Chapter 17 Verity
SEVENTEEN
Verity
I hate it when they whisper.
I’ve been in the hospital right outside our small Georgia town for a week and I’m ready to go home. I’ve been asking when I can leave, but my aunts keep whispering in the hall.
“I’m mentally unstable,” I call out. “Not deaf. I can still hear you.”
They start guiltily, turning wary stares into the room where I’m lying down, and then back to each other.
“Please come in.” I wave them inside with my bandaged arm. “You’re making things weird.”
They’re kind enough not to point out there is a certain degree of inherent weirdness when we’re having this conversation in the psych ward.
Aunt Roz and Aunt Grace walk in, holding hands.
“How you feeling?” Aunt Roz asks, taking the seat to the left of my bed, while Aunt Grace takes the one on the right.
“Confused?” I bite my lip and blink back tears, eyes trained on my fingers twisting in the hospital sheets. “Embarrassed.”
“You got nothing to be embarrassed about, honey,” Aunt Grace reassures me.
“I broke into the fine arts building and tried to destroy a priceless piece of art,” I remind them despairingly. “I can’t imagine what Dr. Garrison thinks of me.”
“She thinks you’re a wonderful girl who hit a rough spot,” Aunt Roz says. “She called last night to see how you were doing.”
“That’s really nice of her.” I drop my eyes to the bed. “If she hadn’t shown up and said I needed a hospital, not handcuffs, I might be in jail right now.”
“Nothing but the grace of God,” Aunt Grace says. “We prayed for you that very morning.”
My lips twitch into a tiny involuntary grin.
My aunts are the praying-est gays you’ll ever meet.
They don’t care that most of the church thinks they won’t see the Pearly Gates.
You can’t tell them God doesn’t hear every one of their prayers.
They met at vacation Bible school in the eighth grade, and the rest is queer history.
“Dr. Garrison has kept everything very discreet,” Aunt Grace says, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Since no police report was filed, and your privacy is protected at the hospital, everything has been… contained.”
“What about financial aid?” I ask, dread filling the pit of my belly. “Did you talk to them about my tuition?”
“We didn’t.” Aunt Roz’s eyes shift away. “We figured you would be taking some time off anyway, and since the money was all gone and we couldn’t replace it, withdrawing from Finley seemed to be the best decision.”
“Oh my God,” I groan, and drop my head into my hands. “I can’t believe I spent all the money you gave me for tuition. I don’t know what I was thinking. How could I do that?”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Aunt Roz says, squeezing my hand, where it rests on the hospital bed.
“Whose fault was it then?” I ask, tipping my head back into the pillow. “I have to take responsibility for it all. What I did in that bar…”
My throat closes around the words. The aunts are right.
Withdrawing is really the only option. I could never go back, could never face Petra and Randi and the guys camped around my table that night, waiting to see which of them would get to fuck me first. Everyone in Top Dog who saw me dancing on tables and buying drinks I couldn’t afford. The cops. Dr. Garrison. And…
There’s no way I can give voice to my biggest regret.
In my right mind, I would never have cheated on Monk.
He was everything I wanted. The shame of him seeing me that way in the restroom with another man crashes over me like a tsunami.
I close my eyes to block out reality and retreat into the darkness behind my eyelids.
“I just don’t understand what’s wrong with me,” I say, emotion thickening my voice and tears slipping from the corners of my eyes.
“Maybe I can help with that,” a white-coated doctor says from the door. She walks in farther to stand by the bed, her eyes kind and steady. “Can we talk for a bit, Verity?”
Her silk press falls in a smooth wave to her shoulders, and her skin is deep brown and unlined.
She carries an air of competency, like anything thrown at her will be handled expeditiously.
I’m not sure if that’s the case, but I breathe just a bit easier meeting the steadiness of her stare.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen her, but the last few days in here were jumbled and patchy.
“I’m Dr. Simmons.” She sits on the edge of the hospital bed. “I want to talk about what happened and maybe help you understand what’s going on.”
“Please.” I fist the sheet and clench my teeth. “I’ve never felt so out of control the way I did last week, and I’m scared it could happen again.”
The room is silent. Dr. Simmons doesn’t rush to reassure me that it never could. My aunts exchange those looks again.
“Just say it,” I blurt. “What’s wrong with me?”
“We’ve done some evaluations,” Dr. Simmons says. “But I want to do a few more. Assess your mental health, run some blood tests to rule out other possibilities. What happened at Finley sounds like an acute psychosis experience.”
“Wait, you mean like schizophrenia?” My heart slams in my chest as my most secret fears are given voice.
“Not necessarily.” Dr. Simmons’s tone remains calm.
“Psychosis can be a symptom in many disorders. I don’t want to jump to any conclusion too quickly.
When we see psychosis, especially in Black women, it’s often misdiagnosed as schizophrenia.
I want to be very careful figuring this out so we get the right diagnosis, determine the appropriate treatment plan, and hopefully set you up for the best possible outcomes. ”
She pauses, levels a clear-eyed look at me, before going on.
“With that said, based on the information so far, your symptoms and behaviors appear to meet criteria for bipolar disorder.”
The words, the diagnosis, land on me like an anvil. The air is knocked out of me and my head begins throbbing immediately. I can’t process what she’s saying.
“No.” I shake my head. “I… no. That can’t be right.”
“Just hear Dr. Simmons out, baby,” Aunt Roz says, rubbing the back of my hand soothingly.
“Your aunts tell me you had a depressive episode last year when you were away at college,” Dr. Simmons continues.
“An episode?” I frown. “I wouldn’t call it that. It was just… a hard time.”
“It sounded like you were extremely fatigued, stopped going to class,” Dr. Simmons says, her expression neutral. “And had suicidal thoughts.”
My gaze pings between my aunts in silent accusation.
“We were just trying to help,” Aunt Grace rushes to say. “They asked us questions so we could figure out what might be going on.”
“When you started taking the antidepressant,” Dr. Simmons says, “your mood improved, correct?”
“Yeah,” I admit grudgingly. “And I’ve been fine for the last few months. I thought I was ready to start over, but I guess I wasn’t.”
“I believe that particular medication addressed your symptoms of depression,” Dr. Simmons continues.
“But I’ve started something more appropriate for bipolar—if that’s what we’re dealing with—and you’ve stabilized some.
Bipolar is cyclical, and usually someone cycles between depressive episodes to a period of stability we call euthymia or hypomania and then to mania. ”
“And you think what just happened to me was a manic episode?” I laugh because… no way, but Aunt Grace and Aunt Roz exchange another of those quick looks, which makes me nervous.
“You’re the right age,” Dr. Simmons goes on, as if unfazed by my disbelief. “Your aunts mentioned some behaviors when you were younger that might indicate—”
“Behaviors?” I snap my eyes from one aunt to the other. “What kind of behaviors when I was younger?”
“It could be nothing,” Dr. Simmons says. “Having an imaginary friend is a common thing, but yours maybe lasted a little longer than most. They also indicated a reckless phase where you thought you could fly and broke your arm.”
“All kids think they can fly at some point,” I protest. “And have imaginary friends.”
“Of course, baby,” Aunt Grace says. “We’re trying to find any clues that can help us understand what’s going on, so we told her as much as we could remember.”
“We just want to help,” Aunt Roz adds gently.
“Having more information,” Dr. Simmons says, “is always better than having less. Your aunts simply answered the questions we always ask in cases like these.”
I’ve gone from being myself to being a “case.”
“Most people have their first manic episode late teens, early twenties,” Dr. Simmons continues. “It can be triggered by any number of things. Stress, lack of sleep.”
“Lack of sleep?” I ask weakly.
For weeks Monk chided me about not sleeping, needing rest, taking better care of myself. I thought he was overreacting, but maybe…
“Because the doctor didn’t consider you might have bipolar,” Dr. Simmons says, “he prescribed an antidepressant, but that can sometimes exacerbate mania. And since there wasn’t anything prescribed to address the mania when it came on, you may have gone into a full manic episode.”
“What’s that look like, Dr. Simmons?” Aunt Roz asks. “Maybe if you share some of what you were telling us about it…”
I look from Aunt Roz to Dr. Simmons, feeling like everyone knows what’s going on except me.
“Manic episodes can sneak up on you,” Dr. Simmons explains. “Because there is this window of time where you feel like a million bucks.”
“What do you mean?” I ask warily.
“You have more energy than you’ve ever had. You’re productive and feel like you can accomplish anything. You’re the life of the party. You might be more confident. Bolder.”
My hands shake as I recall the weeks leading up to everything going so horribly wrong.
The reserve that was so much a part of who I’ve always been seemed to melt away.
I’d felt invincible those last few weeks.
My presentation in Professor Rollins’s class was one of the best of my life. And I literally danced on a table.
“But then it starts veering out of that sweet spot we call hypomania,” Dr. Simmons says, “into true mania. It would be characterized by symptoms like forced speech and—”
“Wait.” I hold up a hand to stop her before she goes any further. “What’s forced speech?”
“Words just pour out of you, fast and nonstop. You might talk over others because you literally have trouble not saying every thought that passes through your mind.” Dr. Simmons raises her brows as if to say Sound familiar?
I stay quiet and wait for her to go on. “We often see outrageous spending sprees, being irresponsible with money, out-of-character sexual behavior.”
“Are you serious?” I gasp. “People do things sexually they wouldn’t normally do?”
“In some cases, yes, unfortunately.” Dr. Simmons offers a sympathetic glance, but speaks firmly. “If not appropriately addressed, these episodes can spiral into hallucinations, fixations, obsessions. It can become incredibly destructive.”
Destructive. Yeah, that’s one way to put it. I destroyed my college career. At least a few friendships.
The best relationship I’ve ever had.
“Your aunt Rosalyn was telling me some of your family history,” Dr. Simmons continues. “What happened with your mother and father.”
I stiffen, my fingers clawing the sheets.
“It seems your father may have been dealing with some undiagnosed SMI,” Dr. Simmons suggests, smiling wryly at my blank stare.
“Sorry. Severe mental illness. We can’t know for sure what his condition may have been, but bipolarity is highly genetic, and if your father was undiagnosed bipolar, the chances that you could also have bipolar disorder would be very high. ”
“I’m not… no, I’m not like him,” I croak, shaking my head from side to side furiously. “Aunt Roz, you know I would never… do what he did. I’m not him.”
And yet the picture Dr. Simmons painted makes sense of everything that happened from the time I had to leave USC to last week’s disastrous episode.
If she’s right, if I have bipolar, then as shattered as my heart is now, leaving Wright Bellamy was the kindest thing I could have done.
I’ve seen how a love like this—tethered to something wild and dark—decimates.
I saw it in the charred rubble of our house and in my parents’ gravestones planted in the earth, set together like two lovers.
I love Monk too much to ever let that be us.