My phone buzzed against the tiles. I was in the middle of brushing my teeth, but I answered it, knowing Carol and I were close enough to share a bathroom.
“Hang on, I have a toothbrush in my mouth,” I spat into the sink.
“Listen, I’m having brunch with Randy and he’s freaking out,” she said.
“What kind of freaking out?”
“He says he wants to die. He’s sobbing on the table. Should I take him to the hospital?”
In the mirror, I winced.
“If he’s that bad, I guess you should.”
Carol exhaled into the phone. I was secretly grateful it was on her watch this time. Whenever Randy was depressed, he reached for an ex-wife. We took turns keeping him company, feeding him dinner and letting him stay the night. At my house that meant he slept in our son’s top bunk, his feet extending past the end of the mattress. In the morning he made it as far as the couch where he would collapse and stare catatonically at the windows all day. When the weight of his presence became unbearable and the throw pillows began to smell like his unwashed hair, my kids finally insisted it was time to send him home.
When we were married I used to panic every time he plummeted into depression. I believed that I was the only thing standing between him and death. In this way I was his marionette for years. One day when his suicide threats got particularly dire, his psychiatrist told me to take him to the emergency room.
“What brings you in today?” the receptionist asked.
“My husband might be suicidal,” I said in disbelief. My eyes met Randy’s and he looked ashamed. He reached for my hand. I was repulsed by his sweaty palm. We were taken down a hallway and into a small empty room at the center of the building. It had no windows and barely enough space for a narrow bed. A small television perched in a cubby behind thick plexiglass. The walls were marked with scrapes and stains, the visual echoes of someone’s tantrum.
Various nurses came and went. They needed a urine sample. We waited hours for a psych evaluation. I paced around and then sat uncomfortably on the edge of the narrow bed where Randy lay. I wished I could be loving and comforting towards him but every cell in my body wanted to jump up and run from that room. Eventually they admitted him to a psychiatric hospital for a 72 hour hold during which they would confiscate his phone and make sure he didn’t kill himself. I waited at home and told our kids lies about where Daddy had gone. At one point Randy was allowed to place a call.
“This is where they put crazy people,” he said. “Everyone screams all day long and we’re not even allowed to go outside.”
“Do they have any therapy sessions or anything helpful?” I asked.
“Not at all,” he replied. “If anything, this place will make me worse.”
After three days they released him and I held my breath until the fog of depression inexplicably lifted as it always did.
By the time Carol had called and brought him to the hospital I couldn’t afford to care anymore. His needs were bottomless and I had to conserve my energy for my children. I tried to go about my day. Guilt crouched heavily on my shoulders. Three hours passed and Carol called again.
“Well?” she demanded, “Are you coming?”
“No.”
I could envision Randy in that wretched hospital room again waiting for a doctor. The compulsion to rescue him was still seductive and it tugged at me.
“Kendall, someone has to be here.”
“No they don’t,” I said. “It sucks there, but at least he can’t kill himself.”
“I have to leave for work and I’m afraid he’ll make his escape,” she insisted.
“I doubt he’ll do that.”
I thought of the harrowing journey that brought me here. Randy the victim. Randy the aggressor. Randy the center of the universe.
“He’s the father of your children. He’s more yours than mine,” she raised her voice.
“He is not mine. If I get pulled in again, I’ll sink with that ship.”
I recognized her state of panic because I lived there most of the time, believing that if I left the battlement he would surely die. But I had run out of energy, and it was time to change the paradigm. It made sense that Carol would resent me for it, and if she never found her way out, I had to be willing to lose her too. She ghosted me for a month and eventually we reconnected but I’m not sure our friendship was ever the same again.
Randy stayed in the hospital for weeks and they gave him electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). In other words, they sent electric currents through his brain that triggered seizures. It came with the caveat that it could temporarily damage his memory, but that it had cured many people who had unresponsive depression. When he was released, he came over to see the kids. Chloe set up a board game they had played many times before.
“Do you want to be Professor Plum or Colonel Mustard?” she asked, extending a hand full of colorful game pieces. He cocked his head to the side and looked at me with a vapid expression.
“Now how do you play this game?” he asked.
Somehow while hovering on rock bottom, he managed to meet a woman. He posted her photo on Facebook with a comment, “Karyn is my guardian angel. Nobody has ever cared for me the way she does. She has literally saved me from the depths of despair.”
“Did you see that post?” Carol hissed over the phone. “What the fuck is that? I just spent the last eight weeks feeding his cats while he was down for the count. You and I together have carried him through decades. Who the hell is Karyn?”
“Carol, I’m pretty sure she’s the best thing that ever happened to us,” I said.