If (24 page)

I had to find Sarah. It was almost February. She didn’t have money. She had to be cold.

“Sarah! I’m sorry! Come back!” I screamed as loud as I could.

BIRD

MILLER WAS TALL
like Ash. But his eyes were copper and he was fuller in build. His brown hair was clipped close to his scalp, not shaggy like Ash’s. Their resemblance was subtle. From what I could tell by Miller’s clothes, even slapped together in the middle of the night, he was definitely a lawyer.

He knocked and when I opened, he put up his finger to signal he was on the phone.

“Yes. William Asher Thomas Thoreau. He was treated at Bellevue in New York City and then transferred to NYU Medical Center. His doctor here is Servus. This is important—he is not schizophrenic. He has synesthesia and it has been confused with that in the past . . . No thorazine . . . I understand, but if he does show up and I find out this was not heeded, there will be hell to pay . . . Thank you.”

He’s definitely a lawyer.

He glanced at his phone before turning his attention to me.

“Hi, I’m Miller, Asher’s brother.” I realized he said Asher’s first name was William. Even though he never went by that, it stung a bit that Ash never told me. It made me feel like I didn’t really know him.

“Hi, I’m Annalise, but everyone calls me Bird.”

“Bird?” His eyes scanned my place like he didn’t really want an explanation. He looked back over to me. “I don’t know how he does it. I guess some things never change,” he said to himself. “So, Ash has a girlfriend?”

“Yeah,” I said. “We met because he saved my life. Some muggers attacked me and he stopped them.”

He leaned back a bit, taking in the news. “So, you’re the one who jumped in and stood up to those assholes?” He pointed a finger at me. “Kudos and thank you.”

“I think I made it worse when I did that.”

“You’re both alive, that’s a plus in my book. So I made some calls on the way over here, so far he hasn’t been picked up. I know some people at the LAPD. If anything comes in sounding like him, they are going to let me know and also get him right to UCLA. If he comes back here, we’ll work on getting him 5150’d.”

“Wait. I don’t understand what’s going on. What wrong with him?” Miller was moving fast and I was just trying to grasp what was happening.

Miller had a look of realization and rubbed his forehead. “Oh, I’m sorry . . . I didn’t think to ask . . . Ash didn’t tell you . . .” His voice trailed.

“Tell me what?”

He took a deep breath and let out the words. “Bird, he’s bipolar. Severely.”

“Bipolar?”

I had heard the word a million times, but I took it for granted. Like “schizo,” or “psychotic.” Those words were thrown around to describe erratic behavior, but I never put much thought into them because I would never need to know the details. My life would not need that vocabulary.

“Do you know what that is?”

“I think so . . .” The clouded thoughts began to part, making way for me to put the pieces together: his sometimes bottomless sadness and his boundless energy. It was like there were three people in Asher: My Asher, sick Asher, and frenzied Asher. Up until now, I kind of liked that about him.

“Well it’s when someone goes between highs and lows, but far more than just a mood swing. Sometimes it gets really extreme, especially if he doesn’t sleep. He was only diagnosed a couple of years ago and he’s had some issues managing it. What Ash is going through right now is a manic phase. And I am assuming he’s gone off his lithium. He’s only ever gotten this bad once before. He hates the medicine because it dulls his senses. You know about that at least, right?”

I barely nodded.

All of Asher’s comments about losing his vision and getting it back developed a new meaning. Somehow I felt like I had pushed him to get it back without knowing any better.

“How could I not have known?” I asked myself out loud.

“Don’t beat yourself up. I am pretty sure he had it for years before we ever noticed it. We always just thought Asher was high-energy and eccentric. In a family full of straight arrows, he was the one with the crazy abilities, and my parents wanted to support his artistic side. So when he would get all hyper, stay up, not eat, or act like a total prick, we just thought that was his method. He could be a lot of fun as a teenager, doing crazy things, taking risks none of us had the balls to. The girls loved him—sorry.”

“Mmmhmm.” I didn’t have the energy to be jealous of some high schoolers.

“Then when he slept and moped for days or weeks on end, we just thought he was a sensitive artist or that he was tired from working so hard or being a moody teenager.”

I shook my head in disbelief. I was both despondent and pissed. I felt like Ash had betrayed me by not telling me. But more than anything, I was scared I would never get him back. He was so distant on the roof, like he was trapped inside of another person, like someone had taken his mind and body hostage.

“Then how did you find out?”

“I don’t know if he told you, but our sister died.”

“Yes, Sarah.”

“Yes. He sank into a deep depression. He was studying art in New York City around that time. And he was becoming this big deal. This boy wonder who had a special way of seeing the world, who could put it on canvas. He was under a lot of pressure with a show coming up and he didn’t want to cancel. The doc put him on some anti-depressants. We didn’t see it as a big deal. I mean, shit, our sister had just died. Docs will fling anti-depressants at you after that. Well, apparently typical anti-depressants can trigger mania. Out in New York, he didn’t have family to watch over him. He had an episode and they found him on the street, wandering, hallucinating. He was institutionalized for a while, but we were able to get him level again.”

“Oh my god.” Everything began to make sense. The pieces fell together as I had gotten to know Ash, but it was as if something was slightly off, one piece not settling into its spot. Learning what Miller told me, all the pieces finally clicked, drawing the entire picture for me. Ash wasn’t just sad about his sister’s death, he was literally sick about it. He was lost in a loop of bipolar disorder and guilt and now I understood why he felt like he was such a burden to anyone who got too close.

“He had to move back home. All his plans in New York went to the wayside. The momentum of his art career stopped because he stopped painting. At first, on the lithium, he wasn’t himself. He would have really bad shakes and his thinking was cloudy. The doc kept insisting it would likely go away over time, but he was really frustrated. And then one day he just up and left. It took months before I saw him again, and now . . . it’s like I can’t reach him. And trust me, I try.”

“I feel that way sometimes, too.”

“The fact that you can get him to stay in one place for more than one night is a miracle. He doesn’t want attachments. And he fucking hates walls.”

We both kind of laughed. But it was a sad laugh because we were part of the saddest inside joke in the world.

“Yeah, we go to the roof a lot. Do you know why he hates them?”

“You mind?” Miller asked, motioning to a wooden chair.

“Please.”

He sat down, glancing at his phone, and then let out a deep exhale as he prepared to fill me in. “The crash had Ash pinned in the car for a while next to Sarah, who was already dead. They were submerged. Well, not completely, the car was tilted and she was submerged and his side slowly sank under.”

“Oh my god,” I whispered and I covered my mouth in disbelief.

“Ash was awake for at least some of it, though for some reason he doesn’t remember it. It could have been because he hit his head, but we think it probably more psychological. Then not too long after, when they found him in New York, it was a lot like today. He had nothing on him so it took a while to identify him. He was hallucinating and he kept telling them he was seeing sounds and stuff like that and they assumed he was schizo. They put him on thorazine, which makes it really hard to communicate because your face goes limp. So, he had a few bad days locked up in Bellevue. He had to be restrained and . . . anyway . . . ever since then he hates being inside for long periods of time.”

It was something about the way Miller said that last sentence that made me emotional again. I had kept it together for Miller up until that point. I think it was because I knew that inside Ash, whether he was being loud and frenzied, or quiet and pensive, there was an endless well of fear and pain. He was lost when I found him and I thought he had found his way, but no, there was still so much more to go. I thought arrogantly that I was guiding this lost person who I loved back on track, but all this time I wasn’t even using the right map.

I bowed over and covered my face as the tears escaped. Miller was much more hardened than me. This wasn’t his first rodeo and he was dealing like a grizzled pro. He knew the routine. And I never liked to admit when I was scared, but I was. I loved someone who was very sick and I was finding out so much he hadn’t told me. I loved Ash with the purity and intensity of a first love. There was life before falling for Ash and after falling for him. He had changed me. I was so deep in with him that I felt like I was drowning in this illness right alongside him.

Miller rubbed my back gently, but it wasn’t any consolation, because I wanted Asher to be the one to tell me everything would be alright.

“We just have to get him in the hospital and we’ll get him better.”

“But he’s been there before. Will he ever really be better?”

“I don’t know, but I have to believe he will. Because I can’t lose another sibling. And I just hope that Asher finding you and trying to get his life in the right direction is a good sign. Maybe this was a misstep. Stress, love, even his art can be a trigger. And the problem with Ash is that, though the meds help, I think he likes the high. He hates the way the meds dull his senses, and I haven’t found a way to convince him to stay on them uninterrupted. He misses checkups, he doesn’t have the patience to experiment with new medications that might have fewer side effects. More importantly, I can’t find a way for him to get over Sarah’s death.”

Miller might have been trying to comfort me, but all I could hear in his words were the insurmountable obstacles. I understood the depths of Ash’s guilt. I understood that what I loved about him was how deeply he felt. That could be great when it came to the way he loved me, but it could be dangerous in the way he felt remorse, or despair.

Just then Miller’s phone rang.

“Miller Thoreau . . . Okay . . . How? . . . Jesus . . . Okay. Yes. I am an attorney so you don’t have to explain . . . I’ll be there soon.” Miller looked up. “Well, they arrested Ash for throwing a brick through an art store window. Fucking-A. My contact with the LAPD has him en route to the hospital.”

ASH

I was going to pay them back. I just needed some paint and nothing was open. Why do these stores close? Don’t they understand brilliance doesn’t have office hours?

I tried to tell the officers the owners would understand. The mayor would be seeing my installations and they would be in trouble if they took me in because I had a lot of work to do. Important work.

“You’re making me taste stale animal crackers,” I told the officer. “And your voice looks like floating turds.” He had this awful accent that sounded like a hybrid of the worst the East Coast had to offer and I wondered what the hell he was doing in the LAPD instead of some East Coast PD.

I was calm. I was so fucking calm until they tried to cuff me. Because I knew what was next. I couldn’t be put in one of those fucking places.

“I am an artist! You can’t do this! You should frame that window, it’s going to be worth millions!” I shouted as they cuffed my arms to my legs like a sow and lifted me into the back of the car.

I flailed and screamed and shouted my name so the people in the street knew if I disappeared, they could tell the news who I was. The international manhunt would begin.

“I have to tell Bird,” I appealed to the fatter cop with the less ugly voice from the back of the cruiser.

“Yup, I am sure the birds would love to hear your story. Tell that to the doctor.”