Cocoon (20 page)

Joanie added, “Well, I have Thursdays off and half the day on Saturdays. I can always help when needed.”

Billie Jean grinned. “Thanks, guys. You know, that's why friends come in batches, doncha? Because when one gets tired and bogged down, the others rally and fill in. Right now, Barth and I have it covered. But you can be sure that if and when that time comes, I'll be sending out the posse for you two.”

Then she added, “We need to keep on believin' and hang together, girls.”

She smacked her hand palm down on the Formica tabletop. Joanie's covered hers and Chelsea's slapped on last. Together they chanted, “All for one and one for all.”

And the fact that their
woo-hoos
drew a few irritated glances did nothing to dampen their sharpened camaraderie.

• • •

“Seana, please, won't you go with me?” Barth was dressed and ready to go to a party honoring Pastor Keith and Louann's ten-year anniversary at Redemption Community Church. A big deal.

The entire church family would be there.

“No. And I don't want you to go.” Seana's petulance over this superseded anything of the past. Barth had pleaded all day, trying every way he could to coerce her into going. She staunchly refused to cooperate.

Finally, frustrated, Barth set out alone. The parking lot was nearly full when he arrived at the church. Just as he pulled into the parking lot, his cell phone rang. “Hello?”

“I took all the sleeping pills in the bottle.”

Barth froze. “What did you say, Seana?” Perhaps he misunderstood, but a squalling alarm set off inside him. “Did you say you took all the Temazepam pills in the bottle?”

“Yes.” His mind began clicking off the number of pills that were left in the prescription.

Too many.

“Hang up, Seana. I'll call EMS.”

She rang off. Barth's fingers were trembling so violently he could hardly dial 911. As he drove he gave them his address. The ambulance arrived at his house at the same time he did and had Seana in the ambulance within minutes. Barth followed the screaming siren all the way to Paradise Springs Hospital, where they whisked Seana into ICU and began treatment.

Barth was frantic. Guilt pounded him into pulp.
How could I have let this happen? I've not been vigilant enough.

He'd let down lately and didn't always lock up the meds. Seana had seemed responsible enough in recent months. She'd wanted to stay alone more, and he felt, in a weird way, that was progress.

While waiting for the doctor to finish the emergency treatment, Barth sank onto a waiting room chair, elbows on knees, face buried in hands. He felt as low as he'd ever felt in his life.

So he did the only thing he could.

He prayed.

• • •

Seana did not want to drink the liquid charcoal they gave her in the ER. But they insisted, so she forced it down. She'd not wanted to come to the hospital, either, when the ambulance had arrived at her house. But they'd made her climb on the rolling cot and put her in the back of the EMS unit and, siren a'screaming, rushed her to the hospital.

Barth was here but not with her. She'd heard him tell the doctor that she'd taken a bottle of sleeping pills. So the vile black liquid she'd just swallowed was supposed to take care of that, either by making her vomit or forcing the pills out the other way.

The doctor on duty tonight came in and talked to her for a little while. “Why did you take the pills, Seana?”

She shrugged. “I don't know why I did it.”

Later, she could hear him just outside her room, talking to Barth.

“I'm going to admit her to the Carolina Center for Behavioral Health.”

Barth said something she couldn't quite make out.

“Yes,” the doctor said decisively. “I think this suicide attempt warrants it. She definitely needs psychological treatment.”

Barth came in and stood next to her bed, looking like an old man suddenly. She turned her face away. “You're going to be admitted to –”

“I heard.”

A deep, ragged, indrawn breath. Then, “okaaay.”

After emptying her stomach of the deadly contents, the team of doctors referred Seana to the Carolina Center for Behavioral Health, where she remained for the next fifteen days.

• • •

Something happened to Seana at the CCBH facility. Perhaps it was the new setting. Or a radically different agenda each day. Whatever it was, she felt, to some degree, once removed from the thing that held her captive.

Not enough to celebrate. Or to even acknowledge. But she realized right away that she did not like her roommate. Certainly not a new thing. And she didn't like to go to group sessions but she somehow knew that to earn the right to go home, she must comply.

And go she did but she never talked during those meetings. She just sat there and listened to everyone else vent.

“Would you like to share your experience here with us, Ms. McGrath?” Miss Fox, the therapist, would ask.

Seana shrugged. “Not really.”

The therapist then moved on to the next patient. So Seana learned to get by with simply being there, not necessarily joining in. Secretly, she was afraid of some of the patients.

Her room was pleasant enough. Spartan-like but comfortable. The other patient sharing the room was strange. So Seana pretended she was asleep that night. When another patient came into the room and made plans with her roommate to go to another room to play cards, Seana never let on she was awake and heard.

Seana was certain this was against hospital policy, at least in her unit.

As her meds took over, Seana surrendered to sleep. The next day, she quietly, surreptitiously approached a supervisor. “I need to talk to you,” she whispered to the nurse.

“Okay. Come into my office.”

There, behind the safety of closed doors, Seana divulged the episode, ending with, “But I'm scared. I'm afraid of her, afraid she'll find out I told on her. Could you move me to another room?”

Not only did they move her to another room, they sent her roommate to another part of the hospital without giving her a reason.

It warmed Seana. They had protected her.

Just like Barth did.

• • •

Barth carried on as best he could under the difficult circumstances. Seana's stay at the Behavioral Health Center stretched past a week. The church folk rallied round him and encouraged him as he worked with the choir and even, because the pastor had a twenty-four hour intestinal bug, gave a brief devotional at the Wednesday Night Prayer service. Though Barth knew his messages touched hearts, preaching was not his primary forte.

Music was.

Today, a sunny January day, he sat in his church office listening to soft music by Dino and tried to wrap himself in peace.

Twice daily, he faithfully spent visiting hours with Seana.

Not easy because Seana was, at best, belligerent and uncooperative.

The rest of the time, he buried himself in music and other church duties. Too, he still regularly researched bone cancer treatments to help Billie Jean – especially holistic approaches, implementing supplements and foods with strong antioxidants that boost the immune system, which, in turn, helps fight cancer. His concern and involvement boosted Billie Jean along, kept her head up, as well as her faith. It was one of the things that validated him these days. Billie Jean's good reports.

Cancer free.
Magic, life-affirming words.

Faith. Ahh, now in his case, situational dynamics pulled and tugged at that fervent five-letter word. He'd never before doubted. Never. Well, at least not for long at a time. But now, with Seana's crash-landing back into the pit, he found himself wondering about a lot of things he'd been taking for granted.

He knew he shouldn't question. But he gazed out the window, into infinite blue littered with snowy cloud puffs … and saw a faraway flock of birds in V formation, headed by a leader, soaring their way to a divinely ordered destination.

That's the way he'd always lived. Following his Creator to … wherever. Because he knew it would be the right place and the right thing in the end. But now? He couldn't help himself – he found himself wondering where this would all end? And the whys, once loosed, were infinite.

Why did Seana have to endure such a nightmare? For that matter, why did
he
end up in such a quagmire?

He laid his head back on the plush leather chair's headrest and closed his eyes. How tired he felt. Then softly … softly his own words floated back to him.
“ … why did I end up in such a quagmire?”

End up. End up ….

An inaudible voice said, “
It's not the end
.”

His eyes sprang open.

The impact of it stunned him. Its veracity. He blinked and shook his head. And surrendered to the wooing presence. A soothing warmth spread through him, amid a holy hush that spoke volumes to his heart.

Barth felt the tension slowly ooze from him.

Then an amazing thing happened.

Barth began to grin like roadkill, feeling like Popeye after scarfing spinach, when superhuman energy invaded him, pumping his muscles, tendons, his very atoms into strapping new handiwork. He recognized the source. He also knew that the days to come would not be easy. But the greatest certainty of all thrilled and stirred to life his long dormant joy.

Whatever happened, he was not alone.

And whatever happened, it would be right.

• • •

Seana's next roommate was Sophie. She liked Sophie. It was as though, away from her ordinary habitat, Seana's perception altered somewhat. Here, she needed more human contact, even if through conversation.

Perhaps it was the newer meds that slowed down that thing that tinkered with her brain. She didn't know and didn't care. She just embraced the slight breather.

So Seana and Sophie began hanging together and talking, even laughing, together.

“Why are you here?” Seana ventured during one conversation.

“Panic attacks. Monster ones at times.” Sophie grinned but Seana could see the uneasiness when she spoke of it. “But I'm feeling better than when I first came in.”

“I'm not as afraid anymore,” Seana confessed. “Not with you here.”

“What brought you here?”

“I took a bottle of Temazepam.”

“A whole bottle of – sleeping pills, I assume?”

Seana nodded.

Then Sophie shrugged, one bony shoulder protruding from the drooping neck of the loose hospital gown. “I'm afraid of dying. I sure don't want to do myself in.”

Seana tried to wrap her mind around that. She'd forgotten what actual reality-based fear was.

“So – why'd you do that?” Sophie asked, looking bewildered.

“I don't know. I didn't really want to kill myself.” She shrugged. “I took the pills to get attention.”

Sophie rolled her eyes. “That's a really dangerous way to get attention, honey.”

“Yeh,” Seana agreed. “It is. But sometimes it's hard.”

“What's hard?”

“Living.”

Sophie peered at her, then slowly nodded. “You're right. It is. Especially when those panic attacks slam into me. I want to run and hide but …” Sophie spread her hands. “Where do I run to? I can't get away from
me
.”

“Sometimes I want to run away, too,” Seana admitted.

“Have you ever tried it?”

“No. Except when I took the pills.”

“So you took the pills to –?”

“To see if anybody would save me.”

• • •

Barth had saved her. Of that, Seana was certain.

And her cry for help was heeded. He visited her every time visitors were allowed.

When Sophie was discharged, Seana found another friend to hang out with. Her name was Gina, a younger woman than Sophie. She suffered from bipolar disorder and was even more engaging than Sophie. She'd had a rough life and had no compunctions about sharing the sordid details.

Group sessions spiced up with Gina there.

But, even so, Seana refused to talk about her own situation.

Gina's lows were black, black revelations to endure at group sessions. On the other hand, the ups were entertaining. So Seana flowed with them, as she did everything else there that didn't disturb the invisible bubble surrounding her, the shield that, when threatened, screamed
back off!

Her lengthy hospital stay and Seana's lack of cooperation culminated with her latest assigned psychiatrist, Dr. Worton, getting fed up and releasing her.

“She's no better,” she overheard Dr. Worton disgustedly telling Barth the day she went home. “But we can't help her if she's not willing to work together with us toward healing solutions.”

The ride home was silent. And that suited her just fine.

At home, her sofa beckoned.

Immediately, she sank into it, pulled the blanket up to her chin, and felt her cocoon close tightly around her again, blocking out the outside world's chill and racket and agitation.

Shielding her from sudden, groundless fear.

Protecting her.

• • •

Zoe knelt beside her mother and peered into her emptied features. “Mama, are you okay?”

“Yes.” But Seana's gaze eluded her daughter's frantic one. Rather, she stared beyond to the ball game playing on the television.

“I don't believe it,” Zoe declared flatly and arose to pace to the den window. Barth watched her from the kitchen where he washed his hands after a morning of turning the garden spot on the farm's back corner.

Zoe spun and strode to where he pulled off paper towels to dry his hands. “She's even worse, Barth.” She narrowed her cold gaze on him and planted hands on hips. “There's some reason she's not getting better.”

Barth looked steadily at her. Then took his glasses off, ran them under the spigot to remove dust, and snatched a tissue from the counter to wipe them clean and dry.