to drain out of my system.”
I want to fall over, but I fight it.
Of course, what if Jani wakes up tomorrow morning to find me cold and lifeless next to her? Which is better? Which child would I rather find me dead?
Susan hangs up the phone. “I think you need to go to the hospital.”
“I’ll … be okay.”
“Why did you do this?” she asks me. “Why now? After everything we’ve been through, and now things are getting better.”
I turn to her. “Because they’re not getting better.”
She looks perplexed. “What do you mean, ‘they’re not getting better’? They’re better than they were. Jani is better than she was. She’s not as violent anymore.”
“Only because she is taking enough Thorazine to put a horse in a coma. She’s not really any better. Every drug she has ever been on either hasn’t worked at all or stopped working after a period of time. What will we do when the Thorazine stops working?”
Susan looks away. “We’ll deal with that if and when it happens.”
“You don’t get it,” I reply angrily. “Look at everything we’ve done just to get her to this point.”
“I am. And it’s working.”
“But we won’t live forever.”
She turns back to me. “So why are you trying to speed that up?”
I open my mouth to reply, but then it finally sinks in.
Why are you trying to speed that up?
Why do I want to die?
Because I’m afraid of watching Jani slowly die in front of my eyes while I am powerless to stop it. Deep down, I realize I’ve been planning this ever since I asked Dr. Kim Jani’s prognosis. Fifty-fifty. Schizophrenics statistically have a shorter life span than the rest of the population. On that day the diagnosis became official, for the first time since Jani was born, it occurred to me that she might die before me.
I can’t bear that.
“Because I don’t want to outlive my daughter,” I answer. “I don’t want her to die.”
Susan looks at me. “But everyone faces that possibility. Any of us could get hit by a bus tomorrow. We’re just more aware of it.”
“I don’t want to be aware.”
Susan puts her arm around me. “I can’t promise you she will always be okay.”
“I wish you could.”
“You have to have faith. This is what faith is all about. We have to do whatever we can to make her as happy as possible for as long as we have.”
“I can’t make her happy.”
“Yes, you can. You always have.”
“Not anymore. I don’t know how to reach her anymore.”
“It will get better. I don’t know how I know, but I just do. I have a gut feeling. We just
have to hang on.”
I look at her. I don’t believe her.
“I’ve never had blind faith in anything,” I answer.
“But this is what faith truly is. I believe in God and I believe we were given Jani for a reason. You know as well as I do that she’s always been special. This is just our challenge. Other people have their challenges, too. They have kids who are blind, deaf, or in wheelchairs. Jani can still run and play. She’s lucky.”
• • •
“I’M SORRY … I’M sorry, Jani. I can’t … I can’t read tonight.”
I am lying in bed next to Jani, fighting the desire to close my eyes. I must stay up. The longer I stay awake, the better the chance I’ll wake up tomorrow morning.
“Mommy will read to me tomorrow.”
“I’m … sorry. We can … we can watch TV? SpongeBob?”
Jani pulls up her blankets.
“I’m tired.” I look over at her, sensing she knows what I’ve done.
I tuck Hero Bear into her arms and she snuggles into him.
“Jani?”
“Yes?”
“I want you to promise me something.”
She looks at me.
“If 400 or Wednesday or any of the others ever tell you that your mommy and daddy don’t love you, don’t believe them, okay? You know we love you and we always will, right?”
“Yes.”
“Have they ever said anything like that?”
“No.”
“But if they do, you won’t believe them, right?”
“No.”
“Good.” I nod. “I love you, Jani.”
“Love you,” she mumbles sleepily.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
June 8, 2009
How many pills did you take?” Ruth, my psychiatrist and the one who prescribes my Lexapro, asks me over the phone. I’m sitting in our car in the bottom of the canyon, the very same one I planned to die in yesterday.
“I don’t know exactly. Probably about twenty.”
“You are very lucky, Michael. Antidepressants are typically not fatal when one overdoses, but still you are lucky.”
“I know.”
“Why did you do it?”
Out the window, I see Honey running around, sniffing, and Jani walking around aimlessly, talking to herself.
“I don’t really know.”
“You are an intelligent man, Michael. You must know why.”
“I guess I got tired of fighting.” I watch Jani through the window. She smiles at a person I can’t see and claps her hands. “I don’t have any hope for the future.”
“Why are you are even thinking about the future?”
Her question sounds absurd. “Because my daughter has a disease she’ll have for the rest of her life.”
“That is true, but you have to go on.”
“But I don’t know how to do that.”
“Michael, nobody knows how to get through life. You do the best you can.”
“I’ve done my best and it wasn’t good enough.”
“What is it you want, Michael?”
I look at Jani. “I want to help her. I want to take her illness away.”
My psychiatrist laughs. “I’m sorry, Michael. You want to cure schizophrenia?” she asks me in her thick Latin accent.
“I just want to make her life easier,” I answer, a bit annoyed.
“You are.”
This catches me off guard. “How?”
“Never giving up on her.”
“I just tried to kill myself, for God’s sake.”
“You just gave up on yourself.”
“I told you. I’m not strong enough.”
“Then who is stronger? Tell me. Who is stronger than you? Who could have done a better job?”
“I’ve made mistakes.”
“I would be worried if you hadn’t. I would be more worried if you told me you were perfect, but you still haven’t answered my question: Who do you think would do a better job than you have?”
“I don’t know. Susan, maybe.”
“But last year, you told me she was emotionally unable to deal with what was happening to Jani.”
“Right now, she’s handling it better than I am.”
“So the two of you make a pretty good team, then, no?”
I fall silent. She’s right. Susan had her moment of weakness and I was there to keep us going. Then, when I broke down, she was there to do the same.
“You each have different weaknesses,” my psychiatrist continues, “but together you make one strong person.”
I remain silent.
“Okay, here is what I want you to do. No Lexapro for three days. That should be enough time for it to leave your system. Then resume your normal dose.”
“Okay.”
“And Michael?”
“Yes?”
“Stop trying to be perfect.”
I smile. My psychiatrist hangs up.
Jani comes up to the open door and holds out her empty hand. “It’s an injured nine,” she says, deeply concerned. “It was attacked by a seven. Her leg is broken.”
I exhale, cursing myself for telling her that joke: Why was ten afraid of seven? Because seven eight nine! Ever since then Jani has talked nonstop about carnivorous numbers. Sevens eat nines. Ones eat eights. Eights eat twos.
Jani looks from her hand to me. “We have to help the nine!”
She expects me to help an invisible number. She’s looking to me to “save” one of her hallucinations. What do I do? Tell her she doesn’t really have a nine in her hand? That numbers aren’t alive and can’t be attacked by other numbers?
She looks up at me, her face filled with worry. The number might not be real, but her emotions are.
I get out of the car. “Okay, bring the nine over here.”
I go over to the grass beside the road and sit down. I hold out my hands to Jani.
Jani looks at me, confused. “What are you going to do?”
“You want me to help the nine, right? Then you need to give it to me so I can treat it.”
Jani puts the hallucination in my hands. “It’s a girl nine.”
I lower my hands to the grass.
“Don’t hurt her!” Jani calls nervously.
“I’m not going to hurt her. First, we need to check her vital signs. How is her breathing?”
Jani kneels on the grass next to me. “Her name is Ninesly.”
“You need to focus on your patient, Jani. The first thing you always do is check for the patient’s breathing.”
“Okay,” she answers.
“Is she breathing? If not, we need to start pulmonary resuscitation.” Years ago, when I was trying to be a screenwriter, I bought a medical encyclopedia so I could write a spec of a medical show. That, plus the fact that I’ve spent a lot of time in hospitals lately, has taught me a lot.
Jani leans over the space in the grass between us, putting her hand on Ninesly’s invisible chest.
“She’s breathing.”
“Is the breathing fast, slow, or normal?”
Jani checks. She’s completely focused.
“A little bit fast.”
“That could be minor hyperventilation due to the stress of the attack. Next, check her heart rate. Is it fast, slow, or normal?”
Jani checks.
“It’s also a little fast.”
“Okay. Now take Ninesly’s blood pressure. If it is low, that could indicate internal bleeding.”
Jani pumps an invisible blood pressure cuff. “It’s normal.”
“Good. That means less likelihood of internal bleeding. Now take her pulse ox.”
Jani looks up at me.
“What should it be?”
“In most animals, ninety-five percent and higher is considered normal.”
Jani checks. “Ninety-eight.”
“That’s good. Now you need to take her temperature. A high temperature would indicate a possible infection.” I wait while Jani checks the temp
erature.
“It’s normal.”
“Okay, we’ve taken her vital signs. You always do that first before you treat any injuries. You have to make sure your patient is stable.”
“What does ‘stable’ mean?”
“Means she won’t die. Now that we’ve made sure Ninesly is stable, we can treat the leg. She needs to go to Radiology.”
Jani gets up and goes over to a tree. “This is Radiology,” she announces.
“Do an X-ray of her leg. Is it a single fracture or a compound fracture?”
“Compound.”
I breathe out. “Okay, we’re going to have to do surgery, then. Start an IV to put her under, plus I need three units of nine blood for Ninesly.”
Jani hands me the invisible bags of nine blood.
We go to work, opening Ninesly’s leg and inserting pins into the broken bones.
A car drives past. I wonder what the driver thinks. A man and a girl working feverishly over a patch of grass.
I smile. I don’t care. Jani is totally focused on the operation to save the leg of her hallucination.
Her world and my world are united.
EPILOGUE
July 2011
The band U2 released their song “Beautiful Day” two years before Jani was born. It’s been in heavy rotation ever since. Like Jani’s hallucinations, it’s still around despite two subsequent albums.
In many ways, “Beautiful Day” represents the duality of my feelings about Jani. In one sense I’ve both loved and hated this song. Of course, I love the soaring chords, just as I always love Jani. But I hate the chorus and the final refrain.
What you don’t have you don’t need it now.
When I’d hear the song, I used to say bitterly to Susan, “Easy for Bono to say. He’s worth millions. It’s easy to tell people they don’t need what they don’t have when you yourself don’t actually need anything.” I resented the song, taking it as Bono’s celebration of his own glorious life.
By the time Jani went to UCLA, the song had become a slap in my face. It’s a beautiful day seemed a brutal reminder of how ugly our life had become.
A lot has changed since then. Today, Jani is on three medications: clozapine, lithium, and Thorazine. This combination has been the most successful.
Are her hallucinations completely gone?
No, but as she will tell us, they are not bothering her. It’s like having the TV on in the background, volume turned down, while you’re doing something, and every so often you look up at the screen to see what 400 the Cat and other hallucinations are doing. They remain on Jani’s periphery, but she can still function in our common reality.
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