I thought I saw Ben, but I don’t trust that memory.
A doctor sweeps into my hospital room, then. He’s tall, dark-haired, and stern, anywhere from thirty to fifty years old. It’s hard to tell, being clean-shaven with a youthful face, but his eyes are hard and tired. “Miss Leveaux.”
“Doctor.” I have no desire to talk to him, to hear his recriminations and faux-concern.
“How are you feeling?”
“Shitty.”
He nods as if this is exactly how I should feel. “Well, I suppose this is to be expected, under the circumstances.”
“Yeah? What the fuck do you know about my circumstances?” I sound hostile, because I feel hostile. I can feel him judging me, even before he opens his mouth.
“I know you recently lost your mother which, understandably, has led to some…emotional distress, you might say.”
I just stare at him, knowing I should hold my tongue, because he’s just doing his job. But does he have to be such a pompous dick about it?
“Emotional distress,” I repeat. “Yeah, you could say that.”
“And, sometimes, when we’re under extreme duress, we may find ourselves making decisions that—”
“Don’t lump yourself in with me, asshole. You don’t know shit about me, and you don’t know shit about my emotional duress or whatever the fuck you just said. When can I get out of here?”
He frowns at me, but doesn’t seem fazed by my outburst or my profanity. “Well, we’ll have to do a few tests to make sure you didn’t do any lasting damage to yourself. Can you tell me how many pills you swallowed, and how much alcohol you drank?”
I sigh, and try not to snap at him. “I wasn’t really counting the pills, but…nine or ten, I guess. As for how much I had to drink? That day? Or…?”
“I see. Yes, how much did you have to drink yesterday?”
“A fifth, or most of it. I don’t remember. They’re all starting to blur together at this point.” No sense in lying about it, right?
“I see.”
“You see, do you? You know what, I really don’t think you do fucking see, Doctor.”
“Loss affects us all differently, Miss Leveaux.” He sets the chart down on his lap, clicks his slim silver pen closed, and regards me for a moment. “For example, when my wife passed away from breast cancer some years ago, I worked double and even triple shifts every single day for three months. I barely slept, barely ate. Eventually the hospital director had to have me forcibly removed from the hospital. So you see, perhaps I do, after all, see. Just a little bit, at least.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, Doctor. And maybe you do get it, but don’t sit there and act like you get me, okay? Because you don’t. No one does.” Why am I saying this shit to him? He’s not even a psychiatrist. He’s just some ER doctor.
“You know, it’s in times like these that I remember John Donne, who wrote in his seventeenth meditation that ‘No man is an island.’ People quote that a lot, but they always stop at that first part. The rest of it makes it all so much clearer, you see. You need the quote in its entirety: ‘No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.’ We’re all a part of a whole, whether we want to be or not, whether we think we are or not. And, you know, the phrase ‘for whom the bell tolls’ that Hemingway made famous also comes from that same writing of Donne’s.”
The doctor leans back, crosses his legs at the ankle, and pokes at the corner of his mouth with his pen. The hardness of an ER doctor has faded, replaced by a softer and more introspective philosopher. “He opens the meditation with a bit of Latin: ‘Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris’, which translates to: ‘Now this bell, tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die.’ Donne then elucidates upon that phrase, saying, ‘Perchance, he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him.’ It’s all subjective, of course, but I’ve always taken this to mean that we often don’t see what’s right in front of us, we don’t see our own afflictions for what they truly are. He writes much on affliction, Donne does, and how it not only glorifies God, but strengthens us. We often fail to see this, though, and we even more frequently, and sadly, fail to see the help that lies waiting for us, so close to hand. And I’m not speaking of God, Miss Leveaux. There is always help to be found. Donne’s point in the bit about no man being an island is that we are not alone. We aren’t each of us this disconnected and disconsolate dot of dirt in a sea of misery. We think we are, but it’s just not true. ‘Any man's death diminishes me,’ Donne also writes, ‘because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’”
I just stare at him, unable to process the sudden influx of seventeenth-century poetry, or whatever the hell. I just stare at him, because even though I refuse to show it or admit it, even to myself, his words have a profound effect on me. I swallow hard and keep my gaze level, even, keep my emotions tamped down.
“Thank you, Doctor.” It’s all I can manage.
He nods, prepares to stand up, and the philosopher has vanished, replaced by the brusque, efficient doctor. “Because you’re classified as an attempted suicide, a psychiatric assessment is required before I can discharge you. Part of your discharge process will include referrals to qualified mental health professionals in the area. Seek help, Miss Leveaux. There is no embarrassment in needing help, every once in a while. It doesn’t make you weak, it merely makes you human, just like the rest of us.”
I say nothing, do nothing, and he leaves.
The evaluation is fairly standard, and I cooperate, if only so I can get out of this damn hospital. Seek help, he says. Right. It’s not about weakness. That’s what I didn’t say to him. It’s not about being afraid of being seen as weak, it’s that help is a fallacy. An illusion. There is no help.
And I am an island. I always have been.
When the hospital shrink finally leaves, I sit in silence for a long, long time; it’s unmitigated hell. Silence is my enemy. Where there’s silence, there are endless thoughts, the cycle of guilt and grief and heartache and regret, all unending and spinning through me until I can’t breathe or move or speak or get out from under the weight of it all. It’s why I drank, and it’s why I took the pills. Not because I wanted to die. It wasn’t about death, or ending it all. It was just about wanting to silence the noise, needing to stop the cycle in my head and my heart. I’m not suicidal. I’m just fucked up, and don’t know how to fix it.