“Yeah, I know and we could take them down and widen the sectioning. People have done that, but that’s not just what I mean. Hell, each dorm room is huge. We could section off and make this place livable and leave room for expansion. Even when the radiation falls, for safety sake, they may stay here.”
I immediately grabbed my note book. I began to do the math, calculating, and drawing. They watched me as if I were mad.
“How about we plan for roughly six hundred. If we need more room, we’ll make adjustments,” I explained. “There are eighteen dorm rooms. All of them the same size. What if we section each dorm room off by six? Each dorm is 60 feet by eighteen.” I pushed forward my notepad for them to see my initial sketch and numbers. “Creating a three foot walk way or hall way would leave a room length of approximately fifteen feet. In each dorm room we could do, four eight foot wide sections that sleep four, one twelve foot wide that’s sleeps six, and twelve foot section that sleep eight for bigger families. That’s 30 people per dorm as opposed to a hundred, which works out to about 500 people.”
Ray looked at the paper. “Sounds complicated. I’d do just six rooms, ten foot wide, sleep six.”
“Or that,” I said. “I was just thinking privacy for the couples.”
Ray chuckled. “They aren’t many.”
“Ok. True.”
With enthusiasm Marcus said, “So it’s a plan. Can I organize it? I really think getting people together to do this, to build, would give them a purpose and a focus. Complete one dorm room, move people in, then start on the next.”
Ray suggested, “We could put a table in each room as well. There are a ton in the cafeteria.”
“Little apartments.” I snickered. “Why not. Let’s start this.” I turned my head to the clearing of a throat to see Mary Agnes standing there. “Yes, Mary.”
“Captain, if you have a moment. I need to speak to you.”
Having the knowledge that she was just visiting Jade, my stomach fluttered with worry. I immediately excused myself and left the cafeteria with Mary Agnes.
***
Mary Agnes’ question of, ‘Is there somewhere private we can talk,’ sent more concern though me.
We went into my little office and I closed the door.
“This is very difficult to present you with,” said Mary Agnes.
My thoughts were, ‘oh God my wife is very ill’. “Why?” I asked. “Is it painful?”
“Could be for someone like you.”
I titled my head, and refrained from asking a question like, ‘Painful for me? Is it a sexually transmitted disease?’
“Captain, you’re a very strong man. Very proud. By me telling you this two things are going to occur. One you’ll not completely understand it, and two, you’ll question yourself.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Your wife is depressed.”
“Oh.” I fluttered my lips and flung out my hand. “Is that all?”
“Is that all?”
“Yes. I laid my hand on my chest. “I was worried. I thought it was something worse. Everyone is depressed. Good God, the world ended.”
“You’re depressed?” she asked.
“I get depressed, yes.”
“Hmm.”
“What is this ‘hmm’?”
“I didn’t think you’d get it,” she said. “She is depressed. It is affecting not only her mental being but her physical being as well. This is why she won’t get out of bed. She doesn’t have the energy. She has feelings of despair, less self worth, unimportance …”
“And you got all this from a five minute examination?”
“I’m giving you text book and standard symptoms.”
“No what you’re giving me is a diagnosis based on a five minute exam.”
Mary Agnes huffed.
“What? What?” I lifted my hands. “You huff at me, why?”
“You’re goddamn hard headed. I didn’t need any more than five minutes. When I physically examined her and found nothing wrong, and when Jade said to me, “I don’t feel like it’, I knew. The way she stared, laid there.”
“She’s ill.”
“Yes, she is. But not physically ill.”
“She’ll get over it.”
“Captain, are you that insensitive or just ignorant of depression. It has set in.”
“What makes her depression different than what everyone else has experienced?”
“She’s not bouncing back. It’ll keep getting her further and further down.”
“If she’s so depressed, then why hasn’t she come to me?” I asked.
“A …. You’re hard headed and strong. You see depression as a sign of weakness. Plus, Captain, you are running about all the time. She sees you at night. By then she is ready to sleep. When is the last time you spoke to her about her family?”
My head lifted.
“Her parents, siblings. This is a loss, she needs to talk about. Her life. Her job. Everything is gone. Some people cope. Some do not. Your wife is not coping.”
I sighed out and ran my hand over my mouth. “So what do I do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Good God, woman, you come in here and tell me my wife is depressed. Give me shit. Insult me and then tell me I don’t know.”
“Look.” She pointed at me. “Don’t get smart with me, you hear? I’m the last person you want to go one on one with. Respect.”
“Sorry.”
“Now …” She took a breath. “You know your wife better than anyone. Since we have no medication that will help. You’ll need to focus on what you think will bring her out of it. What positive there are for her to look at.”
I chuckled. “We’re in a bomb shelter during a nuclear holocaust. I can’t think of a positive.”
“Then try. Get the boys together and try. Because if you don’t. She’ll sink until you can’t get her back. She won’t just snap out of it. She needs therapy. You have to be that therapy.” Mary Agnes stood. “Think about what you will do. Put a plan into action like you do with everything else.”
I nodded. “I will. Thank you.”
“I’ll check on her and I’ll try.”
“Thank you.”
Mary Agnes opened the door and paused. “And for God’s sake be sensitive. Don’t be a prick.”
I believe my mouth was still agape when she walked out. Was I insulted? Or did she speak the truth. No, it wasn’t truth. How could I be anything less than sensitive when it came to the woman I loved most on this earth.
***
The journey to our little dorm section took me on a journey of confusion. I went from leaving my office confident that I could snap Jade out of it, to questioning if I were sensitive enough.
It seemed as if everyone I passed knew what I was en route to do. Each staring at me as I walked by.
Sensitive.
Sensitive.
I was positive I could do it.
I just didn’t know where to begin.
I planned in my mind what I would do. How I would approach, I would sit on the bed, lay my hand on her hip, kiss her gently, tell Jade I loved her and that I was there for her.
I would explain than I was concerned about her mental well being. OK, I would put it a bit more tactfully than that. Encouraging her to talk, open up and I would attempt to make her laugh. Somehow.
Yes. I could do it.
Then I walked in the dorm room.
Jade was lying on the bunk as I figured. On her side, facing the wall.
I took a deep breath. Readying to step to her, I paused.
“Jade,” I called to her.
No response.
“Jade, I know you’re not sleeping.”
“I don’t feel like talking, Hal.”
I opened my mouth to speak to make my way to my wife, and suddenly I noticed it wasn’t there.
Where was it?
I searched. Yet, I didn’t feel any compassion.
What was wrong with me? It was there, it
had to be. Where?
“Jade.”
“Go away, Hal,” she said.
There was something wrong with her. I guess Mary Agnes was right when she said she didn’t need more than five minutes. The just as I searched my inner being for the vat of compassion I boasted, I found something else.
Irritation.
Suddenly, I wasn’t concerned for her, I was irritated. She lay in a bed, soaking in self pity of loss, when she of all people should be rejoicing? Her children were alive. The two precious gifts she loved most in the world were alive and well and she was wallowing.
“What’s wrong with you, Jade?” I asked, and then cringed. Perhaps that wasn’t the right phrasing.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Probably not.”
Silence.
I sighed out. “Jade. Jade.”
After calling her three times, I decided to call it quits. Risking saying something I’d regret in response to my irritation was not something I wanted to do.
One more time.
“Jade.”
She only breathed heavily.
Pissed and thinking ‘pathetic’, I turned and left.
At that moment, the way I was feeling, there was nothing I could do.
***
Beef stew was on the dinner menu and Stan’s wife, Luella, made biscuits. Their warm aroma carried throughout the complex. I was amazed. Most meals that we had, were already prepared. Soup. Beef stew. With the exception of rice and beans, most people didn’t feel like preparing the meal. They merely wanted to warm it.
We now had fifty-two mouths to feed.
Luella was a blessing. She asked to see me once they were situated. Stating she really didn’t have any nursing duty, or teaching skills, she had other skills to offer our shelter that may come in handy.
I didn’t ask to see her or Stan. I would have spoken to them eventually after they were situated, But both of them figured, since we were putting a survival plan in action, we would want to know how they could contribute.
Stan was a farmer. Thank God. But he also had a passion for building and rebuilding old cars. Little did I know that skill would come in handy later.
Luella, she claimed she was the best seamstress in White Sulpher Springs West Virginia, and then she added, “I know the best jobs are always taken, but I know how to run a kitchen.”
Best jobs? Was she insinuating that the cafeteria position was a ‘best job’; I had to pull teeth to get volunteers. When she noticed that there as a cafeteria, she asked if that was how we operated. Does everyone eat together?
I told her ‘yes’, and she said, if she was needed she would love to work in the cafeteria.
Handy in a kitchen was an understatement. Stan told me she worked for twenty-three years as a high school cafeteria supervisor at a small private school. Preparing meals for two hundred students, menu planning, and getting it down on limited resources and a shoestring budget.
Fifty people was nothing for her. She’d need some hands for serving and possibly shifts. But she suggested that in order to run the food supply efficiently, menu planning was needed. She could utilize the supplies.
I told her we were rationing. Not a problem.
“There’s ways to fill a belly,” she said.
The three women who were working the cafeteria were glad that Luella wanted the responsibility. And handed it over with glee.
They had already opened the two large cans of Beef Stew. A heaping spoonful a person worked, and was plenty.
Luella pointed out to me that there was such a surplus. She was positive she could stretch it out longer than I estimated. Especially since there was plenty of wheat, barley, and rice.
She commenced to making biscuits with the stew. Said she would have served a desert, but didn’t want to overcook.
She baked over 150 biscuits and there wasn’t a single one left. A spoon of beef stew over a biscuit, people were in heaven.
I was fortunate enough to have a biscuit before dinner. I savored it and thanked her.
After the meal I was playing scrabble with Jimmy and Brad in the cafeteria.
“So we’re gonna have more privacy?” Jimmy asked. “I’d like to hang out on a bunk without feeling like someone is watching me.”
“Soon, I told him, soon. You can work with the construction.”
“I’d like that,” Jimmy said.
“Say, Captain,” Brad interjected “You think that’ll snap mom out of it?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t even know why your mother is like this. But she is. I guess we have to be sensitive and understanding.”
“I can be sensitive,” Brad said. “I know you can be.”
I smiled. “I try.”
Then as I placed down my impressive word of ‘turmoil’ my head cocked at the call of my name.
“Captain!”
It blasted unexpectedly. I would have never expected Mary Agnes to have it in her. I stood.
“You are unbelievable!” she barked as she stormed to the table.
“What? What did I do?”
She folded her arms, and tapped her feet.
I looked to my boys. “I believe that is a female way of conveying she needs a moment.”
Again, arms folded. Tap-tap-tap.
“Give us a minute boys,” I requested.
Reluctantly they agreed asking if we’d finish our game. I told them yes, wanting to add that they stood a better chance of beating me after Mary Agnes was done. But I held back. She didn’t look as if in the mood for sarcasm.
“Please. Sit.” I held out my hand.
“Oh, I don’t need to sit.”
“Ok. What’s up?”
“Pathetic,” she said calmly.
“Who me.”
“No, your wife?” she asked.
“Mary Agnes. I realize dealing with Jade in this state is frustrating. I know. I was there. But for you to call her pathetic.”
“Why not. You did.”
“I did not.”
“You did, too.”
“No. I thought it.”
“Well the she reads your thoughts, because she told me right before you left you called her pathetic.”
“Fuck.”
“Language.”
“Sorry.” I ran my hand over my mouth. “I didn’t mean for that to slip out.”
“Well, then you have some making up to do. Why would you even think that?”
I sat down.
“Captain?” she scolded my name.
“She’s just lying there. Unresponsive. I don't get it.”
“What is there not to get? She is depressed about everything?”
“Yet,” I held up a finger. “She has everything to be happy about. Her children. Her children are alive.”
“But her family is …”
“Oh, bull. She barely communicated with her family. This wouldn’t cause this. Not at all.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I know her best. There’s something else.”
Mary Agnes scoffed a laugh. “You don’t think nuclear war would cause it.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think. But my gut is telling me she is shutting down for a reason that just isn’t valid.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think is valid or not.”
“True.”
She huffed again at me. “It doesn’t matter at all the reason. She needs help. She needs talked and talked through this. She needs understanding. In a group this small, this is not good for morale.”
“She needs to just get out of that bed and focus.”
“It’s easy for you to say. That’s you. It’s not her. Captain, are you giving up?”
“No. Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll keep trying. Me and the boys will try again. I’ll think of something.”
“You better,” she said. “That ‘pathetic’ comment was a setback. As someone who has taken on the medical responsibility of this camp, I want this h
andled. As her husband, not as leader, I want this addressed. Now.” She turned.
I couldn’t help it. I started to chuckle at her giving me an order.
Wait. She gave me an order.
“Mary Agnes. When you were in the Army Nurses Corps, what was your rank?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Thirty-three years, Captain. I was hands on, in there, no matter what my rank. I was with my nurses through it all. I worked many combat zones, and probably seen more combat casualties than you. I did so until I retired … a general.”
My mouth dropped open. “A general?”
“Fix it.” She turned and walked away.
And in instinctual response, probably from years of training, I stood and replied. “Yes, ma’am.”
***
The boys and I discussed the depression situation over our game. I was glad to hear they, too, were having a hard time believing their mother was being like this.
When I first met Jade, she was this amazingly strong independent woman who was holding down two jobs and raising her boys on her own. I couldn’t believe the odds she had faced.
She loved when we got married and she was afforded the opportunity to quit working. She worked a part time job, two days a week just to keep busy.
Her parents lived in Omaha, and she had moved to Pittsburgh with her first husband. Her mother and father were not warm and fuzzy people, bible thumpers, and Jade, kept her distance. She claimed years of biblical oppression and abuse.
Her sister, well, she hadn’t spoken to her sister in ten years. That was when she found out her sister had an affair with her husband.
Her brother Bobby was in prison.
Jade for the better of her life, kept her distance. Especially since her parents blamed her for her sister and husband’s fling.
Jade was strong. I didn’t get it.
The boys and I went down her list of fiends. She didn’t have many. Not one person that could cause the reaction.
“What about our dog?” Brad asked.
This flipped a switch in me. The dog. Although I wasn’t one of those people who became massively depressed over animals, Jade loved that dog. She went everywhere with it. Dressed it up. Adored it. Yes. The dog.
My heart actually even sank for a moment thinking of ‘Old Faithful’, Harry, our mutt of a pet, in the house when it was blown apart.
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