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Count All This — Chapter 11: it’s not over till it’s over

Just when Jo Kasten’s adult son encounters schizophrenia, she discovers she has breast cancer. Meanwhile, her marriage faces a test. Count All This is a story about love and loyalty, addiction and madness. This is the eleventh chapter. Find the first chapter here.

They kept Eddy in the psych ward for seven days. When we arrived at the hospital on Friday to pick him up, he was dressed in his street clothes and standing expectantly at the nurses’ station.

“Hi, Mom and Dad!” he said, too cheerfully. “Are we ready to go?”

“Sure. I guess so…” I looked around for a doctor.

“There are some forms here that you need to sign,” the nurse behind the counter prompted. “This one just says you’re taking Eddy home with you.”

“Okay.” I signed it without reading.

“This one says you’re responsible for the bill. This one confirms that you’re taking his medications with you. This one releases us from liability. This one says you got back everything he came in with…” She pushed a brown paper bag across the counter.

Passing through the locked double doors a minute later, our son and his meager belongings in tow, felt like making landfall after a dangerous sea voyage. We floated down the elevator on a fog of good feeling, whooshed across the parking lot on a wind of hope. When we reached the little black Nissan, I climbed into the back seat, partly to honor the boy who’d steered across a risky crossing, partly to spare myself the discomfort of being in front — on display.

“That feels good,” I murmured from the back seat as we pulled out of the parking lot, a warm relief suffusing my body from the thighs up.

I saw Eddy turn to look at his father and smile. From behind, the backs of both their heads looked vulnerable. Eddy’s brown hair was fine and soft as a baby’s. Larry’s black hair, a wild tangle of curls when I had met him, was trimmed short now and interwoven with gray. A pink strap held his glasses and rested on his shirt collar. Larry looked straight ahead, not returning Eddy’s glance, his hands gripping the steering wheel with unusual force.

I wanted to put my fingers in Eddy’s hair and massage his head, the center of so much turmoil, but I knew better than to touch him now. His reaction couldn’t be predicted.

I remembered how I had cradled his head in my hands when he was just a baby — the unusual, oblong shape of it, the back of his skull stretching out beyond the expected limit, as if to encompass a larger than usual brain. His eyes as a newborn had been soft and pensive. His manner serene.

When he grew older and got contentious, I sometimes wondered if there was something wrong with Ed. He was so stubborn and uncooperative, I worried that he lacked empathy. But then some small event would prove otherwise, like the time I burst into tears and he burst into tears right back, reflecting my sadness. We’d always assumed that his rough edges smooth out when he grew up. Now, I wasn’t sure.

We spoke little on the ride home, afraid that talking might throw us back in rough waters, between clashing rocks. We’d agreed beforehand not to mention my breast cancer diagnosis. There would be time for that, later, after Eddy stabilized. When we got home, we spilled out of the car and hurried into the house.

“Hey Eddy!” Michael was waiting for his brother on the big couch in the living room. Larry lay down on the loveseat. Eddy and I sat on the couch next to Michael. Rose was away, having left on a road trip the day before Eddy was admitted to the hospital. She was due back the next day, neatly missing this dark chapter in our family history. I wondered how we would report it when she got back. Would this become a funny story we told around the kitchen table? Was it over now?

“How was the hospital?” Michael asked. “Are you glad to get out?”

“It was okay,” Eddy’s words were too loud in the quiet room. His eyes grew brighter. “It was an experience, all right. Not one that I would want to have again. But then again, maybe I would. I managed to escape alive, but that’s because I lied to the doctors. If you ever find yourself in the psych ward, Michael, all you have to do is tell them what they want to hear. They let me out! Can you believe that crap?” Eddy started laughing excitedly.

“What do you mean? Shouldn’t they have let you out?” I asked carefully, glancing over at Larry.

“No. No! They definitely should have let me out. I was through with them two days ago. There’s nothing going on there! Some of the patients are okay. There was one girl that was sending out some interesting messages. But Omigod, you sit and draw a star or something in group therapy and then they give you a little paper cup full of pills. Like I’m going to take that shit!”

We all sat stock still.

“What does that mean, Eddy? Didn’t you take the pills — the medication?”

“Well, I did take it. Yeah. I took it at first because I thought I was supposed to. But then I couldn’t sleep all night. The man in my room kept moaning and rolling over in his bed. And I wanted to get up and take a shower because I smelled like SHIT, but first I needed the little socks they give you with tread on the bottom so I wouldn’t be walking over all those germy germs on the floor and absorbing them through my skin. But I had to take a shower right away because GOD DID I STINK!” he started laughing again.

“It was an impossible dilemma! If I got up to take a shower, I’d get the germs coming into my body through my feet. But if I stayed in bed, I’d die of asphyxiation or something because I swear I was sweating out TOXIC FUMES. That medicine they give you is LETHAL! And they don’t ask you. They don’t check on you. They don’t want to know how it’s working. I swear I only talked to the doctor one time for maybe two minutes in a tiny little room.

“Of course I didn’t tell him about the sparks flying around his head. I knew he didn’t want to hear about those. He didn’t want to hear that I could see what he was thinking. He didn’t even know that his thoughts were projecting on the wall behind him! Can you believe that shit? But I was smart. I kept my mouth shut. I sure as HELL didn’t tell him that I could control his mood if I wanted, or that I could see all this stuff coming off him…”

I looked over at Larry and realized he was crying. He had his hand over his closed eyelids, his fingers resting on his forehead, a wet streak on his cheek. Suddenly, I was afraid.

In 20 years of marriage, I’d only seen my husband cry twice — when his cat died, and just a few days before when I told him about the biopsy results. Now nothing seemed more important than that he stop crying.

I turned my scared face to Eddy and pointed frantically at his father. I put my finger urgently to my lips. “Your father is crying,” I mouthed the words silently, and traced two tears down my cheeks.

Eddy looked over at his father and was visibly stunned. His eyes widened. His head pulled back.

“I could see this stuff…” he trailed off. “But the meds…I took the meds they gave me.” He forcibly slowed his words down. “I…think…they…helped…”

I didn’t care if he was lying.

“That’s good you took them, Eddy.” I nodded. “And I think you should keep taking them until you get your feet on the ground. We’re all upset and wiped out right now. That was a pretty traumatic experience. I made a bed up for you in the back room. Do you want to see it?”

“Sure.”

We got up carefully from the couch and walked to the back room together. When I glanced back toward the living room, I saw that Michael had his face covered, like his father.

I turned my attention to Eddy as I drew him away.

“I’m sorry you can’t have your old room back, because Michael moved into it when you moved out. But hopefully, you won’t mind staying in Rose’s old bedroom.” Eddy stood in Rose’s room now and looked around dispiritedly.

“Yeah. Well, I won’t be staying here too long anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.”

“No. Probably not. But Dad said you wanted to stay until the end of the semester, anyway? You have less than a month to go. And I know you want to pass all your classes so you won’t lose your admission to UC Berkeley in the fall.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

Eddy looked around the room, which had my big office desk in it now, my vanity, my file cabinet, a small couch in front of the window with stuffing coming out of the cushions, an oversized basket chair from Cost Plus, and a small single bed in the corner nearest the door.

“I know it’s not ideal, Eddy. But it can do in a pinch, can’t it? I can get most of my stuff out of here, if you want. Rose liked it well enough all those years it was hers.”

Rose, too, had had her bedroom colonized the moment she left for college. I’d moved my office in here, Michael had moved into Eddy’s basement room, and Larry had set up a makeshift movie theater in Michael’s old room. Now I felt guilty about not leaving their rooms in tact.

“Yeah. That would be nice if you could get your crap out of here, I guess. Or maybe it doesn’t matter…” Eddy still stood in the center of the room. All the energy seemed to have drained out of him. His eyes looked dull. “Did the doctor give you those medications?”

“Yes. I’ve got them in the other room. Do you want to take them now?”

“Yes. I guess I should.”

When I walked back into the living room, Larry was sitting up, working on his laptop. Michael mirrored his father, sitting in silence and computing on the couch. I picked up my purse without speaking and brought the pills back to Ed.

That was the eleventh chapter of my novel, Count All This. To continue, follow the free chapter links below or buy a digital copy of the whole book on Amazon, where leaving a rating or review will help others find my story.

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