Conversations 18 - PM

I saw droplets of my spit hit her cheek. "You awful, fucking spiteful bitch!"

I crawled up over her, my pants down around my ankle, my weight holding her in place. I used my knees to spread her legs wide apart.

"Stop it. David! I mean it. Stop!"

I pushed my hips forward and felt the heat of her against me. My mistake was looking at her face. Tears were streaming over her cheeks as she stared at me in desperation, still trying to push me away.

"Not like this, Mac," Shana whispered, her voice catching as she wept. "Not like this. Not in hate. I love you."

I'm not sure that anything else would have had any effect. But, the monster was in charge, and Shana was right -- the monster did hate her. It hated her for not loving me enough, for breaking her promises, for making me feel worthless and small, for forcing me to push her away. Oh, the monster hated her so much!

But I still loved her.

A whole universe of shame suddenly rushed through me. I couldn't bear for her to even look at me. I had to hide.

So I walked away, horrified at what I'd almost done, my sense of self-worth utterly shattered.

I was sitting in the lounge when she walked through, carrying her suitcase.

"I think it best that I leave now."

I nodded, feeling like... no, knowing I was the lowest, meanest creature that walked or crawled the earth. I'd never tried to force myself on a woman before.

"Will you be alright by yourself?" she asked.

Again the nod.

"I've left the pills on the kitchen counter; you'll need to make sure you take them at the right time.

I couldn't raise the energy even to nod again.

"You need to eat properly and sleep at set times; otherwise..."

I interrupted her. "Just go."

"I can come and check on..."

"No! Don't come back."

"Mac, I don't know what to say anymore."

"Then don't say it. Leave in silence. Please just go away."

Her free hand waved helplessly in the air for a moment, and then she turned and left. The closing of the door felt like the death knell at the ending of the world. All those insanely ugly, desperate thoughts that I'd fought off for what felt like a lifetime rushed back in. I was not only demonstrably a worthless human being; I'd been half an inch away from being a rapist as well.

"I'm so sorry," I whispered into the silence.

I don't know whether I sat there for minutes, hours or days. When I looked around, it had grown dark. I liked it dark. I didn't have to see the terrible mundanity of my life in the dark, and I could see the things in my head more clearly.

I went to the computer, checked a few things on the net and made some donations to charities. I thought about writing a note but decided against it. Then I rounded up a few things to eat and drink, swallowed them, and lay down on the settee in the dark -- the safe, enveloping dark.

After a while, I heard shouting in the distance. Probably those fucking neighbours again with their noisy antics!

Then I fell asleep, free of pain at last.

I dreamed.

I dreamt of a girl in a tower guarded by a dragon, and when I tried to slip inside to save her, the dragon's tail caught me and threw me down. Green demons sat on my chest and tied me up before carrying me away in a chariot. Then, angels in white swept down and chased the monsters away, pulling the chariot along with their bare hands, like slaves building the pyramids. I felt the cold sweat on my skin drying with my relief until I realised that the winged woman alongside me had no hands, her arms ending in long tentacles. She thrust one into my mouth, and it grew longer like an erecting penis, choking me until it laid an egg alongside my heart. She stroked my chest and then patted it harder and harder until the egg hatched and a creature from the Alien movie burst through and out into the world and...

I woke up and heard myself croak with fear. I was no longer in my bedroom but in a curtained off portion of a much larger room. Alongside me was a drip machine; drops of clear liquid from two different transparent bags running down into a needle in the back of my hand. On the other side was a monitor. I recognised the signal on the screen from movies, although it didn't seem to be doing anything wildly exciting.

I closed my eyes again and inventoried my body. My throat was sore and dry enough to make the Sahara seem lush. My tongue felt swollen and raspy, and was signalling the acrid aftertaste of vomit. My chest didn't seem to have a hole in it, so I supposed the hatched alien of my dream wasn't in actuality hiding in the room and was most unlikely to be hanging around amongst the bedsprings as I'd imagined.

I rubbed my face. Or at least I tried to rub it. But, for some reason, my arms wouldn't move, and it took a couple of seconds before I realised that they were restrained. Then, I heard the monitor's beeping suddenly start to go crazy as I tried to free my arms, pulling at the restraints and twisting my body from side to side.

There were quick footsteps, and a nurse hove into view. She quickly checked the various tubes and wires connecting me to the power grid as I tried to ask what was happening. My attempts were in vain, my throat too dry to do more than croak at her. After she finished her maintenance check, she laid a hand on my chest.

"Don't try and talk," she said calmly, in contrast to my panic. There was no comfort in her voice. "We had to pump your stomach, and the procedure often leads to a sore throat. Your vocal cords might be a little traumatised."

"Why..." I croaked in a whisper, even that faint murmur sounding to my ears like a chorus from the Child Catcher and Darth Vader. Frustrated, I shook my hands helplessly within their bonds.

"Don't worry," she said. "It's standard procedure -- for your safety. Suicidal people sometimes need to be restrained so we can help them get better without them trying to... you know. Luckily, your wife found you in time and knew how to perform CPR."

She peered over at the corner of the room. My eyes followed, and there was Shana, curled up on a chair, snoring lightly. I hadn't noticed her there.

"She's a doctor," I grated.

"Oh, then I'm sure you'll be fine. Would you like me to wake her up and tell her you've come around? She was so worried."

I shook my head.

My attempt to escape from the pain and shame had failed. Instead, my bête-noir had ensured I would stick around to regret my life even further.

"How long?" She had to put her ear close to my mouth to hear; my voice was so faint. She smelt freshly showered, a mixture of soap and shampoo, with a hint of perfume.

"Since the ambulance brought you here? Two days," she responded crisply. "Now, get some rest, and I'll let Doctor know you're up and about."

I guessed 'up and about' was an overly cheerful way of saying 'awake'. I assumed they went all out to be positive and upbeat with attempted suicides.

Shortly afterwards, a young South Asian man in a white coat walked in and picked up my chart.

"Mr David MacLeith? Can you tell me your date of birth and the first line of your address?"

I croaked the correct reply.

"How are you feeling?"

I nodded.

"Good, good," he said automatically. He hadn't looked at me yet.

"Do you remember what happened?"

It seemed a ridiculous question. I had swallowed a vial full of antidepressants, half a litre of whisky, and as much of the cooking sherry I'd found in my pantry as I could stand. If any of them had offered to wipe my memory, I would have concentrated on those and left the packet of OTC aspirin alone. But, of course, if I'd been braver, I wouldn't have needed any of them, as my apartment was five floors up, with access to the roof another three storeys above that.

I nodded again, forcing him to look at me for the first time.

"Reading your notes, I'm pretty sure of the answer, but I need to ask. Did you know the consequences of taking the substances you ingested?"

"Yes," I said reluctantly. My failure made the attempt seem petty and childish -- a useless, stupid protest to the universe. I was sure the paramedics and hospital staff had better things to do than pick up the pieces of my abortive tantrum against life. I was sure they thought so as well.

There was a gasp from the corner of the room. I looked over, and my eyes locked on Shana's. She looked exhausted, haggard and old. I felt another wave of guilt rush through me for taking her beauty away.

"When you arrived at A&E, you needed assistance to breathe, and your heart had stopped while you were in the ambulance. A Dr MacLeith was with..." He broke off, flipped over a couple of pages of my notes and turned to Shana. "You are his wife and his doctor?"

"Yes," she said. Even her voice sounded defeated.

"Then you signed the..."

"Yes."

"That's a little troubling," he commented.

"It is what it is," she sighed.

A little beep came from the doctor's pocket. He slipped something out of it, looked at it and then turned to Shana as if I had ceased to exist. "I'm being paged. As his doctor, would you mind explaining what treatment he is receiving and why?"

She nodded and took the clipboard from him.

"Thank you." He left without a further glance in my direction. I was sure that doctors and hospital staff got pissed off at failed suicides adding to their load of accidents and illnesses. Either that or he was just an utter prick with an over-inflated sense of his own importance. The jury was still out.

Shana walked to my bedside and looked down at me. Her eyes were now like mine; red, bloodshot pissholes in the snow. For a moment, there was a twinge of satisfaction that she looked as bad as me, and then it turned around, and I just felt so sad. She had always been the standard for beauty in my eyes, and very few women had measured up to it. I didn't want my memories of her to be tarnished into ugliness. She saw something in my eyes, and her gaze skittered away and lit on the carafe of water on the locker next to my bed.

She poured some into a glass and helped me sip at it, the cool liquid tasting like the sweetest nectar, even though my throat protested at the necessary swallowing.

Following the other doctor's request, Shana detailed the staff's actions after the ambulance arrived, and I realised that my dream had been a strange, disjointed interpretation of reality, from the green-clad paramedics to the angelic nurses who had forced a tube down my throat.

"You were the one who found me?"

She nodded and tried to continue. "I forgot to leave my key, so I popped back to drop it off."

She paused for a moment. "The overdose might have affected your heart and kidneys, so they'll monitor you closely for a few days while referring you to psychiatric care.

I waited until the end. "So you signed off on me being tied down, like some mad lunatic?"

She blinked rapidly, then pursed her lips. "Yes. It's to prevent patients waking up and trying to harm themselves."

"Please release me, Shana. You know that yesterday's incident wasn't who I am, or at least who I was. I'm not sure who I am anymore. But you know how much I hate the idea of being trapped somewhere."

It was true. I can't remember the incident, but when they were still alive, my parents talked of me getting stuck in an old trunk at some point when I was very young. So there was bitter irony in the fact that I'd been trapped in my flat, alone, for the past months.

She hesitated for a long moment. I stuck it out in silence. Despite what she might imagine, that loss of control that led to my attempt on her was not the real me, and she knew it. Silently she made a note on the chart and loosened the buckles of the wrist restraints.

"Mac," she said as I rubbed my wrists weakly. "I would have gladly made love with you and done it with all my heart the day before yesterday. I would do anything to get you back. But I couldn't bear it if you did it out of hate or spite."

I stared at her. "I don't love you."

Her face contorted for a split second, and I saw the pain she felt hearing that bald-faced lie. It depressed me even more.

Over the next couple of days, she was always there, a smile on her face and pain in her eyes. And every time I looked into those eyes, I felt even worse. Love is supposed to make you feel fantastic, light-hearted, full of the zest of Spring. But, instead, my love for her just depressed the shit out of me.

A psychiatrist came around and took Shana off to his office to consult with her. Later he came by to get my input, sitting next to the bed and never saying much, just prompting me now and again to get the whole story of my life over the last couple of years. Strangely, he never once asked how I felt about it. I thought that was de rigueur for any shrink worth his salt. He did prescribe different meds, however.

After a whole week in the hospital and several very intensive sessions later, he seemed satisfied that I probably wouldn't again try to kill myself anytime soon and offered to sign a release for me for the next day -- although requesting I attend a final session in his office before that to discuss a course of treatment. It was a little weird. I was used to doctors ordering people about like they thought they were photographers or wedding planners. So being requested to do something was pleasantly different.

Another difference was Shana's presence when I turned up at his office for my appointment late in the afternoon. She hadn't returned the past few days and hadn't moved back into my flat -- or at least I didn't think so -- so I'd imagined I'd pretty much seen the last of her. But no -- here she was, dressed in a knee-length summer sky blue frock with her hair and make-up looking as good as ever as if she was heading for an afternoon in the park. She was seated in one of the three armchairs in the shrink's office. I scowled at her, sat in the remaining one and then pointedly turned away.

"I brought the car so you can get home," she said quietly. I didn't reply.

"Officially, Mrs MacLeith is still your doctor," Dr Reynes explained in a calm voice as I tried to ignore her presence by concentrating on all the certificates he had hung up on his wall. "And it will help your treatment if she understands all the details. But if you want to be treated without her here, that's fine."

"Why do your certificates say Mister Reynes if you're a doctor?" I asked, wanting time to consider his words.

"My mother is from rural Africa," he replied. "She hoped that giving me that as my Christian name would help lift me socially amongst my peers. It was a fairly common practice at the time, naming children Patience, Goodness, Intelligence or even Teacher -- a hope for the future of a child."

I looked at him closely and realised for the first time that he was of mixed race origin. He was pretty old, and his short-cropped hair was white. I hadn't noticed anything more than a good tan before.

"It didn't work," he said with a wry smile. "Apart from a few friends, most of my peers thought I was just a nerdish bookworm with a weird name and gave me all sorts of nicknames to avoid having to call me Mister. My mother's thought was a loving one, but once I'd qualified, I took to using my middle name, Eric -- my father's name."

I nodded. That was fair enough. It also made him a little more interesting.

"Shana can stay," I said. It wouldn't make anything worse than it already was, so why make a fuss.

"Okay, shall we begin? Mr MacLeith..."

"Mac," I interrupted him. "Just Mac."

He nodded thoughtfully and started again.

"Mac, simply put, you experienced a schizoaffective disorder. You have deep depression -- which you already know. I changed your prescription, and you should be starting to think more clearly by now. From your medical records and what you've told me over the last couple of days, this is not a long-term thing. And by long-term, I mean life-long. So it's not episodic and not a genetic chemical imbalance. You experienced intense trauma and simply reacted to it by withdrawing into yourself. The reason your depression started is pretty straightforward and understandable, and I think in normal times, you would have been seen and helped long before it got to this stage. But, unfortunately, this global pandemic has affected almost every single person. We are a social species, and being forced to isolate has caused more mental illness than you would believe."

He gave a rueful smile. "I think almost every psychiatrist currently has to be treated by one or other of their colleagues, so even though we understand the process, we're not immune either.

"I'm going to recommend several courses of action that should help you get out of it. Depression is something that you have to recognise that you are suffering from and take positive steps to rise out of it. The medication will help, but you are going to have to work at it.

"It won't be anything huge or wildly exciting -- unless you want it to be, of course. That's worked for quite a few patients who've taken up sky-diving or mountain-bike racing, things like that. The adrenalin rush is a good antidote. It makes you feel alive. But I'm talking more about getting out, doing things, talking to people, taking exercise. Take up a sport -- anything from badminton to cage fighting, it doesn't matter what it is. Have a plan for how tomorrow is supposed to go. Create some stability in your life. Those are all things that you need to use to get over it."

I nodded. I recognised what he meant -- that seductive feeling of passively letting life happen rather than forcing it into a pattern.

"We've discussed the trigger point for your assault on your wife. I think the change in medication should help you control your reactions and take care of that. We'll discuss that further in a future session.

"How do you feel about what I've said so far?" he asked.

I paused for a long moment, looking at the nap of the rug.

"I hate it," I hissed. "I hate it with all my being."

"Me?" Shana said with a sudden terrible look of grief on her face. She had been quietly listening, nodding now and again in agreement with his analysis. "You hate me that much?"

"Yes... No. Ah, fuck it! I hate this whole situation. I hate that you left. I hate that you fucked around on me. I hate that I found out and couldn't forgive and forget. I hate that I have to not think about you or I start to feel ill. All this hatred bubbles inside me, and I don't know how to get rid of it.

"Most of the time, I try not to think about it. I keep busy on the computer, analysing stocks all day long because doing that eats up time while not having to think about you."

I turned to face her.

"You broke me. You took the love I had for you and threw it in the garbage. In doing that, you broke something inside me. And now I'm so scared I'm never going to feel happy ever again that it makes me want to throw up."

My old problem with leaking tear ducts had started up again. There must be something about air-conditioning that causes it, I thought, looking at the vent on the wall behind the doctor. Then I remembered I didn't have air-conditioning in my apartment, just trusty old radiators. So much for that theory.

"And most of all," I finished, my voice so low it was almost a whisper. "I hate that I can't stop missing you."

If I had intended to hurt Shana, I would have won the world title at it with that final blow. She broke down completely, her body heaving as she drew great breaths in before letting them out again in desperate, grieving wails as if she was mourning the dead.

I didn't know what to do. I was sorry that my confession had caused so much pain, despite our history. I had no idea what to do. However, Mister Reynes didn't move, so I took my cue from him.

After a moment, he spoke again, giving her time to get herself under control. "Mac, yours is a severe depression. As I said, you have, or had, a schizoaffective disorder, which finally led to an attempt to end your own life, and it's not something to take lightly. But I think you're on the road to recovery, and I don't think you have it in mind to try that again. That's why I'd prefer to get you out of the hospital and back home -- with some care services."