by Laura Crum
"Sounds like you're depressed." He smiled at me in a friendly way, as if being depressed was no big deal, a minor problem that we could solve together. I sure as hell hoped he was right.
"Have you been depressed before?" he asked me.
"Not that I'm aware of. Not like this." I hesitated, the words bringing up some memory I couldn't place.
"When you were a child? In the past?" The shrink watched me closely.
"I don't remember. I was a very solitary child," I said slowly, "but I don't remember being depressed."
"Tell me about your childhood," he said.
"I was an only child," I began, wondering what to put in and what to leave out. "My parents were both what I think you'd call introverts; they seemed happy together but they didn't have a lot of friends. My dad was an only child and his parents were dead from before I could remember, and my mother's family lives in Michigan. So there weren't any grandparents or aunts and uncles and cousins around. I was raised out in the country on an apple farm, and I learned to entertain myself."
"Were you lonely?" he asked.
"I don't remember being lonely. I think now that I was just used to feeling lonely, maybe. It seemed like the norm to me. My parents didn't pay a whole lot of attention to me; they mostly left me to my own devices. I read a lot. I made up stories and games. My animals were my friends."
The shrink watched me quietly; I had no idea what thoughts were going on behind the steady blue eyes. "So you don't remember having any feelings of sadness and depression?" he asked.
"No, I don't. I was sad when my parents died, of course."
"When did they die?"
"When I was seventeen, about to turn eighteen." I went on, trying to meet his eyes. "They were killed in a car crash on the highway. Overnight I went from being secure to having to fend for myself. Our home had to be sold to pay debts and taxes and whatever; by the time it was all said and done there wasn't much money left. My aunt in Michigan offered to let me live with her, but she was a virtual stranger, and I didn't want to do that."
"It must have been a difficult time."
"It was. I'd always wanted to be a veterinarian, and I decided then that I would make that happen. I quite consciously meant to create a new security for myself, one that wasn't founded on other people.
"It wasn't easy, though. I had good grades in high school and I was able to get a scholarship, but I still had to work in order to pay my bills. I worked full-time as a waitress to put myself through college and vet school."
"Were you depressed then?"
"No. Not that I can recall. I was too busy to be depressed, I think."
"You say you were sad when your parents died. Would you call that a depression?"
"No. Actually," I thought for a minute, "I was sad, of course. But I can't remember crying much, or feeling terrible. I was mostly shocked. And just like later, there simply wasn't any space for me to fall apart. I needed to make arrangements, pay bills, get myself accepted to college, rent a room .... You see what I mean? I couldn't let myself be too sad. I had to function. No one else was going to take care of me. I had to do it myself."
I leaned back in my chair and let out a deep breath. That was the most I'd ever said about myself to any human being. In general, I tended to keep my feelings and struggles to myself. Still, that was the point of coming here, wasn't it? To unearth buried problems. Dr. Alan Todd continued to watch me quietly; he seemed to be thinking.
"So, what's your diagnosis?" I asked flippantly.
"Oh, you're depressed, certainly," he answered in a similar tone. "I'm just wondering how we can most usefully help you. I'm not sure medication is the way."
"Did you give Kris antidepressants?" I asked him.
He studied me. "I really can't talk about other patients," he said at last. "However, I can say that I don't normally prescribe antidepressant drugs for someone who is in what I would call a situational depression."
"What's a situational depression?" I asked.
"When something has happened to cause the depression. A specific situation, like the breakup of a marriage, or a death. Essentially, the depressed person is really grieving; it's a natural process. Quite different from a person who suffers from chronic depression."
"So, what about me?" I asked.
"Your situation is a little different," he said. "In my opinion, and of course it is just an initial guess at this point, your depression was probably triggered by the breakup with your boyfriend. But part of the problem is the loss of your parents. You didn't grieve then, as you explained, and the grief is still there inside. This most recent loss has touched those old, and very deep, feelings of loss and grief."
"So, I'm really depressed about my parents' deaths?"
"Possibly. I surmise, too, that even when they were alive, you felt somewhat cut off from them, somewhat isolated and unconnected, and that your depression is about this, also."
I sat quietly, thinking. The words rang a bell. I had long been aware of my inability to connect easily with other people. Over the years, I had rationalized that it was simply part of my personality. But now I wondered. Had I always been lonely? Was I sad about that?
And what about Lonny? He had been the closest I'd come to warmth and intimacy, and yet I had always held myself apart from him. I'd never wanted to take that final step, make a commitment, give up my autonomy. Since my parents' death, my autonomy had been my security. Not needing anyone was my defense against being hurt.
Was it time to make a change?
I stared at Dr. Alan Todd, wondering what to say. What came out was, "I don't know if I can change."
"Yes," he said simply.
"It's a long habit and it goes very deep. To hold myself apart, separate, invulnerable."
"Yes," he said again.
"Do you think it's behind this depression?"
"It's possible."
"What can I do?"
"I think," he said slowly, "that the best thing we can do is to talk about your parents and your childhood. We need to go back to the time when they died, as well as the times when you were a little girl, and you can perhaps let yourself experience your feelings of grief and loneliness. Depression is about depressing something. You're holding feelings down inside where you can't feel them, because you're afraid to feel them. You perceive them as too painful. If you let these feelings come up to your conscious mind and allow yourself simply to feel them, to accept them, oftentimes they will cease to trouble you.
"There's an old Zen saying, 'What you resist, persists.' " Dr. Alan Todd folded his hands in his lap.
What was this, a Zen shrink? I had the impulse to say, "Yes, master." Still, his words were hitting home. Somehow when he spoke about my parents, I felt an emotional resonance-like a bell that has been struck. Deep in my heart, I believed he was right.
"You don't want to prescribe some drugs?" I asked him.
He regarded me. "No, I don't think so," he said. "Not yet, anyway." Another level look. "Perhaps we could meet again in a week?"
"All right," I said.
He stood up; I did likewise. Apparently our interview was at an end. By my watch, it had taken almost an hour.
"How do I pay you?" I asked him as we walked down the hall.
"I'll send you a bill," he said cheerfully.
Remembering that he had taken my address and phone number when I'd first called him, I said, "Okay. And thank you."
"You're welcome." Giving me another cheerful smile, Dr. Todd disappeared back into his den.
I stood alone in the waiting room, which was still empty. Perhaps I was the last patient of the day. The thought made me feel odd. Here I was, the patient of a shrink, not a role in which I had ever envisioned myself. And yet, I found I believed that he was right, that he might help.
Whatever I was, I assured myself, I was not a quitter. Dr. Alan Todd had set me a task-to understand myself and my relationship to my parents. If that sort of understanding would help with this depression,
I would work at it.
TWELVE
By the following morning, I wasn't feeling so optimistic. My first call had turned out to be deeply frustrating-a horse who had gone down and wouldn't get up. This problem can have a number of causes, and in this particular case, I had found myself completely stymied when it came to diagnosing what was wrong.
The horse, a fat, gray Quarter Horse gelding, lay on his chest in the stall, obdurately refusing to get to his feet. His pulse and respiration were only mildly elevated, and he didn't seem to be in much, if any distress.
"He's been like that since yesterday," his owner, a woman in perhaps her sixties, said tearfully.
I stared at the horse. I'd already tried to get him up by the simplest methods; I'd run a rope from his halter over the rafter beam, and had his owner haul on it as hard as she could while I tugged with equal force on his tail. No go. The horse lunged upward and collapsed, seeming to lack control of his legs.
The only useful piece of information I had wasn't helping me much. The gelding was positive for HYPP, sometimes known as "Impressive" syndrome, as it often occurs in horses who are descended from the well-known Quarter Horse stallion Impressive.
Trouble was, the symptoms this horse was displaying didn't match up with HYPP.
Normally HYPP horses have seizurelike signs and obvious distress, and this horse had none of that. I'd already pumped some fluids into him-the classic treatment for HYPP-but so far I'd seen no results. At this point, I'd been here two hours. It was time to call for help.
I wasn't crazy about asking Jim to bail me out of difficult cases; let's face it, it hurt my pride. But I knew that it was in everybody's interest, let alone it was my moral obligation that I do the best I could for this horse. And right now that meant finding somebody who knew more about this situation than I did.
Unfortunately, Jim, when I finally got him on the phone, sounded genuinely puzzled. "I don't know, Gail. I've never seen an HYPP horse go down like you're describing. And if he is HYPP, there isn't much to do except run fluids into him and let him rest."
"I've done that. He's been down twenty-four hours now," I said.
"Better get him up," Jim said unhelpfully, and hung up the phone.
Great. I considered my options. Finally, I told the woman, "I think we need to make a real effort to get this horse on his feet."
"What can we do?"
"I think we could try a tow truck with a boom."
"Well, all right." She was dubious but accepting. Between us, we managed to make arrangements. An hour later the tow truck arrived, driven by an aging hillbilly in a dirty ball cap and low-slung jeans, who was sporting the worst-looking set of teeth I'd ever seen. He was friendly and helpful, though, and jockeyed his truck into the necessary position with a quiet competence that was reassuring.
Fastening the wide nylon webbing strap under the horse's belly, I instructed our driver to raise the animal at my signal. Once again, I steadied the gray's head and held the lead rope taut so he could brace against it.
"All right," I said.
Slowly and inexorably the boom lifted. In another minute the horse was on his feet. He stood there, swaying slightly. But he stood on all four feet. He had no broken legs, no dislocated joints, nor badly strained tendons. We all watched him.
After a few more minutes had passed, I unfastened the strap from around his belly. The tow truck driver was just climbing back in the cab when the horse collapsed, stumbling forward into the breezeway of the barn and settling almost calmly onto his belly.
"Damn," I said forcefully.
Now what? The gray still seemed remarkably quiet, but I felt he was beginning to show minor signs of stress. The woman who owned him was crying silently, tears running down her cheeks.
"Look," I told her, I hoped evenly, "this isn't going too well. In my experience, horses that go down and won't get up don't have a good prognosis. Horses aren't built to live lying down. If this guy doesn't get up in the next day or so, I'm afraid he'll probably die."
"But what's wrong with him?"
"I don't know," I said helplessly, even as various ideas spun through my head. Cancer? EPM? Heart failure? Nothing seemed to fit these specific circumstances.
"What should I do?” the woman asked.
"You've got three choices, basically. You can haul him to an equine hospital where they have more resources than I do, you can put him down, or you can wait and see."
"How long can I wait?”
"Another day, maybe," I said, feeling even more helpless. The truth was I simply didn't know.
"What would you do if it was your horse?" The woman swallowed a sob.
I hesitated. I hated this question, and I got it all the time. It was so terribly subjective. What I would do might be entirely unworkable for her.
"Haul him to the nearest equine hospital," I said at last. "They can put him in a sling, so he'll stand, and they'll probably be able to figure out what's wrong with him. But it will be expensive."
The woman stared at her horse, lying on his chest in the barn aisle, breathing heavily "All right," she said, "but how?"
I motioned to the tow truck driver who had been standing by his truck during our consultation. "We need to get this horse in a horse trailer," I said.
He nodded, already calculating the logistics of the problem.
"I can put him all the way out," I said.
He pointed at a large piece of plywood leaning against the barn wall. "If we can get him on to that, I can drag him out of the barn, like he was on a sled."
"Yeah." I looked at the owner. "This may not be pretty," I told her, "but we need to get him in the trailer, and it won't hurt him."
She nodded silently.
"Is there anyone who could help?" I asked. "What we could use is a few good, strong men."
"Maybe the neighbors," she said doubtfully.
An hour later we were more or less organized, with two neighboring men pressed into service. By now it was past noon, and my frustration was growing. Taking a deep breath and reminding myself to stay quiet and calm, I gave the gray horse five cc's of ketamine, which would put him all the way out for fifteen minutes or so.
The minute his nose was touching the dirt of the barn aisle, I nodded to my crew. "Let's go."
As we had prearranged, the five of us, using ropes and what strength we possessed, managed to lever the gelding onto the sheet of plywood, which had been attached by chains to the boom of the tow truck. As soon as he was on, more or less, the tow truck driver leaped into the cab and hauled him out onto the driveway where the horse trailer was ready and waiting.
Now came the tricky part. Thanking God the woman had a stock trailer rather than a little two-horse trailer, I helped the truck driver fasten a second chain to the boom. Once again he lifted the horse, looking for all the world like a carcass on a board, and we pushed, pulled, shoved, and dragged him into the trailer.
Just in time. We no sooner got the door latched than he snorted and lifted his head.
I tranquilized him, gave the woman more tranquilizers and directions for her journey, thanked everybody, and got back in my truck. It was two o'clock in the afternoon, I'd dealt with all of one call, and I was both sweating and starving. I called the office.
The receptionist sounded tense. "Jim's had a couple of emergencies," she said, "and he's way behind on his appointments. He was supposed to see this one woman at noon; he wants you to get out there as soon as you can."
"What's the matter with the horse?"
"It's too thin. She doesn't know what's wrong with it. She made the appointment earlier this week."
"Who is it?"
"Her name is Jeri Ward, and the horse is out at the Bishop Ranch. She's been waiting there since noon."
"Call and tell her I'll be right there."
I hung up the car phone, wondering. I knew a Jeri Ward. She was a detective with the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Department. But it couldn't be the same person. The Jeri Ward I knew did
not look like the type to own a horse.
I was wrong. When I pulled into the Bishop Ranch twenty minutes later, the woman who greeted me was indeed Detective Jeri Ward.
Parking my truck under the big cottonwood tree in the barnyard, I got out. Jeri Ward in jeans and a T-shirt looked remarkably different from the sleekly professional woman I'd met in the course of a murder investigation, many years ago. She also looked disconcertingly similar.
Even in her jeans, she appeared poised and well put-together; the white T-shirt unsullied, the short blond hair neatly groomed, the face calm and somewhat aloof. The sight of her brought back a rush of memories, most of them distinctly unnerving.
"Hello, Dr. McCarthy," she said, with just the faintest trace of amusement in her voice.
"Hello, Detective Ward," I replied. Belatedly I realized that she had made an appointment with Jim, not me, and that my presence was perhaps unwelcome. "Jim had an emergency," I said.
"No problem." Jeri Ward seemed quite unperturbed.
"Sorry about the wait," I added. "I was working on another emergency call."
"I understand," she said.
She probably did. As a cop, unexpected emergencies would be an everyday matter, just as they were for us vets.
"So what can I help you with?" I asked.
She smiled. I'd never really seen her smile before, I thought.
"My husband gave me a horse for my fortieth birthday," she said.
"Is that right?" I said stupidly. I'd always assumed this woman was single, that her cool professionalism reflected an austere nature; I would have bet she was solitary by choice. Apparently I was wrong again.
