“Ten-four.”
Isabel went in search of the rest rooms, swimming upstream against the crush of music fans and studio executives hurrying to take their seats before the show began.
“Excuse me. Excuse me,” she said, trying to stay polite.
A guard pointed a few feet ahead and Isabel rushed into a stall, conscious of the time.
After washing and drying her hands she headed out of the bathroom while adjusting her dress and walked directly into the back of a man blocking the bathroom exit.
“Oh! Sorry, but can I get through?” she said as the air returned to her lungs. Her mouth dropped open when he turned around.
“Well, hello there!” Alex was theatrically cheerful. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Alex!” Isabel looked beyond him toward the camera stand and Tom, but she couldn’t see over the bobbing sea of heads. “What’re you doing here?”
He followed her glance and turned back to her, his mouth twisted up into a Grinch grin. “I don’t want to keep you,” he said. “You’re in a hurry. We can walk back if you want.”
“No,” Isabel said a little too quickly, wanting to avoid a scene between Tom and Alex. “How’d you end up here?”
“I have friends, musician friends, who got me a ticket. I thought you might be here.” The grin grew.
“What’re you…following me?” But Isabel didn’t need to ask. She knew he was.
“Naw,” Alex replied.
“I have to go now, Alex. Just leave me alone, okay?”
He didn’t move or break his stare.
“Did you hear me?” She was almost pleading. “Will you stop following me? You’re freaking me out, Alex.”
Without saying a word, he stepped aside and ushered her past with a mock chivalrous sweep of his capeless arm.
“There you are!” Tom looked relieved. “They want you early. Get plugged in and talk to the producer.”
Isabel passed the clip-on mike up under her dress to her collar and fastened it. She put her earpiece in and turned up the volume. “Hello? Check, check, check. This is Isabel Murphy. Mike check one, two, three.”
“Hi, Isabel?” the nervous producer came into her ear. “It’s Paula. Can we come to you in about two minutes? I know it’s way early but we’re crashing here and we need to fill.”
“That’s fine,” Isabel said. “Two minutes it is.”
“You’re a gem. Thanks so much.”
Jesus, what am I going to talk about?
She looked back over her shoulder, scanning the crowd for Alex. Her heart was pounding like a drum against her rib cage. She felt its pulse vibrate in her ears. She knew he was nearby. The prickly feeling on the back of her neck hadn’t gone away yet.
Where is he?
Down below the skybox where the reporters were stationed, Isabel saw the legendary rocker on a huge screen set up above the stage, accepting his Grammy.
“One minute, Isabel,” the voice in her ear announced.
She quickly leafed through the Grammy program but the words were blurring.
“Thirty seconds.”
Calm down. Calm down.
Isabel turned to search the crowd once more for Alex and froze. He was leaning up against the wall, only a few feet away from her. Her eye static mushroomed and she squinted through her anxiety to find the iris on the camera. Her temples were throbbing.
Focus.
She listened to the excited anchor in her ear. “Now we go live to Isabel Murphy at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Isabel? We hear there are some surprises tonight!”
Surprises?
“Ah, yes…” She looked frantically past the camera to Tom, who had come out from behind the viewfinder to search her face with a worried look.
He’s mouthing something. What’s he mouthing?
“Sorry, Tom,” she managed. Wrong name. Wrong name! “As you can imagine, it’s hard to hear with all this wonderful music in the background. It’s pretty loud here.”
Tom ducked back behind the camera.
I can do this.
“That’s okay, Isabel.” The anchor sounded every bit as nervous as Tom looked. “Tell us, what’s surprised you so far tonight?”
Alex.
No. Don’t think about that. Focus. Grammys.
“Keith Richards.” She pushed the name out of her mouth. Tom peered around his camera again.
Dammit, doesn’t he know I’m trying to concentrate here? What is he mouthing?
“He was slated to perform,” she continued as if in a dream, “but for some reason he was a no-show and had to accept his Grammy via satellite….”
Tom left his camera on his tripod and moved toward Isabel.
It’s awfully hot in here.
“I think that surprised me the most. Everyone here was talking about how this was to be his first live solo performance ever.”
Why is Tom yelling at me?
Maybe I should wrap it up.
The voice in her ear was saying something but she couldn’t make out the words above the din of white noise in her brain.
“That’s all for now,” she squeaked, feeling the sweat trickling down her chest. “Back to you, Tom.”
The last thing Isabel remembered before she collapsed was the light on the camera switching off.
Thirty-Five
What is wrong with me? I can’t figure out how to wake up out of this stupor.
“Is there something about Lark that touches you?” Dr. Seidler asks. “Can you tell me what you thought when you saw Lark being led away?”
Numb. I felt numb. There’s nothing we can do to save ourselves….
But Isabel cannot form her thoughts into words.
“Have you thought about Lark much since that day last week?”
Oh, Doctor, I see you making this big effort to save me…don’t bother. Leave me alone. That’s all Lark wanted…to be left alone. That’s all I want, too.
“Isabel, we need to talk about ECT.”
That’s right. Try to shock my brain into functioning normally. Try to jolt my body back into reality. That’s the solution, isn’t it? You want to scramble my brain so it doesn’t get sad anymore, so that I can function like a “normal” person. So that this mind-numbing life I live can be tolerated. It won’t work…I already know the answer to the riddle: life is meaningless. Nothing has any value whatsoever. Once you know that you can never go back.
“I think it would do you a world of good. I really do—otherwise I wouldn’t suggest it. But I would like to know, I’m going to try to find out, one last time, what you think about it. Can you tell me what you’re thinking?”
I am blank.
“That’s it, then,” her doctor says decisively, watching Isabel closely for her reaction. “I have made an appointment for ECT for you tomorrow morning.” She scribbles a note to herself. Isabel feels like she is watching her catatonic self from the ceiling of the small office. Watching Dr. Seidler make the next move on the chessboard.
ThatsitthenIhavemadeanappointmentforECTforyoutomorrowmorning. ThatsitthenIhavemadeanappointmentforECTforyoutomorrowmorning….
“So I want you to get a good night’s sleep tonight and I’ll see you when you wake up. Don’t eat breakfast. We’ll go over there (Over there…over there…send the word…send the word…over there…the Yanks are coming…) together in the morning.”
Isabel goes back to her room.
“Isabel?” The singsong voice of Julie the day nurse. Isabel notes that on the metal clip of Julie’s clipboard she has written her name in large block letters with dots on the ends as if she were in college.
She still uses rollers and sets her hair.
“Isabel? Did you forget? We have group exercise now! We’re going to the pool, so go jump into your bathing suit! The rest of the group is waiting!” Everything Julie says is punctuated with exclamation points.
They’ll be waiting until hell freezes over if they’re waiting for me.
“Isabel, you must not ha
ve heard me, sweetie….”
You’re so chirpy I want to rip your face off.
“No,” Isabel says to Julie just before closing the door to her room in Julie’s face.
It suddenly occurs to Isabel that Julie bears a scary resemblance to Joanie from Happy Days.
It is a leaky-faucet night: the minutes drip by at an excruciatingly slow rate. Isabel lies in bed, nearly paralyzed with fear.
How did this happen to me? How did I end up here? God…I know I haven’t gone to church in years and I take your name in vain and sometimes I even doubt your existence so I have no right to ask you anything…but please, please—if you can hear me—please help me. Please keep me from having electroshock. I’ll do anything. I really will. I’ll talk in my therapy sessions. I’ll cooperate with all the doctors here. I’ll work on myself—anything. Just please don’t make me have electroshock.
Isabel turns onto her stomach to try to fall asleep, but she is kept awake by the sound of her own breathing echoing through the mattress coils.
“Isabel?” A knock on the door. “Isabel? It’s Dr. Seidler.”
Oh, God. Oh, God, no.
Isabel feels nauseous with exhaustion and the sick realization that her therapist is there to accompany her to electroshock.
“Good morning,” Dr. Seidler says, trying not to sound too somber. “I’ll wait outside for you to get dressed and then we can get going.”
What should I wear? What did Francis Farmer wear?
Like a zombie, Isabel pulls on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, slips on her JP Todd mules and looks in the mirror.
Jesus Christ.
She opens the door and tentatively steps out into the hallway.
“You ready?” her therapist asks, and without waiting for an answer, starts walking.
“I can imagine you’re a bit frightened, Isabel,” Dr. Seidler says as they turn onto the path that leads to the medical treatment facility. “I wouldn’t blame you, we’re always scared of the unknown. But let me just tell you that before we do anything we’ll explain how it works and what you should expect so you won’t be surprised by anything. In fact, the only surprise will likely be how easy it is.”
Easy for you to say.
Isabel stares down at the path as they walk along. Her empty stomach is churning with bile.
“The technician and the doctor overseeing the treatment will be there to answer any and all of your questions.”
“What about you?” Isabel panics. “Aren’t you going to be there?”
“I will for the initial meeting, but once you go into the treatment room I’ll have to leave.”
“Why?” Isabel’s voice is urgent.
“You’ll be in good hands” is all she says. “Don’t worry, Isabel. You won’t even notice I’m not there.”
They walk along in silence, following the pathway that cuts across the grounds. Dr. Seidler walks at a brisk pace but slows from time to time to allow Isabel, slumped and sluggish with dread, to catch up. The building they are headed toward looks more like a conventional hospital than any other structure at Three Breezes.
As they pass the cafeteria, the door opens and out file small children. There, taking up the rear as always, is little Peter. As they pass each other he looks Isabel straight in the eye for the first time. For that brief moment Isabel feels a tremendous sense of peace.
Don’t let this be you, Peter. Don’t ever let yourself get to this point.
But Peter is already studying the pavement, searching for the anthills he is so desperate to avoid.
The Medical Treatment Facility is a structure remarkable only in that it has not one piece of ornamentation, not one redeeming decorative architectural element. To Isabel it is a whole other world: nurses she does not recognize clutter the hallways, visitors stand around killing time, the smell of a distant cafeteria permeates every corridor. Having been cloistered in her tiny unit for more than three weeks, Isabel finds it surreal. She quickens her pace to keep up with Dr. Seidler.
“It’s just up ahead,” says Dr. Seidler, noting Isabel’s worried face.
“So many people…” Isabel says, her eyes wide, taking it all in.
“I know.” Dr. Seidler sounds apologetic. “I’ve been telling them for some time now that we need a more private place for some of our treatments.
“Here we are,” she says as she holds the door open for Isabel.
The psychiatric wing is much quieter. They turn into a nondescript waiting room and Dr. Seidler motions for Isabel to take a seat. “I’ll be right back,” she says as she goes through an unmarked door at the far side of the room.
“Where are you going?” Isabel’s heart is beating so fast she feels it in her throat.
“I’m just going to let them know we’re here. Don’t worry. I’ll be right back.”
Isabel’s breathing becomes shallow.
Oh, God. Oh, God.
She scans the room to find something on which to focus her attention but finds nothing. The blank walls are littered with nail holes where pictures once hung. Isabel squints to make out the discolored squares surrounding the marks.
Why’d they take down the pictures? What’s so bad about pictures?
“Isabel?” Dr. Seidler is standing in the open door, motioning her to pass through it.
I am Alice in Wonderland…I will pass through this door in the looking glass and I’ll become smaller…smaller…smaller…
Isabel has slumped so far down in her chair that her shirt rides up her back. She stands up and pulls it back down. Wordlessly she crosses the empty room, her breaths still short and shallow.
“Hello, Isabel.”
This guy looks like that Ghostbusters actor. What’s that guy’s name?
“I’m Dr. Edwards and I’ll be treating you today. Why don’t you come on into the treatment room so that I can show you exactly what’s going to happen.”
Not Bill Murray. Not Dan Ackroyd…the other guy.
Isabel follows the two doctors into the treatment room. The smell of ammonia is overpowering.
Harold Ramis! That’s who he looks like. Harold Ramis.
Dr. Edwards gets right to the point. “The machine you’re looking at is what we use to gauge the intensity of electricity used to treat our patients. I know it looks like a dinosaur but it’s state of the art.” The doctor is proudly standing alongside his silent, mechanical partner in crime.
State of the art when? In 1960?
“It’s quite simple, really. We’ll ask you to lie down on this table and we’ll attach two electrodes to your temples. Then we will set this needle and flip this switch and the current will be administered. It’s very brief. The whole thing lasts a matter of seconds. You might feel a bit of a jolt but it’s not painful. In the old days, patients had rubber mallets in their mouths to protect them from biting off their tongues. Now we need nothing of the sort.”
“Isabel?” Dr. Seidler is facing her. Isabel feels like she is snorkeling, the muffled words come at her in slow motion.
She turns to face her therapist and watches Seidler’s mouth as it moves, imagining tiny air bubbles floating from it with each word.
“See? I told you it’d be quick,” Seidler is mouthing, not so surreptitiously checking her watch while reaching out to touch Isabel’s forearm in reassurance.
“And maybe feel a bit tired…” Isabel turns to watch Dr. Edwards’s mouth move. She nods at everything they are saying. She watches as they talk at her and then to each other.
Smile. Let them see you’re a picture of grace under pressure…smile! Hello, I’m Isabel Murphy, ANN News. Reporting live…
Isabel’s attempts at twisting her mouth into the shape of something upbeat fail and her smile is more of a miserable smirk. Dr. Seidler looks sad.
Isabel telepathically messages her doctor.
Take me with you.
Failure. Dr. Seidler is gone.
“Okay, Isabel, we’ll have you lie down right here,” an overweight nurse pats
the hospital bed as though it is made of feathers and sitting by a fireplace at a bed-and-breakfast.
“Are you cold? Do you want a blanket?”
Maybe some hot chocolate while I warm myself here by the fire.
Isabel cannot speak. She watches the kind nurse open a cabinet and pull out a light hospital blanket to drape over Isabel’s bare legs.
“Now. This jelly might be cold. I’m just going to dab a spot of it on each side of your forehead. There. This will help the electrodes stay in place. They’re suction cups so they need a bit of moisture. Now they’re in place and we’re all set to go.” Her touch is soft.
Wait! This is happening too fast! Hello? Can anyone hear me? Wait.
It is as if the entire scene is part of a dream sequence in a movie and someone has hit the fast-forward button on the VCR after watching in slow motion for a while.
I’m not ready for this. Wait…please wait.
“Okay, Isabel,” Dr. Edwards is hovering over her head, checking the nurse’s work. “Looks like we’re good to go.”
“Good to go.” Harold Ramis with a military background. Good to go. Goodtogogoodtogogoodtogogoodtogogoodtogo.
Thirty-Six
“Okay, so we’ll run first then we’ll get bagels on Chestnut Street,” Alex offered. “Just come running with me. Please?”
The sand is so soft it feels like running in molasses. The waves are too big to run along the water’s edge without getting soaked. In the distance, the Golden Gate Bridge seems to remain untouchable no matter how hard they run toward it. The wind is at their backs gently nudging them along.
“Isabel, come on! Try to catch me!” Alex is smiling, calling out over his shoulder, his jog turning into a sprint. “We’ll finish sooner! Think bagels! Come on, Isabel!” His words are carried to her by the wind.
I can’t keep up, Alex. Wait up.
“Isabel?”
Alex!
“Isabel?”
Where am I?
Isabel squints up at the ceiling.
San Francisco? Did we already get the bagels?
“Isabel? Isabel, are you awake?”
Oh.