Chapter 35 Peggy
I am going to be released.
They call it discharged.
The doctor said I am responding well to my medications, to therapy, and I am taking responsibility for my decisions. She said I look happier and more composed. I told her I felt myself again.
I sit watching a man my own age coloring a picture of a ranch. He is using black for the sky and dark red for the fields.
They keep asking me about how I think it will be to return home.
I do not tell them that home may have moved a mile or a hundred miles.
I do not tell them I am thrilled to go back, and I do not tell them I also have frequent nightmares about it.
I do not tell them I have formulated a plan that I cannot share with another soul.
I do not tell them how I wake up in the middle of the night sweating, my chest tight, knowing that Sammy has grown older since I saw him last. His beautiful, unselfconscious, handwritten notes have kept me going these past days, but he sounds different.
He has some of the skill of his father when it comes to stitching words together, some of that same musicality, but I can see through his style.
I worry I may have hurt my child so deeply that he may have changed forever.
I am still not sure how, but I will make things right.
I will shield him from what will come.
The tree has gone. There was a stump. Sawdust on the grass. But they came and dug out the stump and took it away on the back of a flatbed truck. The sawdust has been washed away by rain. It is as if the pine tree was never there.
I have hated this time but perhaps I needed it to think straight. Years of hostility and being worn down by another person can corrupt your mind.
I feel capable again.
On the yellow chair sits a woman who arrived yesterday.
She told me she came in restrained. There are scars all over her legs and arms. On her neck.
She is gripping the radio we never use. The staff superglue the battery compartment shut so nobody can swallow the contents.
They have also removed the antenna so the radio sounds like static.
She holds it tight in her bandaged hands.
I think about how to escape somewhere with Sammy, to the next county, or Cincinnati, or England, even.
Sneaking away when Drew is at work in the scrapyard, leaving a long letter explaining everything, telling him how we still love him but we need to go.
It is just that I cannot see that future.
I cannot picture it. I search inside my head for the right words, the visuals, and there are none to be found.
They tell me there will be a home treatment team. Plenty of support. Constant review of the meds I am taking. There will be a plan for my recovery to continue: this is not the end. We have talked about packing to go home but I have so few belongings it will not take me long.
Fatima has not returned from the other hospital yet. I want to see her. I want to say goodbye.
After my shower I am told there is a meeting and I am invited.
I am led to the room with the pale yellow hot-air balloon wallpaper.
My doctor is sitting down, cross-legged, and there is a social worker I recognize, and one of my nurses, and then, in the corner, standing slowly, stiffly, is my husband.
Drew stands straight and awkwardly opens his arms.
I run to him, weeping, and he holds me. I sense the others look away, look at each other, nod approvingly.
All part of the plan.
His scent. Some essence of Sammy in there.
“You OK?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m getting there.”
He nods. “Coming home soon.”
I will see my son again.
They discuss routines and appointments. Help at home.
Emergency phone numbers. They talk about the importance of taking it slow, remembering some of the coping strategies I have learned in here.
They talk about support. But in my head I only see Sammy.
Us at the library on a weekend, him helping, then reading quietly at one of the tables, me glancing over at him, gazing at his beautiful red hair, his freckles, adoring him, hoping he lives to be a hundred.
“I said you’ve done really well, Peggy,” repeats the doctor. “You seem much better now. But we don’t want to go one step forward then two steps back, we talked about that, remember? You’ll be going home soon but not quite yet.”
I nod.
“Take it one step at a time, and if you ever need us you know where we are, OK?”
I nod.
Drew places his hand on my knee and pats it twice.