Past Tense in Total

“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 wasn’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.
This is why I found myself in a car shadowing my wife with my son asking, “Why won’t Mom get in the car?” 

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

We convinced Jessica to come home.  

Jason and I had followed her for a block or so before she finally stopped.  I got out of the car and walked up to her.

“I’m scared,” she said.

“It’ll be okay.  Just come home.”

“The messages are telling me to leave you guys but I don’t want to.  I’m scared.”

Her eyes were wild and darted occasionally.  Ever since this started, her eyes had taken on this kind of caged-animal look.  Honestly, they reminded me of the way our cat looked at night when he was bouncing off the walls wanting to go out.  The rest of her face looked tight.  I don’t know if that is really a good description, but that is what it seemed to me - tight.  She looked almost like another person.

“You don’t have to leave us,” I said. “I don’t know why you are getting messages saying you have to leave us, but the messages are wrong.  You don’t have to leave.  I love you.  The boys love you.”

Finally, thankfully, she got into the car.

Jason spoke up right away.

“Mom I’m sorry you aren’t feeling good.  If this is because I slept over Josh’s?  I won’t do it again.”

My heart broke a little listening to Jason.  Of all the pain I’d felt in the last hours, the pain of Jason’s statement was almost unbearable.  It struck me how quickly kids, and all of us really, look to blame ourselves for things.  To an adult, the idea of Jason’s sleepover causing all this turmoil was ludicrous, but to Jason it was possible.

Before I could reassure him, Jessica spoke, “It’s ok honey, and it’s not you.  I love you.  I haven’t been a good mom to you.  I want you to know how much I love you. You deserve a good mom.”

Jason was crying as he said, “But you are a good mom.”

He reached into the front seat to put his hand on her shoulder.

We got her home.  It was almost 3am.  I got Jessica upstairs to our room and Jason into his. Harry was in his room, the door closed, hopefully asleep.  

“I know it will be hard, but try to get some sleep,” I said to Jason as I stood over his bed.

“Just don’t let her leave again.”

“I won’t,” I replied and kissed his forehead.

Jessica lay in bed but she was still in the same sweats and light shirt she had been wearing when we left for the hospital.  I sat on the bed next to her.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s ok.”

“No, I mean I’m sorry for everything.  I’ve done so many bad things.  In my whole life I’ve done so many bad things and I’m so sorry for them.”

Jessica had not done a lot of bad things in her life.  She was and still is a nurse.  She has spent most of her life helping people.  And though our marriage like others had its ups and downs, she was not a bad wife, nor a bad mother.

She sat up next to me and took my hands into hers.  

“I need you to look right into my eyes while we talk,” she said.

“Ok.”

“I’ve tried to help people but it has all been for ego,” she began.

I began to protest.

“No listen.  I haven’t been a good person because even if I’m doing something good it isn’t for good reasons.  It’s because I wanted people to see how great I was or something.  That’s why the messages are telling me to leave.  I have to learn to really help people.  You know I’m a healer, but I haven’t been healing like I’m supposed to.  You have to look at me when we talk.”

My eyes must have drifted off of hers.  It’s actually quite hard to not break eye contact while talking to someone.  I brought my eyes back to hers and she stared at me with her intense caged eyes.

“I haven’t been a good mother either.  I get mad too easy.  I don’t always put the kids first.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I told her.  “What you are saying isn’t true. It doesn’t make sense.  You know all you’ve done for this family, for your kids.”

What she was saying didn’t make sense.  She was a wonderful mom.  She loved her kids as much as anyone could.  She did everything she could for them.  She gave up a corporate nursing career to stay home with them.  Everything about this situation felt so weird and wrong to me, and everything she was saying about herself was so weird and wrong.  It was like some other person was confessing to me all of her sins, sins Jessica had not committed.

Abruptly she sat up.

“Where are you going?” I asked.  I was worried she was going to take off again.

“Just to the bathroom.”

I watched her walk down the hall and into the bathroom.  I slowly lay back onto the bed.  

“Where did Mom go?” Jason called out from his bedroom.  His room was directly across from ours.  It hadn’t occurred to me that he was still awake and vigilant.

“It's ok buddy, she just went to the bathroom.”

Jessica returned and got into the bed next to me.  She stayed stiffly on her back.

“Let’s try to sleep,” I said.

“Ok.”

After fifteen minutes or so Jessica sat up again.

“Where are you going?”

“I can’t sleep.  I’m going to go sit downstairs.”

Before I could say anything she was down the hall and down the stairs.  Jason was quickly out of bed and in my room.

“Where is she going?” he asked.

“Just to sit downstairs.”

“I’m going to,” he said.

“She’ll be ok.”

“What if she leaves?”

“Ok, we will both go downstairs.”

Jessica was back in the sitting room, on the couch where all this began.  Jason and I sat in the TV room on another couch.  Jason slumped against me, his head on my shoulder.

“Let’s not fall asleep Dad.  I think she will leave if we do.”

“Okay.”

I understood his fears and I didn’t want to tell him I thought the same thing.  So we sat.  I faced the sitting room where Jessica was -- her back was to us and I could see the silhouette of her head above the back of the couch.

Jason shook me awake.

“Dad you fell asleep.”

“Did I?”

I did not know I dozed off.  It was like a blank sleep of exhaustion.

“I think I did too,” Jason said. “Is Mom still there?”

“I’m sure she is,” I told him.  Truthfully, I wanted to go back to sleep and I was sure Jessica was finally exhausted and fell asleep herself.

“I’m going to check,” Jason said and trotted into the sitting room.

“Dad,” he said with a panicked voice. “She’s not here.”

I jerked myself fully awake and rushed over to him. 

“We’ll find her.  We’ll find her.”

With Jason right behind me we went to the door.  I threw on a coat and slid into my shoes.  Jason was out the door before me and was waiting by the car.  In the soft new dusting of snow I could see her footprints making their way out to the road.  It was clear from her tracks that she wasn’t wearing shoes.  I walked to the end of the driveway hoping I could see which was she had gone.  I went back to the car.

We backed out of the driveway and pulled into the street.  We hadn’t gone more than a few hundred yards when we saw her.  She was sitting cross-legged on the side of the road, but still in the road.  Her hands were resting on her knees, her palms faced upward and her forefinger and thumbed connected to form circle. 

I pulled up next to her positioning my car so that it would protect her from any traffic that might come her way.  Jason jumped out of the car before I came to a complete stop.

He was standing next to her, his hand on her shoulder, shaking her while saying “Mom” over and over again.

I crouched next to her. Her eyes were closed and her chin was slightly upturned. The headlights from my car caught the sparkling snow around her. 

“Jessica,” I said.

She didn’t answer. I shook her.  She didn’t respond.  I pushed her harder.  Her body just seemed to absorb my energy and not move.  I stood and looked around.  A car came toward us slowing down as it approached.  The headlights silhouetted Jason.  His cold-smoke breath floated out of his mouth and the cloud circled his head.

I leaned against the hood of my car.

“Dad, what are we going to do?” asked Jason

I ran my hand through my hair and stared  up into the clear sky.  I remember noticing the Big Dipper and for some reason started thinking about when we lived in Maryland.  We had a little house there where we had started our family.  I was just starting out after the military and college, and Jessica was doing corporate nursing.  She thought it was so silly that I’d bought glow in the dark stars and stuck them to our bedroom ceiling in the form of various constellations.

“Dad?”

“I don’t know buddy.”

“We can’t leave her sitting there.”

“I know. I guess I have to call the police.”

“No,” Jason said. “I don’t want them to arrest her.”

“They won’t arrest her.  They will just help us get her to the hospital.”

The last thing I wanted was to call the police, but I had no idea what else to do.  I couldn’t leave her in the road, in the cold, sitting half in a snow bank and half on the wet pavement.  I couldn’t get her in the car myself.

Reluctantly I dialed 911 again.

“The police will be there shortly,” the tinny voice said.

I hung up and waited.

While we waited I worried.  I hadn’t wanted to call the police because even though our local police aren’t known for being abusive or for overreacting you never know.  What if she didn’t respond and they tasered her?  What if they tried to move her and she resisted?  Would Jason and I have to watch her get slammed to the ground and handcuffed? 

 It took about ten minutes for the police to show up.  I told them what was going on, about our earlier hospital visit, about her leaving the house while we were sleeping.  Jason stood next to me as we spoke.  I didn’t want him there but I didn’t know what else to do with him.  And he probably wouldn’t have left my side anyway.

Both police officers walked up to Jessica.  She still sat crossed legged on the edge of the road.  Jason and I watched from a distance. 

“Ma’am, we need to get you off the road and inside.”

She didn’t reply.  Or move.  One of the officers put his hand on her shoulder and shook her.  She didn’t respond.  He shook her a little harder.  Still no response.  I stood by, hands in my pockets, sheepishly watching.

The officers talked quietly to each other then walked over to me.

“We’d like to get her in your car and then take her to the hospital.  We will meet you there. Once we get her looked at we’ll know how to proceed.”

Jason and I got into the car and I slowly moved it next to her.  I told Jason to stay in the car while I got out and opened the back door.  I told him he shouldn’t be worried but he might be upset watching us try to get her in the car, so it would be best if he looked away.  The two officers and I approached Jessica.  They put their hands under her armpits and tried to lift her.  Her limp body was hard to move.  I tried to help by picking up her legs but I don’t think I was helping much.  We somehow dragged/moved her to my car.  They slid her upper body into the backseat and her legs were sprawled out the door.  One of the officers moved to the other side and was trying to pull her in far enough so we could push her legs in.  As he pulled, her shirt rose up exposing her braless breasts.  I reached in to tug it back down and thought how humiliated Jessica – the Jessica I had known before today – would have been for this to happen.  I kept hold of her shirt while we pushed her legs in and hoped Jason hadn’t seen his mother exposed and catatonic and being shoved into the back of a car. 

We got her into the car, finally.  You would be surprised how hard it is to move a limp person.  I followed the police cars to the hospital and pulled into the emergency lane.  The police were already out and talking to the hospital staff.  An orderly was rolling a wheelchair our way.  Once again I helped wrestle Jessica’s limp body, this time out of the car and into the wheelchair.  They wheeled her inside while Jason and I went to park the car.

I held his hand as we walked from the parking lot and into the emergency room.

“It’ll be okay, buddy,” I said even though I had no idea if this was true.