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Count All This — Chapter 4: something’s happening here
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 fourth chapter. Find the first chapter here.
The day after the mammogram, I got a call from Eddy around two o’clock in the afternoon.
“Hi, Mom”
“Eddy, Hi!” I gushed, relieved he wasn’t still angry, glad he’d made the effort to call. “How are you doing?”
“I’m okaaaaay,” he stretched out his words, a sly smile in his voice. “But I need you to come pick me up.”
“Come pick you up? Why, honey? Where are you? What’s going on?”
“I’m up here at College of San Mateo, and there’s all kinds of shit going on,” he started to chuckle. “There’s broken glass everywhere, and policemen, and an ambulance, and they want me to get in it, but I don’t want to get in it! I’d feel much more comfortable going home with you.”
“An ambulance?!” My heart started to race. “Oh my god! What happened?!? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Mom. Nothing much has really happened. I just have this cut on my hand. It was bleeding a lot, I guess, but they bandaged it up and now I want to go home.”
“Why is there glass everywhere?! And policemen?! Are you in trouble? What did you do? Why don’t you want to get in the ambulance?”
“Look, we’ll talk about all this when you get here, okay?”
“Okay. Yes, okay.” I was pivoting on one foot, looking around the room for help, eager to rush out the door but held back by a need for more information, like a car with the brake and the gas pedal pressed. “Where are you, exactly? By the bus stop? How can I find you?”
“Wait a minute, Mom. The nurse wants to talk to you.” He handed the phone to someone I imagined wearing a white nurse’s cap with a big red cross on it.
“Hello, Mrs. Thibedeaux?” No one ever called me that unless a child of mine was in trouble. My name is Jo Kasten. I kept my maiden name.
“This is Mrs. Malatesta. I’m a nurse here on campus. Edward has a very serious laceration on his hand and definitely needs to go to the hospital to have it stitched up. But for some reason, he doesn’t want to get in the ambulance. So if you’re coming to get him, I just want to make sure you understand that this isn’t something he can nurse at home. He needs immediate medical attention.”
“Okay. No problem. We’ll take him right to the hospital. Can you tell me where you’re located on the campus? It will take about 15 minutes to get there. Will he be all right until then?”
“He seems to be fine at the moment. He just doesn’t want to let us give him the attention he needs. Let me put the officer on the phone to give you directions.”
I felt a fresh wave of dizziness as another official got on the phone to talk to me about my injured son. “Okay Mrs. Thibedeaux.” (That name again.) “Let’s see if we can get you oriented. You know the administration buildings on your left as you curve around to the west side of the campus after coming in the main entrance off Hillside?”
“Not really.”
“You’ll see them…”
I didn’t understand the directions he gave, but I copied them down anyway. I couldn’t bear interrupting to ask another question, or lingering on the phone. I took his cell phone number in case I got lost and hung up as quickly as I could.
I looked frantically around the room, unsure what to do next. Eddy’s friend Jason was sitting on the couch and looking at me quizzically — the friend who’d been giving me so much welcome attention while my husband spent all his time on his computer. The young and vital friend I had a huge crush on and who I’d been pretty sure had a crush on me — until he didn’t. Despite my urgent need to run out the door, a flood of embarrassment washed over me.
“What’s going on?” he asked. His body was familiar — tall and wiry with a huge mop of hair, a younger version of Larry, I noticed for the first time — but his attitude was different: cold.
“Eddy’s up at the college with some kind of injury and he won’t get into the ambulance. He wants me to come get him.” My voice came out in a rush. I gave Jason a pleading look. “You should come.”
Larry walked briskly into the living room at that moment and I whirled toward him. “Eddy’s in some kind of trouble up at the campus!” I had the directions written out on a scrap of paper and waved them around in my hand. “He wants me to pick him up, but I’m not sure I can find him!” I heard the hysteria infecting my voice.
“Let me see,” Larry snatched the paper out of my hand and squinted at it. “You want me to drive?”
“Yes!”
The three of us rushed to the car. Larry drove, I sat in the passenger seat, and Jason sat in back, his big head of hair obliterating half of the rear window. Conversation was sparse. Larry drove fast. “I’m sure Eddy’s okay,” I said in a flat voice, casting a spell of protection. “He sounded okay on the phone…”
Once on campus, Larry had no trouble following the directions, and was the first one of us to spot the ambulance, tucked away, down a steep driveway, behind a grove of tall redwoods, much farther from the entrance than I’d imagined it would be.
I’d been angry with my husband for months — for the funk he’d gotten into which put a perpetual scowl on his face, making him moody and difficult all the time, unwilling to go anywhere or do anything together for what had seemed like years, but now I felt a wash of gratitude for his brisk efficiency. As we pulled into the lot, my eyes locked on our son.
Eddy was standing alone while people buzzed all around him. He seemed elevated on a small mound of earth. He was dressed all in black, spattered with streaks of mud and dried blood. He wore the expensive waterproof pants he had purchased at REI in preparation for forest dwelling, which made loud, crinkling noises when he walked. He wore a bicyclists’ tight, shiny spandex top, and a black windbreaker was bundled carelessly on the dirt at his feet. He was barefoot, and his feet were filthy, streaked black and brown. His hair tangled and unwashed. He looked skinnier, still, than the last time I’d seen him, but still handsome and now imbued with a kind of charismatic energy that drew me to him like a magnet, but seemed to be keeping other people off.
A woman stood a few feet away from him, not touching or speaking to him. Other official-looking people — two paramedics, a police officer, a security guard — also stood back.
I hurried out of the car and was the first to reach him. Both Larry and Jason hung back.
“Hi Eddy. We found you! How are you doing, Honey?” I put my hand on his arm. He pulled it away from me sharply.
“I’m good. Let’s get going.” His eyes were bright. He seemed strangely happy for a person standing amid all this chaos, as if merely amused by all the commotion he had caused. He noticed Jason first, then his father, standing near our little black Nissan, and immediately began walking toward them.
“Wait a minute,” the woman stepped forward. “I’m Stacy Malatesta. I believe we spoke on the phone?” She didn’t have a little white cap with a red cross, but she held up an identity badge she was wearing around her neck that identified her as a nurse. I glanced at it and nodded. Eddy stopped reluctantly. Larry approached.
“I just want to make sure, once again, that you’re taking him to the hospital. I’m not sure why he doesn’t want to get into the ambulance, he seems to be experiencing some kind of…fear of authority, but as long as you’re taking him directly there, I won’t object or intervene.”
“Okay, yes. We’ll go right to Sisters,” I assured her, intimidated by all the manpower assembled here on Ed’s behalf — an ambulance, police car, several people in uniform. “Unless you think we need to go to Stanford.”
“No, no. The Sisters of Infinite Beneficence should be fine. They have a full-service emergency room there.”
Eddy nodded his head and started walking away again, towards the car, carelessly leaving behind the large crew of emergency and law enforcement officials that had gathered on his behalf; I felt nauseous and deeply ashamed.
“Thank you,” I said quietly to the nurse. “Thank you very much for helping him.” I began to turn away, to follow my son, but she put a restraining hand on my shoulder.
“It’s wrapped up pretty well. It should last him until he gets to Sisters.” She seemed to want to say more, but hesitated. “He’s pretty agitated. You might try to find out what happened. He was very evasive with all of us here.” She had short hair dyed blonde with black roots and cloudy blue eyes. She was about my age, overweight, probably a mother. Her concern opened up a new avenue of fear in me.
“Thank you,” I faltered. “I’ll ask him. We’ll take care of him. We’ll find out what’s going on.”
A policeman stepped forward with what looked like a ticket book. Larry was shepherding Ed toward the car. “We’re not going to press charges, considering the circumstances. Your son seems to be confused. But he’ll have to pay for the broken window.” He tore off the top sheet on his ticket book and handed it to me. “That will cost around $260. You’ll be getting a bill from the maintenance department of the college. They’ll tell you where to send the money. But if you don’t send it on time, we’ll be visiting you again.”
“Okay. Of course,” I took the paper and put it in my pocket. “Thank you for not arresting him. Where is the window?” I looked around. “What did he do to it?”
“The window’s not here. It’s over in the men’s bathroom. We’re not sure exactly what happened, but we know that he broke it. He admits that. A janitor saw him acting strangely in the bathroom, then a security guard noticed him walking around, bleeding. But when he approached him, he tried to say he had just fallen on his bike.”
I saw Eddy in the distance, grouped with Jason and his father behind the car. The trunk was open, and Larry was taking the front wheel off Eddy’s $1,600 bike. Like the special hiking and biking clothes, the bike was brand new, another in a short spree of extravagant purchases he’d made on credit after deciding to sell his car to Jason because he didn’t want to “rape the planet” anymore.
“I better go,” I apologized. “I don’t want them to leave without me.” The officer and the nurse nodded. In the background, the paramedics were already backing the ambulance out of its parking space.
When I got to our car, the bike was stowed in the trunk and Jason was climbing into the back seat. I climbed in after him, leaving the passenger seat for Eddy to sit next to his father.
“So, where are we going?” he asked cheerfully as he pulled the door closed, as if we’d just picked him up for a casual date.
“I guess we’re going to the hospital, Eddy,” his Dad answered in the matter-of-fact tone he used for every situation. “That must be a pretty nasty cut you have on your hand.”
“Oh, it’s not too bad,” Ed enthused, fussing with the white bandage, not offering an explanation. A reluctance to ask the obvious filled up the car. Eddy was bursting with energy, exuberant, wild, not at all in the mood you’d expect of someone who’d just endured a serious injury and confrontation with authorities. Finally, my curiosity won over my dread. I put my hands on the headrest in front of me and leaned into the gap between the two front seats.
“What happened here, Eddy? How did you do that to yourself?”
“Well,” he sounded flattered, like a celebrity addressing an admiring audience. “I put my hand through a window, man,” he said with a big smile. Then he stopped, as if taunting me to try being satisfied with that.
“Why did you do that?”
“I don’t really know. I just wanted to.” He gave a funny little laugh.
Jason and I glanced at each other in the back seat. “Were you angry?” asked his father.
“No, not at all.”
“Are you on drugs?”
“Nope. I haven’t taken any drugs for weeks!” Eddy beamed in a childlike way, as if showing off a good report card.
“Where were you? What were the circumstances?” I pressed for details while Larry navigated the car down the winding, wooded road that led from College of San Mateo to Highway 92.
“First, I was in class.” Ed settled into his story. “But I was feeling kind of bored and disconnected, so I got up and went to the bathroom. And while I was in there, I noticed this hairline crack in the window. Then I realized what I really wanted to do was put my hand through it.”
The car propelled forward in silence, engine humming beneath us. Larry turned left on Hillside and continued toward the highway. Eddy seemed to think he had given all the explanation that was necessary.
“You sure you weren’t mad?” his dad asked hopefully.
“No. But I was definitely full of something — I don’t know what — some kind of emotion, maybe tension. I felt a big release when I did it, a huge rush. It was fantastic!”
“What happened next?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing. I…never mind.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I was going to tell you something, but then I decided I didn’t want to.” He smiled mischievously. I sighed noisily.
“Why not? What else did you do? Aren’t you going to tell us what happened next?”
“I just sat there for a long time. But then the janitor came in, so I thought I better leave. I went back to the classroom, but the door was locked. I guess class must have ended while I was still in the bathroom. I was worried, though, because I’d left my bike and backpack in there. Then I saw an open window. It was like it was left open for me!”
Jason and I exchanged glances again.
“So I climbed through it and got my stuff.”
“You climbed through a window?”
“Yeah, man,” he laughed again, delighted with himself.
“Weren’t you afraid someone would see you and think you were a burglar?”
“Well, I guess someone did see me, because when I came out, this security dude started following me around. But he was doing it at a distance, like he was hiding behind bushes and shit,” Eddy laughed. “He was like a little cartoon character. It was great!”
“How long did that go on?”
“I don’t know. For a while. Then he got another security dude in on the act and they came up together and asked me what happened.”
“Is that when the ambulance showed up?”
“First I told them I’d just fallen off my bike. I wasn’t sure if they knew about the window or not — if they were in communication with the janitor guy. Then they called the ambulance, even though I told them not to. I told them I was fine, and just to leave me alone.”
Jason gave an explosive snort of disbelief.
I stopped questioning Eddy then, and we rode on in silence for another 10 minutes until we pulled into the hospital parking lot. By that time a dark fear was snaking through me. What is wrong with him?!
When we climbed out of the car, Eddy said he didn’t want to leave his expensive bike hanging out of the back of the trunk. Jason offered to ride it home to our house and wait for us there. I felt a twinge of guilt that he’d been roped into our family emergency when he’d only dropped by to pick up the car he’d bought from Eddy. But I was glad for the help, and glad to see him. On some level, I felt that he owed it to me. Why had he stopped coming around? I missed him. I wanted an explanation...something.
So Larry and I left Jason in the parking lot, putting the bike pieces back together, and walked beside Ed to the emergency room.
That was the fourth 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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