The Begining

“Why won’t Mom get in the car?” Jason asked.

Jason was my 10 year old son.  Why his Mom wouldn’t get ion the car was a question that I wasn’t sure how to answer because I still wasn’t sure I knew the answer.

“She’s sick buddy.  Something is making her not think right,” I told him.

“I wish she wasn’t sick,” he replied.

I did too.  I wished it very much.  But that isn’t where we were.

Where we were was driving slowly down one of the side streets in our small city, shadowing what looked like a homeless woman but was really my wife Jessica.  It was about two in the morning, it was February and it was cold.  Wet snowflakes sputtered in the air.  My wife shuffled slowly down the sidewalk.  She wore a large loose coat with a sweatshirt underneath that made her look bulky and large.  She carried a cloth grocery bag that was really a quickly thrown together sort of emergency supply kit – it contained some fruit roll-ups and energy bars, a sweater, a blanket, a flashlight I think, and some other things I didn’t see when she pulled it out of the trunk (I didn’t even realize she had this kit ready to go, never having noticed it in the trunk).  Her long brown-but-graying hair that was usually neatly braided or pulled back now swirled around her head with the wind and intermittent snow.  She wore skateboarding shoes my teenage son Harry had given her when she had originally refused to get in the car after leaving the hospital emergency room in stocking feet about an hour ago.

An hour ago.  

More like a lifetime ago - when we were in the emergency room.  Jessica had been brought there after I called the ambulance.  She had been meditating in the sitting room, trying to make herself feel better.  The past week had been a hard one for Jessica.  She had been more anxious than usual.  She was worried about our oldest son, Harry, graduating high school in a few months.  She was worried about our food being contaminated with Fukushima radiation.   She was sure government agents had been in the health food store where she worked trying to find some reason to shut it down.  Most of all she was tortured by “messages” she had gotten in her dreams about a cataclysmic event that was soon to occur in the United States (as I write this, I’m struck by how clearly insane some of her thoughts were, yet at the time I was able to somehow convince myself she wasn’t ill.  Perhaps it was because her thoughts gradually became extreme, starting with reasonable suspicion and ending at clear paranoia.  Also, it wasn’t until later that I learned the “messages” she got telling her things also occurred while she was awake).  She was not sleeping, and not only that, she was waking me up to tell me important revelations she was having, dreams that had meaning, or important thoughts that were coming to her.  She was exhausted and I only slightly less so.

She had been in the sitting room for quite a while when I realized how quiet she was.  I thought perhaps she fell asleep, so I went in to check on her.  I found her lying on the couch, and though her eyes were closed she didn’t seem to be sleeping.

“You okay?” I asked her.

She didn’t respond.  I shook her lightly and still she didn’t respond.  I shook her harder.  Terrified, I put my hand on her chest and was relieved that I could feel her breathing.  I shook her again to no avail.  I slapped her face lightly, then a little harder.  She made no response.

My oldest son Harry came into the room, then my youngest Jason joined us (my middle son Corey was over a friend’s house).  They each called to her and shook her, much as I had, and both to no avail.

Finally I called the ambulance.

The EMTs found her in the same state.  They could not rouse her either.  All of her vital signs seemed normal.  They began to load her onto a gurney for transport to the hospital.  Once in the ambulance she regained consciousness.  

“I want to stay home,” she said.

“We have to find out what’s wrong,” I told her.  “It will be okay.”

I let my sons know I was riding with Jessica in the ambulance and that I would call them as soon as I could.

On the way to the hospital, she went out again.  It was so odd, so bizarre.  One minute she was talking, the next she was flat out.  As we pulled up to the hospital she came to again.  They wheeled her into an exam room.

Nurses checked her out and asked her questions.  She seemed fine physically, they told me, and the doctor would be in soon.  Before they could officially admit her to the emergency room, she decided she didn’t want to be there.

“I’m being told I have to leave,” she said.

“What?”

“I’m getting a message telling me to leave.  I’m leaving.”

“Wait,” I said.

I rushed out to the nurses’ station to tell them she was leaving.

“We can’t make her stay,” the nurse who had first seen Jessica told me.

I rushed back to Jessica who was making her way out of the room.  She had no coat or shoes, just the light shirt and sweats she had been wearing when the EMTs had arrived at our house.

“Jessica, wait.  Let’s get you checked out.”

She had never behaved like this before, and I was unsure what was going on.

“I have to leave.  I have to leave and be homeless.”

“What?”

This made no sense to me.

“I am not humble enough.  The message I’m getting is that I’m supposed to live homeless in order to understand everything.”

She left the building and I was fast behind her.  I convinced her to wait long enough for me to get my son Harry on the phone and have him drive to the hospital to get us.

“I can’t go home with you. I’m sorry,” Jessica said.

“Just wait until Harry gets here, please?”

I was fairly begging her.

She gave in and agreed to wait.  She shivered in the cold, coatless and shoeless.

Finally Harry arrived with Jason in the car with him.  Harry got in the back and I slid in behind the wheel.

“Let’s just go home and talk about this, ok?” I asked.

She would not join us in the car.

She said, “I need some shoes.”

“Let’s get some at home,” I said.

She started to walk away.

Harry yelled after her, “Here Mom, take mine.”

She returned to the car and put on his shoes.  She asked me to pop the trunk.  She pulled out the cloth grocery bag and a coat and started to walk away.  I got out of the car and followed her.

I pleaded with her, “What’s going on?  Why are you doing this?  Just come home. Don’t do this to the boys.”

“I’m not doing this to hurt anyone.  The messages I’m getting are saying I have to.”

Not knowing what else to do, I let her walk away.  I drove the few blocks back to our house.

“We can’t let her go Dad,” said Jason.

“I know.   I just don’t know what to do.”

I decided Jason was right, I couldn’t just leave her wandering around.  I dropped Harry at home and Jason and I went to find her.

“Why won’t Mom get in the car?” Jason asked.

And I didn’t know, and I felt like this was the start of our descent into maelstrom.