CHAPTER FOUR
Her parents loaded her clothes and furniture from the dorm onto the back of their dusty station wagon and drove her back to Hopeville. Everyone was staring in hushed awe as she left; they all knew what had happened. Leah felt powerless and humiliated as they went to the administrative office and turned in her key, where she then had to explain to her parents that the remainder of her stuff was in Cameron’s room.
At home, the sudden and complete withdrawal of drugs from her system wreaked havoc on her system. She had frequent bouts of violent temper tantrums. During one such episode, she went out back and slammed a rake into the ground again and again, so hard that it bent the rake askew and deformed.
Her mother panicked. When Leah wasn’t looking, she went searching through her room. There, she found an old twenty-dollar baggie of marijuana that Leah had forgotten about. Instead of confronting her daughter, however, she went straight to the doctor.
“Bring her to the emergency room,” he said.
There, they injected her with Haldol and diagnosed her with “drug-induced psychosis.”
Leah started screaming. The hospital, which smelled thickly of alcohol, was buzzing with activity but no one had been to see them in over four hours. She demanded to speak with Cameron.
“Call him!” she screamed. The nurses were holding her down, preparing to strap her to the bed. Connie told them it was alright and picked up the phone.
“They were dating in college,” she explained. As she dialed the numbers, Leah watched her mother’s face carefully.
“Yes, I know…yes, I understand that, but…” her voice faltered. “Please. She really needs to speak with him.” There was a long pause. Then her mother handed her the phone.
“Cameron?” she asked, after she had grabbed it.
His voice sounded weak and distant. “I can’t talk long, Leah,” he said.
“Oh, Cameron, I love you,” she said. “I’ve loved you since that very first day in Justice’s room when you turned to me and asked me about the acid. I hate myself for everything that’s happened, and I hate myself for letting everything go down the tubes.”
“Leah, it’s over,” he said abruptly.
“But Cameron, please.” Tears were dripping down silently from her face.
“You’re in the hospital now, so let them help you,” he said. “Because I can’t.” He hung up the phone.
She started screaming again. The nurses held her down. “The sedative should kick in very soon,” one of them said. Leah screamed until she lost strength.
Soon, she fell asleep.
They put her on a heavy anti-psychotic drug meant for schizophrenics. The first side effect Leah noticed was extreme thirst. Then the fatigue and slowness overtook her. She discovered the meaning of the phrase “Thorazine shuffle.” She felt like a non-human—not completely herself. Her senses were dulled, and her thinking was not what it used to be.
She had lost everything—her place in school, Cameron, her gun, her dignity, self-respect, control, even her power. Not to mention Jeremy. She would never forget him. She felt naked and vulnerable, stripped of everything she had once treasured. She was beyond agony.
She got a call from some high school friends of hers. Camelia had killed herself. Leah reacted with shock, then silence. She couldn’t remember Camelia ever being depressed during the time that they had been friends. She was a shy, sweet girl, and didn’t even socialize very much until she was a senior in high school.
Leah didn’t go to her funeral. Not because she didn’t want to, but because she forgot. In her drugged, hazy mind, the days and weeks all seemed to blend together.
This plunged her into an even deeper depression. Camelia, who had so much to live for, managed to escape. And yet Leah, the one who really needed to, was still here.
On a cold day in March, Leah, stripped of her resources and power, went into the garage and fetched a bottle of anti-freeze. She took it to her room, and after her mother had said good night to her, she drank the whole thing.
She didn’t wake up for another two days.
Her mother had heard her moaning from another room. She went in to check on her daughter and discovered her sleeping on a wet pillow—drenched from tears. She nudged Leah, but she wouldn’t wake up.
Soon, she began vomiting and wetting herself. Connie held out a bucket in front of her face, trying to keep her hair out of the way, and periodically changed her panties.
But Leah was projectile vomiting. She was filling up buckets. A decision was made to take her to the hospital. Even though later Leah remembered nothing of this, as her father carried her to the car, she helped him along by standing and walking on her legs.
They determined the cause of the problem. The doctor was grim as he briefed the family. Truthfully, they weren’t sure that she was going to make it.
They fed alcohol intravenously into her veins. They pumped her stomach and then put charcoal into it. They hooked her up to all sorts of tubes and machines, and when that wasn’t enough, they decided to transfer her to another hospital so that she could get dialysis.
Her parents were concerned about brain damage as they rode in the ambulance to the other hospital. It was a long trip. A lot could happen in a couple of hours.
She woke up during the second dialysis session and said, “I feel no pain.”
Her pastor visited her. The rest of her family visited her. She received flowers. After a week, she was strong enough to be let out of the regular hospital.
By law, they had to place her in a psychiatric ward. Leah didn’t want to go, but her mother explained to her that either she go voluntarily, or a judge will force her.
They changed her meds. A doctor spoke with her every day. The hours inside that place dragged as if they were weeks, and Leah wished she could be let out sooner than later.
But they thought she was lying about not being suicidal anymore. It was enough to make her want to have a temper tantrum and be locked up in the quiet room, but she controlled herself.
After ten days, they finally let her go.
Leah still felt weak, but secretly, she now knew that she had the courage to kill. And that made her feel powerful.
Her mother enrolled her in a local community college. Leah was a good writer, so everyone thought that she should take some English classes.
She made straight A’s. With newfound optimism and confidence, Leah decided to go out and socialize again. She hung out with the few friends that still lingered in Hopeville, smoking cigarettes occasionally with them, even though she had quit.
She started going to raves and clubs. She went there dressed like a hooker—in short, tight skirts, halter tops, and spiked boots. She almost always made out with someone different each time she went, and on several occasions, she let him do more.
She never forced him to use protection. It was as though she were daring God to give her some fatal disease.
She rediscovered her haughty, sassy attitude and used it every chance she got. She showed her personality with her body, and her mother disapproved.
“You’ll break my heart,” her mother once commented, shaking her head. Leah just looked at her leave.
Even though she was living dangerously, her grades did not suffer. She made straight A’s all the way to her AA degree. The only drug she did was the occasional ecstasy tablet. She was on a roll: energized and self-confident.
But then she dropped again. When she came back to the hospital, they re-diagnosed her. They now said she had “bipolar.” Apparently you get really high and really low. Leah didn’t care enough to listen to everything they said. They put her on Lithium, anyway.
She transferred to a four-year school and majored in journalism. Her thoughts, at that point, were consumed with studies and writing. She dreamed about someday having a lucrative career at a major newspaper.
But her mother was concerned about her. She was determined that she was going to drop again. She was concerned that all this success meant only one thing—mania.
She forced her daughter to go to a day-treatment program for the mentally ill on her days off.
She walked into the day room stiffly and uncertainly, looking at all the faces. Some of them were staring off into space with their mouth open. Others were mumbling to themselves, pacing back and forth. All of them had a not-so-there expression on their face. Some even looked intelligent, but you could tell that there was something not quite right about the way they looked longingly out the window.
Leah timidly took a seat, clasping her purse in her lap.
In the mornings, everyone had to do a job. It was like work: dusting, sweeping, mopping, cleaning the toilets, etc., etc. Then there was a communal gathering for lunch, and afterwards, they all met for group therapy.
At first, Leah didn’t want to share. But soon, she thought of inventive things to say: “My mother is upset about my past drug use” or “I’m having a tough time coping with the stresses of school.” Those two always went over well.
But neither of them touched on the real heart of the matter. What bothered Leah, what had been bothering her for a long time, was something she couldn’t quite put into words without sounding crazy: the dissolution of her soul.
She was getting a lot of mentally ill friends. Not only did she meet people at the clinic, but she also met people every time she went into the hospital. She went into the hospital eight times over the next several years. Each time, they adjusted her medications and observed her for a few days. Each time, she went in because she was suicidal. Except once.
She found herself at the mall with two younger friends who were just graduating from high school. The girl driving them was mad at her, and Leah cocked an attitude. “So just leave me here,” she retorted. Soon, she was off and flying. She was running through the mall so quick that the two girls behind her could barely keep up.
When they did, Leah rushed up to a security guard. “See those two girl?” she said, pointing at them. “They’re trying to kill me.”
They were taken to the security guard station. Mothers were called. The younger of the two girls started crying and then the older one did, too. When Leah’s mother picked her up, little was said between the two of them.
Leah stood staring out of her window when she heard a rap on her door. “Leah? I think you’d better go to the hospital. I don’t think you’re well.”
When they got there, they had to wait again. The wait was excruciating. Leah thought about Cameron and about the last time she was here in the emergency room, and she decided to lose it.
She screamed at the top of her lungs. She wouldn’t stop; it was as though her life depended on it. She screamed until her lungs became hoarse, not even stopping when they gave her an injection in the hip and strapped her to the bed.
She was in the hospital for three weeks. Her parents visited her occasionally, bearing gifts, but they did little to comfort Leah, who was in despair. None of the doctors thought she would get better, and everyone predicted that she would be there for months. Leah wept in her room, thinking about the freedom she felt when she owned the gun and engaged in fantasies about killing whomever she wanted.
She had stopped writing letters to Brendan some time ago. She thought about him frequently, but feared the consequences if she were to continue to send unwanted mail. After understanding the hardships of penalties (landing herself in the hospital), she didn’t want to take that chance again. She still wanted, needed, to be connected to him, but it was just too big of a risk.
She thought he’d understand.
When she got out of the hospital, Leah resolved to live a clean life for as long as possible. She broke connections with the friends that did drugs, focused her attention on her studies, and resolved that she was going to try to live positively.
She did a very good job. She made it most of the way through school, and didn’t once get into trouble.
But just before she graduated, she started using pain killers and sedatives. She gathered up hoardes and popped them like candy. She even got addicted. Without her mother’s knowledge, she slowly weaned herself off of them. No one ever found out. But over the next few years, she relapsed twenty times. Eventually, however, she stopped.
She graduated. Everyone was happy. Her family patted her on the back and congratulated her. They threw her a party that night. Non-alcoholic, of course. They said, “We’re glad you finally got your life back on track.”