The Healing (22 page)

chapter twenty-six

Karen raced to the kitchen sink and splashed cold water on her face. Mike was already asleep in the living room, splayed out like a broken puppet on the bed. And it was a good thing he had fallen into a coma-like slumber before his head even hit the pillow, because Karen was losing her composure. Watching Mike lose control of his hands was far more difficult than she could have imagined. She had tried her best to act like nothing was awry as she fed him those few slivers of steak, but it was the hardest thing she'd ever done.

Now she was trembling from head to toe. The last hour and a half had been like a drug rush—the glimpse of her old Mike being the fix and his surrender being the crash.

At least she'd gotten him outside. At least she'd lifted his spirits, if only for a few moments. He even had a beer.

Had she pushed him too far? Maybe she should have listened to him when he told her he was exhausted. Maybe going outside just sapped the last of his energy. Or maybe the alcohol in the beer had a negative effect because of his other medications. He couldn't be losing the use of his hands.
Please, God. Not yet.

She braced herself against the edge of the kitchen counter and took a few slow, deep breaths. She told herself that when he woke up, she'd offer him the rest of his steak, and he'd manage to eat it by himself. Rested and hungry, he might even enjoy it. If he did, he'd give her one of his charming winks.

She had seen the possibilities in his eyes just a short while ago.

But Karen never had the chance to find out. Just as she was fighting her way back from the edge of despair, the phone rang. She answered it before it rang a second time, grateful for the reprieve from her own thoughts. “Hello?”

“Hello, Mrs. Donnelly?”

She immediately determined that the tentative male voice on the other end was unfamiliar. “Yes?”

“My name is Jerry Doyle. You might remember me, Mrs. Donnelly. I work at the Bayview Inn with Lori, and you brought her to my house last week to pick up her car.”

Karen's heart flew into her throat. “Where is she? Is she okay?”

“She's here at my house,” the young man told her. There was a forced steadiness in his voice. “She came here after work, and—well—I don't think she's feeling very well.”

To Karen's horror, she heard Lori sobbing and babbling unintelligibly in the background. And she heard the young man trying to calm her down, to no avail.

“Is she drunk?” Karen asked.

“I don't know, Mrs. Donnelly. She was like this when she got here.” He directed a few more words of comfort to his distraught visitor. Then, very quietly, he told Karen, “I think she hit a squirrel with her car or something.”

“Did you say she hit a squirrel?” Karen asked, incredulous.

There was a wail of misery from Lori, and once again Jerry tried to soothe her. “Yeah, but she's way too upset. Something's not right. She's not making sense.”

Oh, no,
Karen screamed inwardly.
Could she be slipping into psychosis?

Out loud she asked, “Is anyone else there with you?”

“No. Should there be?” Edginess crept into Jerry's voice.

“Lori's not dangerous,” Karen reassured him. “Except possibly to herself.”

“I have to tell you, she's freaking me out a little,” the young man confessed.

“I'll be right over, Jerry,” Karen told him calmly, realizing she must have sounded far too sedate for a mother whose only child was apparently losing touch with reality. But by the time Karen hung up the phone, her reliable numbness had set in. She had to think clearly. She would evaluate Lori's condition when she got her home. And she had to figure out what to do in case her daughter needed to go to the hospital.

Mike was sound asleep in the living room, and Karen didn't disturb him. Learning that his daughter had plummeted into her old abyss was certainly not going to help him overcome his own obstacles. It was far better to let him get as much rest as possible so when he woke up facing a new crisis, he would be better able to handle it.

Karen wasn't comfortable leaving Mike alone, but she didn't have a choice. Besides, if he was awake, he would demand that she go out after their daughter, just like he had the week before. So she placed both the medical alert pager and the cordless phone beside him on the bed, said a quick prayer that she didn't get a flat tire or a speeding ticket, and grabbed her cell phone before sprinting out the door.

She remembered where Jerry lived and veered into the dirt driveway, parking alongside Lori's Honda. Although she was practically out of the van before it came to a stop, Karen didn't have to go up to the front door because Jerry was already guiding Lori out. She was walking like a zombie, her face colorless and her sunken eyes rimmed with red. When she saw her mother, those tormented eyes welled with fresh tears.

“I know they think I did it on purpose, but I didn't,” she said, rambling.

Karen's heart sank. “I know, sweetheart,” she replied in spite of herself. “Don't you worry about that right now.”

Jerry was a tall, lanky youth with sandy hair and a mild case of acne, but the sad confusion on his face made him look like a lost little boy. As he handed Lori over, his pale eyes sought Karen's for some logical answer. But she couldn't put his mind at rest. “Thank you, Jerry,” was all she could say while Lori was between them.

“Mrs. Donnelly?” It sounded like Jerry was pleading for some understanding.

Karen guided her daughter into the van's passenger seat and closed the door. Only then did she turn to Lori's bewildered friend. “Lori suffers from depression, and she's an alcoholic. This is what happens when she falls off the wagon.”

Jerry appeared stricken. “I didn't know—”

“She'll get better,” Karen added, as if she had to convince herself as well. “It'll just take a few weeks.”

Karen felt like she was falling backward into a dark tunnel as she led her daughter into the house. Even Luka's insistent barking from outside on her dog run couldn't pierce the numbness. Lori took one look at her sleeping father sprawled on his hospital bed in the living room and fell apart. “He's going to die tonight, Ma. Look at him. He's going to die. I hit the squirrel, and it was a sign. Don't you see? It was dead and lying in the road. Lying there, just like him!”

“Lori,” Karen said. She took her daughter by the arms and looked into her face. “Daddy's not going to die. He's just taking a nap.”

“But he
wants
to die. I heard him tell you.” No delusions there.

Karen was at a complete loss. “He's very sick, sweetheart,” she said as evenly as she could manage. “Sometimes sick people say things they don't mean.”

Lori continued to sob inconsolably. Karen tried to lead her away from the living room before Mike woke up and saw her in such a state, but it was no use. Lori's legs liquefied beneath her. So Karen just gathered her daughter in her arms, and they both sank to the carpeted floor. “They think I did it on purpose—” Lori said, blubbering almost incoherently.

“Did what?”

“I would never do something like that—the poor little thing—”

Was she still talking about the
squirrel
?

“I can't—I can't do this anymore,” Lori said. Her shoulders were shaking and her contorted face was reminiscent of how she looked as a little girl when her daddy would yell at her. It wasn't very often, because Mike had no stomach for seeing his baby cry.

This was going to kill him.

Karen glanced over at Mike and saw him stir. He opened his eyes and blinked a few times. She could tell when the realization hit him because a silent jolt seized his body and widened his eyes with a kind of terror. Karen could only imagine how Mike felt. He woke up from a peaceful nap to see Lori in a state of mental collapse on the living room floor, shaking violently in Karen's arms and wailing like someone who had just been told she would never get out of her dungeon of pain.

“Baby?” Mike called. Karen watched him grip the rail and try to squirm to the edge of the bed. She couldn't help him. If she let go of Lori, she was afraid her daughter would melt. “What's going on?” he asked. There was panic in his voice. “What happened?”

“I can't do this anymore,” Lori kept saying. “I want it to be over. Please let it be over.”

Karen was back in her living nightmare. When Mike had been on the floor, Lori couldn't help her. Now Lori was on the floor, and Mike couldn't help her. He could only call to her and try to reach her through her thickening delirium. “Lori, baby. Come here,” he said.

Lori obviously heard him, but she must have thought it was in her head. “You're in heaven, Daddy. Why can I hear you? Am I in heaven, too?”

“I'm not in heaven,” Mike replied. “I'm right here.”

And it's certainly not heaven,
Karen thought.

She tried desperately to block out the morbid things Lori was saying and focused on what had to be done. First she had to call the doctor. Letting go of her daughter for the moment, Karen darted to Mike's bed and grabbed the phone, speed-dialing Lori's psychiatrist. It was Sunday evening, and she got his answering service, but he had always been good about calling right back. She left an urgent message and hurried back to her daughter.

While they waited, Karen rocked Lori back and forth, not daring another glance at Mike, who was intoning mantra after mantra of soft consolations from his bed. From the corner of her eye she could see his hand jutting out through the bed rail, remarkably steadier than it had been in days, reaching out to his little girl.

It seemed like an eternity, but the phone rang in five minutes.

“Dr. Kaplan? I think Lori's slipped into psychosis.” She went on to describe her daughter's symptoms and explained how Lori had recently suffered a few setbacks in her battle to remain sober. She recounted the events leading up to the breakdown, including the night she came home drunk and the embarrassing scene with the health aide this morning. “I'm afraid for her this time, Dr. Kaplan,” Karen admitted. “With our situation at home, I can't keep an eye on her like I know I should, and this is the worst I've seen her since—”

She almost said
since Nick died,
but she caught herself.

The doctor asked a few questions, determined that Lori was indeed a danger to herself, and told Karen to get her to the hospital. He would call ahead to Central Suffolk in Riverhead and make sure that a psychiatrist was on hand to evaluate her. They would probably hold her there until morning and then transport her to Stony Brook University Hospital, a larger facility about thirty miles away, where Dr. Kaplan would see her and where she could remain for rehabilitation.

Now Karen looked over at her husband, her mind on the fast track. How was she going to split herself in two?

“All right, Dr. Kaplan. I'll call an ambulance.”

She saw Mike grip the rail, his face full of anguish, and she had to look away. Still rocking Lori in one arm, she maneuvered her thumb over the phone's dial pad, disconnecting her call to Lori's psychiatrist and punching in 911. She told the dispatcher she needed an ambulance for a nonviolent psychotic episode and gave the address.

The whole ordeal started to feel like another out-of-body experience. Karen knew the only way she could stay in control was to consciously detach herself from everything that was going on. Yet an odd thought struck her while they waited for the paramedics to arrive. Lori was considered clinically ill when she lost touch with reality, and because of it she was at the mercy of mental health professionals and their prescribed wonder drugs. Karen, on the other hand, was immersed in reality and needed to shield herself with emotional indifference in order to stay sane. Neither plight was healthy. It was hard to think straight through the fog of indifference.