I heard Dr. Khan give Aunt Jillian some sleeping pills (for me, not for her, though I can’t imagine she was getting much rest, between my caterwauling and the sheer worry she must have felt) and tell her to keep an eye on me. Since I’d already proven that I was capable of taking an overdose, Jillian kept track of my meds and doled them out to me as prescribed. The new sleeping pills knocked me out for hours at a time. From what I remember, I didn’t think about anything much in between bouts of sleep. I mostly lay around feeling wretched, feeling a sharp, inner agony that I couldn’t touch or see but which was nonetheless like a gaping wound somewhere inside of me. I did want to die; that I remember. Death was the only thing I felt would stop the pain of my existence. Like turning out a light. Snap. Done.
* * *
—
Akilah called again when I was awake one time. I picked up.
“Oh my God, I’ve been so worried! Are you okay?” Akilah’s panic showed on her face and in her voice. She was frantic. “You didn’t go and do anything to hurt yourself—?”
I groaned an apology to her. Tears trembled in my eyes. “I’m alive. But I can’t talk, okay? I’m sorry.” And I hung up on my very best and only friend. Which made me feel so bad I started to panic again. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I just be normal?
Tears, snat, anguish. Lather, rinse, repeat.
* * *
—
Julie and Jillian took turns sitting with me practically around the clock. I would fall asleep with my head in Julie’s lap and wake up in Jillian’s arms, hardly knowing one hour from another. I had never felt so wretched.
* * *
—
When Dr. Khan returned, I grumbled that house calls cost a fortune, and he said he didn’t usually make house calls at all. “I know what it’s like to be a new immigrant. It can be really scary. Everything’s big and strange. And it all moves so fast.” He added, “I don’t make this exception for everybody, though. Jillian and I go way back. You’re important to her and I want to help her support you. She didn’t want you to go back to a hospital so soon after your recent stay.”
First: Immigrant? Whaaaat? But I brushed that aside. I’d obsess about it later, I was sure. For now there were other details to unpick. Until he’d mentioned it, I hadn’t even thought about a house call as a big deal. And hospital? It never crossed my addled mind once. Then it hit me like a full-on Cobra Kai roundhouse kick how terrified Jillian and Julie must have been that I would have tried to kill myself again. It was true, though, I had had a Classic Nervous Breakdown. Again. This time I actually felt relieved I hadn’t died, as much as I had wanted to be dead when the dreaded canyon yawned in my belly. I was alive and I was…happy to be alive? Maybe not quite happy to be alive, but at least sort of happy I wasn’t dead. It was a lot to process. I wouldn’t let Jillian leave, gripping her hand like I did in the bathroom during the Tacos and Tequila Incident. Stay, please, I begged with my eyes. She smiled and squeezed my fingers to let me know she understood, and that she would stay. Julie leaned against the doorframe, looking elegant despite the fretful look on her face.
“What do you think led to this panic attack?” Dr. Khan asked baldly. He’d been so careful when we last met. I realized he’d decided to try another tactic.
“Was it…because of the boy?” Julie nervously prompted.
This whole episode wasn’t really anything to do with Josh or his dad. Yes, it was the awfully uncomfortable dinner that proved to be the tipping point, but honestly, it could have been anything pushing me over the edge. That afternoon, I should have known that something was up. I knew I was feeling sadder and more hopeless and scared than I had been since coming to Edmonton, and the awkward dinner somehow, in my tangled reasoning, seemed to be all my fault.
Dr. Khan smiled at me hopefully, waiting for me to say some of those things out loud. At first, I couldn’t. Though I had been under Dr. Khan’s care since I had been in Edmonton, he had never seen me crash. In our first long appointment he asked me stuff I recognized from sessions I’d had with the doctor in Trinidad. Usually Dr. Khan didn’t push me. He talked more than I did, because I didn’t say much in our sessions. This time he asked a lot of questions. Like, a lot. And he refused to let me avoid them.
I kept glancing over at Jillian and Julie. My mother had responded very coldly to this part of everything when I was in hospital, making me feel as though my whole existence was inadequate and that I was only making things harder for her as a single mom. But Jillian and Julie didn’t react like that. They looked worried while the doctor asked the first few questions—not worried I’d say something to embarrass them, but worried that I was so unwell. It was all new to me. I wanted to see how they would react to my answers. Dr. Khan finally asked me, “Do you want them to stay or are you going to work with me today, really work?”
I sighed. It was scary. But if the alternative was that disgusting hell of the last couple of days, then…“Okay. They can leave. Thanks, Aunties.”
They both said you’re welcome at the same time. They grinned a little and ducked out of the room to give us some privacy, holding each other’s hands on the way.
“Tell me what’s been going on,” Dr. Khan said. He was not as formal as my first psychiatrist at the hospital in Trinidad, and talked to me like I figured a big brother would, if I had one. “Are you taking the meds I prescribed?”
I nodded. I finally talked, in a low, shaky voice. “I do everything you said to do, Doctor. I take the medicine. I exercise. I try not to worry about things I can’t control. But I don’t know. Sometimes I just feel…You ever spin around really fast with a water balloon and then let it go? I feel like that.”
“Like the person spinning?”
“No. Like the balloon. I’m so scared. And when I get scared I get mad. And then I get sad because I’m so scared and mad and I can’t do anything about any of it. It makes me…” I slumped forward, dropping my chin to my chest, and wrapped my arms around my middle to hold back some of the pain that threatened to surge.
“Oh.” He sighed. “Antidepressants don’t work overnight,” Dr. Khan said, telling me what I already knew. “They take weeks to be absorbed into your system.” In my case, he explained, the medication I had been on since my troubles began took about three weeks to take effect, and as long as two months to really work. “You feel the meds have been helping? Do you feel better or worse now than when you came to Edmonton?”
“Kind of better? They help me not feel so sad. Sometimes.” Sometimes I still felt like I had the Grand Canyon in my belly, but to be honest those times had been getting further and further apart until the Classic Nervous Breakdown.