Chapter Thirty-Three
Sometimes saving ourselves starts with a seemingly simple act. For me, it meant showering the next morning before Henry and I met with Dr.
Ruthledge to discuss the results of my shock treatment. I choked down some breakfast, combed my hair, and put on the best dress I had available. But I didn’t swallow the tranquilizers; I needed to stay alert. I wanted them all to see that the treatment had worked. I was cured. I could go home. I wouldn’t be another Bitsy.
Henry met me outside Dr. Ruthledge’s office. He reached for me, seeming as nervous as the first time he dared to hold my hand back in college. “You look good,” he told me.
I couldn’t help but see how tired he looked, the redness in his eyes and the draw of his cheeks.
“How’s Wesley?” I needed to know.
“Good. Been spending a lot of time with James. Oh, and he lost his first tooth.”
Oh. That was how he said it, like it was something typical, usual, a common occurrence. He had lost his first tooth, and I hadn’t been there for it.
I tried to imagine what he would look like with a gap, and what he would look like when the permanent tooth poked through the same spot that had previously held his perfect little baby tooth.
“Shoot!” Henry said. He ran his hand through his hair, pulling it backward, exposing the first silver strands. “Wesley drew you a picture. I left it in the
car.” He nodded toward the window, where the sun sparkled off his frost-blue sedan.
“Maybe we can go for a walk and get it,” I offered.
In that moment, those chocolate eyes of his softened to the sweetness I had hungered for. He rubbed my hand, fumbling with my fingers, rubbing my palm. “Yeah?” he asked. “You’d be up for a walk?”
“I think some sunshine could do us good.”
His smile both warmed and broke me. I wanted nothing more than to do everyday things like go on walks with my husband, but his enthusiasm showed that something like that had not been typical for a couple like us.
“Maybe,” I began as I stroked his hand and stepped closer to him, “we should go now.”
“Now?” Henry tried to look around me to see into the doctor’s office.
“It’s okay,” I told him. Then I went even further. “I’m okay. Can’t you see it?”
“Well, you do seem like you’re feeling better.”
“I am, so what do you say we just go home?”
Standing in the mental hospital, begging my husband to take me home, I thought back to those two college kids. My reluctance to accept his proposal was not because I didn’t love him or because I didn’t think he loved me; it was more a question of if he would continue to love me when he saw beneath the surface.
“I want you to come home,” he said. I wanted to run out of there before he changed his mind. “But we need to talk to the doctor.”
“No, we don’t. Look at me. I’m good.”
Henry paused and I saw it in his eyes. I knew he wanted to take me home; he wanted life to be back to normal. “I don’t know—” he stammered, as if trying to convince himself, but before he could, the nurse called us in.
“I have good news,” Dr. Ruthledge began. He sat with his hands folded. He didn’t need to look at any paperwork. He crossed one leg over the other and leaned back in his chair, and for a moment, I allowed myself to feel hopeful.
Apparently, no amount of treatment could stop me from being a fool.
“The first session was a success,” the doctor began.
Henry squeezed my hand and smiled. They both seemed relieved, happy with the report, but I had caught a word that my husband hadn’t. “The first session?”
“Why, yes. I know it was only a couple days ago, but we’re pleased with what we see, so we’re going to move forward, keep going, and after a regimen of, oh, perhaps five to ten more, we believe you’ll be ready to go home.”
Five to ten? I looked at Henry, expecting to see the same confusion on his face, but instead he continued to smile and nod along with the doctor.
Apparently, he wasn’t going to speak up, so I had to. “Five to ten?”
“Yes, as is often the case, for best results we need to conduct multiple sessions—”
“You said one. It would just be one.”
Henry whispered my name and then attempted to tell me to “calm down.” I pulled my hand away from his and scooted to the edge of the couch. “We’ll get through this,” he tried to reassure me. “Together.” But his wasn’t the body that they wanted to charge repeatedly as if it were a dead car battery that needed a jump to work again.
“One!” I told the doctor. “It was supposed to be one and then I’d go home.”
Henry tried to intervene, but Dr. Ruthledge held up his hand, believing he could placate me. “Mrs. Mayfield, you may have thought you heard me say that, but I didn’t specify how many sessions we’d need. Often we need to see how the first one goes before we have an idea of what the regimen should be.
Given your case, we need to do more for best results.”
My cheeks burned so that the rash prickled my face. I wanted to scratch at it, but I ignored it. Sensing I would get nowhere with the doctor, I turned to Henry. “Please,” I softened my voice, careful to not sound too desperate.
“Take me home. You can see for yourself that I’m better.”
Henry clasped his hands together, but his fingers fidgeted, as if betraying his attempt at a calm resolve. As his eyes began to moisten, I prayed he would recall our early days together, when his mother had still hoped he would find someone else but he knew he wanted only me. I wanted him to remember the vow he’d made to me, the promise, the pledge to love and care for me. Now was the moment I needed him most.
But before he could answer, the doctor said, “We all want to do what’s in your best interest.” I refused to look at him. Instead, I kept my focus on Henry, pleading without words. “I know you’re feeling better, and that’s what we want to hear, but do you understand this is for your own good?”
With that, Henry dropped his gaze and I knew.
“Please,” I muttered, forcing the word past the emotion tangling in my throat.
“L-l-l-l—” He stopped. He couldn’t even say my name. He kept looking down as a tear dropped onto his wool pants.
I slouched into the couch. I looked past the fern and out the window. It was a sunny day. I’d had so much hope for it. I really had thought we could go for a walk, listen to the birds, act like ordinary people.
“I want you to get home to your son just as much as you do, but we can’t rush this,” the doctor pressed. And then apparently the man couldn’t simply shut up. He had to keep going. “Let’s not forget the serious nature of what brought you here.”
How dare he bring up Esther. Did he really think either of us could forget her?
I stared out that window and at the blue car that shimmered in the sun, the car with the keys tucked into the visor because we lived in a neighborhood safe enough to make that possible, and sometimes when Henry went elsewhere, he was so in the habit of tucking them behind the shade that he didn’t think to do otherwise. God, please let this be one of those days.
I sat up a bit straighter and took a deep breath, Nora’s words turning over in my mind: Save yourself.
Then I looked the doctor in the eyes and said, “I understand. But I hope you won’t mind if I use the restroom.”
Mama sometimes called me obstinate, said I got my stubbornness from my father’s family. Like the time she baked a rhubarb pie and had the audacity to add strawberries. She knew rhubarb was my favorite. Mama would tell me it was such a bitter choice, but that’s exactly why I preferred it to the heavy sweetness of any other pie. The one time Mama put strawberries in with it, I refused to even taste the pie. She called me obstinate, not as a compliment, but out of frustration. But what she had meant as an insult might be exactly what I needed to save myself.
“Oh, not at all,” the doctor said as he granted me permission to go to the bathroom. “That’ll give Mr. Mayfield and me a chance to talk a bit more in your absence.”
I flashed him a smile and stood to leave. I didn’t look at Henry. I didn’t give his hand a squeeze nor his leg a pat before walking away from him. I didn’t pick up my pace until I made it to the staircase. I didn’t start running until I got outside. That’s the thing about showing improvement: A place like that gives you more leniency, so no one thought a thing about me walking right out the front entrance.
I opened the car door and slammed it shut behind me, as if the harder I closed it, the more difficult it would be for someone to open it and pull me out. I
needed to find the keys and get out of there. I looked up at the doctor’s office window to see if they were looking for me, but I didn’t notice anyone. Of course, they didn’t know yet that they had let me get away.
Before I reached for the visor, a piece of paper caught my eye. On the seat beside me was the picture Wesley had drawn. It consisted of three stick figures, all with crooked, crescent smiles. I was the only one wearing any sort of clothing, a pink skirt that reminded me of Esther’s blanket.
The blanket! In my haste, I hadn’t bothered going back to my room to grab the one material possession in all the world that I most wanted. But I couldn’t risk it. I hoped she would forgive me. If my time there had taught me anything, it was that the blanket had been empty, but her presence had been real. It still was. And I didn’t need a piece of cloth to feel her.
But I knew. I knew in my bones that I wouldn’t forgive myself if I left her behind.
So I looked up at the window. No one was watching. I opened the car door carefully, quietly, as if I feared they would hear the squeal of the door springs through the office window. I walked as quickly and casually as possible, though my feet begged me to run. I couldn’t look suspicious, I told myself.
And as a small part of my mind told me to forget about the blanket and get back to the car, my heart informed the rest of me that it wasn’t possible to leave without her.
I forced myself to take the front steps one at a time and to open the door like a tranquilized patient should. And when the nurse with the kind eyes greeted me in the front hall, I smiled.
“Hello, Mrs. Mayfield,” she said. “You’re looking well today.”
Apparently, escaping looked good on me.
I forced the words thank you out of me as calmly as possible, while my heart throbbed so forcefully that I was afraid she would hear the drumming for herself.
I strolled to the staircase, and once she was out of sight, I hurried up both flights of stairs, holding on to the banister, pulling myself upward. I rushed into my room and grabbed the blanket, peeking into the hallway before starting back to the car. A few patients milled around in the halls, but none of them seemed to care what I was doing. After all, in a place like that, your only focus is yourself.
I had made it back to the stairwell and down the first flight of stairs when I heard Henry’s voice. I loved that voice; its depth and familiarity were reminders of home. But in that moment, it wasn’t the safe haven I wanted it to be. I tucked myself against the wall, listening. He was looking for me, wondering what was taking me so long. As Dr. Ruthledge’s secretary said she would go to the ladies’ room and check on me, I started my descent down that final flight of stairs.
The kind nurse was still in the front entryway.
“Taking a walk, Mrs. Mayfield?” she asked.
I took a deep breath and put on a smile before I said, “Yes, it’s so lovely out.”
“Well—” She paused for a moment, and I considered pushing past her before Henry realized I wasn’t in the bathroom, but then she let out a sneeze.
“Bless you,” I said, as I walked to the door and opened it.
“Thank you. And enjoy your walk.”
“I will.”
I forced myself to walk instead of run, and I slammed that car door shut when I got back inside. Time ticked and I needed to go, so I placed the blanket on the seat beside me and I reached for the visor, again praying that Henry was as predictable as I had thought him to be. I tilted the shade and the keys fell into my lap, a prayer finally answered while so many others had died in silence.
As I pulled out of the parking spot, I looked at the office window again,
but still no one was watching. I didn’t squeal tires or speed out. I rolled down the window and let the breeze blow my hair as I drove down the tree- shrouded drive. I had a nearly full tank of gas and miles to go before I could rest. Like those cries in the night, home had been calling and it was time I paid it a visit.
