by Terri Cheney
Terribly, terribly happy was quickly dissolving into not so terribly comfortable. How absolutely marvelous. How thrilling. Probably nobody but a manic-depressive can understand that putting on the brakes is sometimes far more exhilarating than winning the race. Something was clearly working, and this time I was sure it was the new medication. Abilify was actually nicknamed “Goldilocks” because when it worked, it struck a balance between too much and too little dopamine until it finally, hopefully, hit on the amount that was just right for you.
“Just right.” Who would have thought that I would ever be satisfied with “just right,” when “more” is always around the next corner? But I knew that manic corner: you had to round it at three times the legal speed limit, and sooner or later a cop would be waiting for you on the other side, eagerly jingling his handcuffs and utterly indifferent to your diagnosis. That was why happiness for me no longer lived in excess. It lived in the absence of: the absence of pain, the absence of depression, the absence of consequences I never intended to incur.
I looked down again at the very visible snag on my thigh—and yes, there was a scuff mark on my shoe—then I straightened up. I felt noble and victorious, resisting the little hairs’ call to action. Dr. Cameron returned, patted me on the back and handed me the tape. “Let’s have one last look,” he said. “Open wide.” But my body had gone rigid with propriety and my jaw was practically clenched shut. “Wider,” he said. “Come on now, open up wide for me.”
It would be hard to resist a line like that even if you were not getting manic, but I did my best. Before Dr. Cameron’s aftershave made me forget all my good intentions, the exam was over. He reached down into his pocket and pulled out a lollipop. I swear. A big red lollipop. He handed it to me and laughed at the expression on my face. “This is actually your treatment,” he said. “I want you to go out and buy several bags of these when you leave. It’s extremely sour and when you suck on it it’s going to stimulate the parotid glands’ production of saliva. But I warn you, it’s going to be very, very uncomfortable. You’re going to feel a whole lot worse before you feel better.”
For more reasons than you could possibly know, I thought to myself, bending down and sticking the lollipop in my purse. Just forcing myself not to execute a come-hither head toss when I straightened up was almost more than the little hairs could stand. But it was war now, war against all those natural impulses that naturally got me into trouble, and I didn’t expect to be comfortable. I stood up and extended my hand, thanking Dr. Cameron for the tape and promising I’d get it back to him as soon as possible. God, his hand felt good in mine. But I pointedly didn’t make a definite date, and as of that moment, at least, I figured I’d just return the tape to his receptionist in a few days, and let matters take their own unfettered course from there. I’d put the repertoire of little tricks away, along with all my other nets and snares.
I left the room without a backward glance. The elevator was too slow, so I took the stairs. Ten, eleven, twelve flights down, and the back of my neck still tingled. When I stepped outside, twilight was starting to descend. I automatically headed in the direction of my pharmacy—but then I realized that for the first time in years, I had actually walked out of a doctor’s office without any prescriptions to fill. No wildly expensive pills or potions, just permission to buy a big bag of lollipops when I got home.
This must be what life is like for normal people, I thought. No drugs, just candy and bright blue skies in November that presage nothing more than a spectacular sunset. Maybe the Abilify fairy tale was coming true after all, and I really was Goldilocks and this really was a happy ending.
Happily ever after, for once—or at least, happily ever after, for now.
Or, better yet: just right.
4
I have never sinned on purpose. Not that it mattered now, when the deed was done. I paced the narrow cell, the cell without bars, without windows, with no distractions but my own wandering thoughts. I may very well have turned too late on that left-turn light. I couldn’t remember. I could remember the loudspeaker voice telling me to pull over and stop the car. But when I looked back in my rearview mirror, there was no one there. No black-and-white with the spinning red light on top. No one was there.
Not until I pulled up to the stop sign, and the pounding on my windows began. I peered into the dark and saw two faces with bicycle helmets on. It was ten o’clock at night, it was Van Nuys, and I was alone and not feeling very well. I took off with the tires squealing. Then at last came the siren, the flashing lights, and the same loud, tinny voice saying “Stop the car immediately. This is the police.”
Bicycle cops. I was arrested by bicycle cops.
I had at that point a near perfect driving record: one speeding ticket in seven years—and for a girl with a Porsche, that’s pretty damn good. So I wasn’t too concerned. Maybe one of my taillights was out. And surely they’d understand why I hadn’t pulled over in Van Nuys at ten P.M., all alone and no police car in my rearview mirror.
I forgot about the drugs. Not street drugs, perfectly legal. Prescribed. I kept my doctor’s card in my purse, along with the extra pills I always carried for safety’s sake. Granted, the pills were also lethal if taken with the wrong foods or medications. MAO inhibitors, they’re called, and they’re the court of last resort when it comes to manic depression. No doctor ever prescribes MAOIs unless everything else has failed. But I had been through every drug out there, not just in the United States, but Europe, too. I had been through electroshock therapy, and every other kind of therapy known to man. Nothing had worked. When depressed, I was suicidal. When manic, I had the energy to act on those suicidal impulses—and I did. Repeatedly.
So when my doctor prescribed an MAOI, I went along with it. I looked it up in the PDR, and it freaked me out. If I ate anything containing the substance tyramine, I would have a stroke. Tyramine is everywhere: in pizza, red wine, cheese, smoked meats, liver, caviar, and fava beans, just to name a few. I figured I could live without fava beans, even pizza if I had to. And I had to. I was inches away from the next suicide attempt, and I knew it.
The only problem was, I kept fainting. Mostly when I stood up, but sometimes when I was walking. Never when I was sitting down. So far as we could tell, the drugs made my blood pressure plummet when I stood up, a condition called orthostatic hypotension. I carried a compact blood pressure kit with me, and tried to monitor myself every hour or so. Lately, it hadn’t been much help.
I’d fainted everywhere during the past few weeks—at the Third Street Promenade, at the Beverly Hills Public Library, in my boyfriend’s arms, in a stranger’s arms. Once I passed out on the sidewalk in a not-so-good part of town, and woke to find my purse stolen and my skirt partially unzipped. I passed out walking to Saks in Beverly Hills, and was shaken awake by two cops, who wanted to take me into custody but finally relented once I got my therapist on my cell phone. He explained the situation—that I had never sinned on purpose, and that the medication was prescribed. The cops were nice about it. They even offered to drive me home, but by that time I was fine—coherent, well-mannered, even a little flirty—so they let me go with a warning about walking on public streets while I was taking this medication. A warning. Who ever listens to a policeman’s warning? You’re just relieved you talked your way out of the mess, even a bit smug about your luck. I should have listened.
When the Van Nuys cops told me to get out of the car, I hesitated, because it meant standing up. “Get out of the car, with your hands in plain view.” I pushed myself up by the steering wheel, placed my hands in plain view on the car door, and the world went white again. Then little spots started to swim in front of my eyes, like they always did when I came to. All I could clearly see was the bicycle helmet looming over me: “Stand up and walk in a straight line,” it said. “I’m sorry, really, I’d like to. I’m just a little bit dizzy right now….”
A second helmet swam into view, then four arms, and then I was up against the car, and
all the hands were patting my body. “It’s in my purse,” I said. I meant my doctor’s number, that would solve everything, just like with those nice cops in Beverly Hills. But this was Van Nuys, and when they dumped my purse out on the sidewalk, all the extra pills spilled out. While I tried to explain, they read me my rights. Just like on TV.
It was everything you’ve ever seen, and a bit more. The handcuffs bit into my wrists, they were cold, and they made an unexpected snapping sound when they closed shut. The police station was dirty, crowded, and I couldn’t place the smell. When they took the mug shot, I didn’t know whether to smile or look whipped. But the booking was worst of all. I kept trying to explain, begging them to just let me call my doctor. Or my lawyer, my therapist, my boyfriend. The woman carefully rolling my fingers in the black smudgy ink refused to even look me in the eyes. None of them looked me in the eyes. They focused somewhere around my throat, as if measuring it for a possible choke hold. I started to realize that I wasn’t human anymore, that once they’d assigned me a case number, my eyes no longer existed.
Next a woman cop took me into a little room behind the booking desk. She undid the handcuffs, God bless her, and told me to wait there. I thought this was finally cell phone time, they’d certainly taken long enough. But she came back with rubber gloves on, and a little mirror attached to a stick, like a dentist uses to check for cavities.
Still looking anywhere but in my eyes, she held out a metal box. “Shoelaces, belt and watch,” she said. I wasn’t wearing shoelaces, I was wearing ballet flats. Chanel, my favorites. But they did have little bowties on them, so I took them off. I noticed my hands were trembling. “Now undress.” I stared at her. “Do it or else I’ll do it for you.” I was wearing a summer dress, my Audrey Hepburn dress, I called it. I had no bra on underneath, not even a slip—just summer panties. If I took it off, I would be naked. “What for?” I asked. “Body search.” “Wait, you don’t understand, it was prescription medication.” She took me by the shoulders and turned me around, unzipped my dress, and pulled it over my head. Then she bent me over.
This wasn’t happening, it couldn’t be; but the rubber fingers were very real. Thank God I couldn’t see what was going on back there, or what she saw in the little dental mirror. When it was over, she told me to stand up and wait there. Standing up was scary, because I thought I might faint again, but my head slowly cleared and I stood my ground. She returned a few minutes later with an orange jumpsuit: “Put this on, and wait there.” Wait there, wait there. Where the hell else was I supposed to go? “What about my phone call?” I asked, but she had already shut the door behind her.
Orange has never been my color. I had to wear it for a year as a varsity cheerleader, and I looked like hell the whole time. Redheads should almost never wear orange. The jumpsuit was far too big, and scratchy as a Brillo pad, but I just rolled up the legs and sleeves and waited there.
The trembling worried me. It was more than fear, it was a sign of something going chemically wrong. I tremble when I’m manic, I get light-headed and dizzy, and I sweat. All of which I was doing now. And I could feel the words coming on, the irresistible desire to say all the things spinning around in my head. I needed that phone call; I needed it badly.
A male cop finally opened the door. I saw the handcuffs dangling from his belt, but he didn’t put them on me. He just told me to follow him. “What about my phone call?” I asked, but he didn’t answer. I followed him down a long hall, through a heavy metal door with iron bars on the window that we had to be buzzed through. On one side of the room was what I knew from TV to be a holding cell, containing half a dozen women still dressed in street clothes, looking bored and a bit disheveled. One of them was reading a book, which for some reason gave me hope.
We kept going, past another metal door with another iron-barred window, down yet another hallway. We finally stopped in front of a third door, also metal but even thicker. This one had no windows. The door guarded a small, maybe 8 x 10–foot room, with a metal bench attached to the longer wall. When the policeman told me to go in and wait there, I gladly entered and sat on the bench, relieved. I assumed the cell phone was coming at last, and they wanted to give me complete privacy. Until the metal door swung shut, and it clanged. I’d seen enough TV shows to know the meaning of a door that clangs shut. I’d always assumed that it was some kind of enhanced sound effect, but in fact it was even louder, clangier, more final than I had imagined.
It was long past time for my medication. I had been on my way home to take it when I was pulled over. The MAOIs required precise dosing to maintain a safe and effective level in the blood. It’s a religion with me, taking my pills on time. I don’t want to mess with the gods, or my brain chemistry. Just because I’m mentally ill doesn’t mean I’m crazy.
I should have known that I was getting manic long before my trembling fingers tried to zip up the orange jumpsuit. What, in the name of God and all the saints, was I doing in Van Nuys? I never go to the Valley. Especially not in summer, when it’s hot and smoggy. It was coming back to me, in scattered bits and pieces: I had left my house in Benedict Canyon while it was still light. I wanted wildflowers. I always want wildflowers at the beginning of mania, there’s something about the illicit search and pluck that thrills me. Wildflowers, you see, don’t always grow wild. Not when you’re manic.
The best picking was north of my house, where the canyon slowly winds up toward Mulholland Drive, and the real estate values climb proportionately. When you’re manic, it’s sometimes impossible to change direction. You just go and keep on going. So I must have worked my way up to Mulholland and continued over and down the hill to Van Nuys. I had a vague recollection of sitting in a dim, noisy coffeehouse, surrounded by young men and the constant pinging of video games. Ordering lattes for us all, treating, as I always did when I was manic. And flirting. Flirting hard, with someone, a boy with an accent. That gorgeous dusky boy from Mombasa, with the desert sheik eyes. The parking lot, the kiss—no, wait, the kisses. His hands. My car. Did I even ask his name? Did I ever, when I was manic? Thank God my car had bucket seats, and a stick shift in between.
I must have fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion because I don’t remember lying down. When I woke, my throat was achingly dry and my tongue thick and coated. I heard a knocking on the door, and a key clicking in the lock. A guard entered, carrying a plastic tray with a banana, a small container of orange juice, and a slice of bread with a pat of butter on top. It must have been breakfast time. I had been arrested before midnight.
“What about my phone call?” I demanded. “I just give out the food,” said the guard, and he placed the tray on the floor and left. I threw the whole thing at the door, but it barely made a sound against the reinforced metal. I refused to eat their lousy food, although I swallowed the orange juice in one grateful gulp. One of the worst side effects of my medication is the constant dry mouth. I never go anywhere without a bottle of water and a half dozen tubes of lip balm. But they had confiscated all my ChapStick at the desk, and now the corners of my mouth were starting to crack and bleed. I took the pat of butter off the tray and smeared it across my lips. It was time to get crafty; who knew how long I’d be in there. I took the remaining butter and spread it in my belly button, and in between my toes, for later.
I had no idea how long I’d been locked in solitary confinement when a guard finally arrived to escort me to the phone. I was worried, of all things, about the butter dripping from my belly button into my pubic area. If they were going to conduct another cavity search, would it look like some kind of melted drug?
But the guard took me to a phone, and stood watch outside while I dialed my therapist’s number, which I knew by heart. There was no ring. I hung up and tried again, thinking perhaps my shaking hands had punched the wrong buttons. No ring, again. A third time, and now no dial tone at all.
I opened the door and told the guard that the phone didn’t work. Was there another one, or could I get a cell phone? Talking to my thro
at, he explained that in solo detention you’re only allowed one phone call per hour. I could hear my voice rise: “Wait a minute, I’ve been here all night, and this is the first time I’ve ever been allowed to call anyone. You’re telling me I have to wait another hour before I can talk to my lawyer? To my lawyer?!” My brain struggled to remember what the TV shows said about a prisoner’s right to one phone call. Did it count if the call didn’t go through? Were they supposed to give you another phone? I couldn’t remember, nor did my legal training help, since all I knew was entertainment and copyright law.
The guard returned me to the clanging door. I have no idea how long I paced and cried and pounded that damned door before another guard, a woman this time, finally came to get me. Lunch had already gone by, meaning another pat of butter was safely smeared on the cold tile floor where it wouldn’t melt. The guard gestured impatiently, but I stood up too quickly and the earth started slipping away. I grabbed her by the arm to steady myself. Never grab a guard by the arm. She jerked back, I fell, and she clanged the door shut again.
The meal was waiting for me on the floor when I came to. Sometimes protein helped ease the shakes, so I carefully peeled off the cheese from the gray thing that might have been meat, and nibbled. A few minutes later, the same woman guard unlocked the door. “Sobered up yet?” she said. I started crying as we walked down the hall, partly in relief that it looked like I was going to get another phone call, and partly in frustration that I couldn’t make myself understood. “I’m not drunk,” I said. “I’m not even on drugs, they’re prescribed. But I need my medication. It’s really serious. You have no idea how serious it is.” This woman had a genius for ignoring her fellow creatures. “At least look me in the fucking eyes while you’re ignoring me, goddamit!” I shouted. And then I knew that a certain line had been crossed, both with the cops and with my own level of sanity. I would never knowingly say “fuck” to a police officer, any more than I would say “fuck” to a judge. Unless I was manic. I was probably manic. Good. The fucking bastards deserved it.
