The Weight of Zero (29 page)

Oh my God. He's agonizing over
that
? And has been since Friday when I didn't return his texts or calls? Instantly, I feel like complete shit. “No, Michael, please don't apologize.” And even though I told myself the entire weekend that I would limit contact with him, I find myself moving closer, wrapping my arms around him, hugging him. “No, I wasn't upset about that. I was just…I don't know.” And then this comes out, “I was having a tough weekend. It had nothing to do with you. I'm so sorry if you thought that.”

Michael pulls back to study my face. “Really? Oh my God, I was completely freaking out. I thought I had blown it with you.” He takes both my hands in his. “I still cannot believe that you're my girlfriend. I've liked you since freshman year. Since that show. You probably don't believe it, but the minute I saw you, that was it for me. I haven't looked at another girl since. Tyler sent this to me almost two years ago.” Michael takes out his phone, taps away and then hands it to me. It's a video. “Go ahead. Watch it.”

It's a clip of me dancing in the talent show. Just me. Riley and Olivia twirl by occasionally, but the camera is focused on me. Michael was right about how I stayed in the back. The music, the number one pop song for that year, a song I despised, sounds cheap and tinny.

“Tyler saw my face. He took the video while we waited in the wings and sent it to me for Christmas,” Michael says.

I can't speak. My heart thuds. My cheeks feel like they're on fire. I can't take my eyes off red-ribboned, chestnut-ponytailed freshman me. The gleam of my red satin miniskirt catching the light as I move. I was good. And damn, I was skinny. Too skinny. Mom was right. I look a little bobbleheaded, my head a tad too big for my frame. I have a mellow smile on my face, slightly zoned out from whatever Dr. A was prescribing me. And even though I hated the song Riley chose, I loved that routine. In fact, I don't think I ever met a routine I didn't like. I remember dancing now. This particular show and all the Miss Ruth recitals. The joy of it. The music enveloping me. My body moving purely from muscle memory. Performing in the heat of the spotlights. Thoughts on mute. Only music and motion.

Peace.

I miss it.

“Cath?” Michael asks. “Are you creeped out? Is it kind of psycho for me to have this?”

“I can't believe it,” I whisper, mesmerized by freshman me. Because I know this girl's story like I know Jane's. This skinny, dance-loving freshman is less than a year away from her lithium and Prozac overdose. I want to cry for her. Because she looks okay right then and there. She's
dancing,
for Christ's sake.

I don't want her to die.

“Do you want me to delete it?” Michael asks.

“No,” I say, dragging my eyes from the screen to Michael, who studies me with worry and concern. Michael, a complete stranger eight weeks ago, who has kept a video of me,
me,
on his phone for two years. “Don't delete it. I'm…I don't know. Just really touched, moved really, that you have this. Of me.”

Michael groans a little. “This is my proof, Cath. So you know how much I like you. You're like…perfect.” He swallows. “Last week was such a mess….I was such a jerk to you.” He stares at the roof of the Subaru. “I kept thinking you were going to dump me. And then Friday night, you were so great. You made
me
feel great. And then I thought I blew it again with you. This time for good.

“You said you had a rough weekend,” Michael continues. “High school…well, it hasn't been the best experience for me. Not at all. With Farricelli hassling me and then my passing out in anatomy class and now this. Can you understand?” He's staring at me with a questioning intensity. I nod. “I should've told you what I was feeling. What happened with Farricelli in the past. So you'd understand a little. It wasn't fair to you.” Michael takes my hand. “I want us to be completely honest with each other, okay? I want to be able to tell you things and for you to tell me things. To trust me. I want that kind of relationship with you. I really want something with you. Something big.”

I nod, blown away. By him and by the fact that he has these feelings for me. “Me too,” I whisper.

“Now your turn,” Michael says. “Why was your weekend bad?”

I shake my head. “It was nothing, really.” I lie. “Just stuff with my mom. Just fighting, the usual.”

“Cath, I'm here for you. I'm not going anywhere. You didn't run from me. I'm loyal, remember?” he says. He must know something about me from the gossip last year at school. I think that's what he's getting at. There's an urgency to Michael's voice, a question he's not asking on his lips. “You can trust me,” he almost pleads. “It had to be pretty bad if you shut off your phone the whole weekend.”

Again, I shake my head. It's too much to tell him. Where I really go after school. Why. What medicine I take every night. Would he take out his phone and Google “bipolar”? No, I can't do it. I'm entitled to the little peace, the enjoyment, the
absence of shame
that my lies allow.

Disappointment crosses Michael's face and he pulls away from me. An expression I don't recognize slides over his face, something guarded and distant. He grabs the Dunkin' bag. “You ready for your doughnuts?”

“You eat them. I'm kind of full,” I say. But the truth is I'm a little nauseated. Because something has shifted between us. Something big. I can feel it.

“Well, we should go in now,” he says, biting into a doughnut. “Don't want to be late, right?”

I feel like crying as he gets out of the car. I am so fucked. By a disease that isolates me with its stigma. That not only taints my reasoning but also limits any relationship that I could have. It's so not worth it, a life like this.

Slipping on my everything-is-just-fine mask, I walk into school with Michael.

I'm hunkered down in the black leather chair, with Dr. McCallum opposite me. He's grabbed his coffee mug and placed a bottled water on the small end table between our two chairs in his office. He's making himself comfortable for the long haul. Shit. I was hoping I might be able to split a little early and get to St. Anne's. After today, there are only two more IOP days left, Tuesday and Wednesday; this week's sessions are cut short due to the Thanksgiving holiday. After that, we are officially in the step-down program, which seems to basically be the IOP minus three days of meeting.

“So, how are things?” Dr. McCallum asks.

Bad,
I want to say. The full extent of my disease is really sinking in now, the scope of Zero's destruction widening in ways I didn't expect. It not only kills existing relationships but also, I'm learning, stunts new ones. Things with Michael and Kristal are deepening and the effort to conceal is exhausting. I'm sick of the hiding, and I'm sick of constantly anticipating Zero. He went away for a while, but I know he's back, circling ever closer. And now one of Zero's four horsemen, disrupted sleep, is here. But I don't say any of this.

“Things are okay,” I answer.

“What's going on, Catherine?” he asks. Jesus, he's perceptive.

I shrug. Dr. McCallum sits like a stone Buddha, just watching and waiting for me to spill the contents of my chemically imbalanced mind. Oh, screw it. “Just some stuff with my fr—Michael and Kristal.”

Dr. McCallum nods.

“I haven't really told them anything about me…you know, being…b-b-bipolar,” I stutter.

“Why not?”

“Why do you think?” I snap.

“I know what I think,” Dr. McCallum says oh so wisely, like he's fucking Dumbledore. “I'd like to hear what you think.”

“Because…because…they'll be like Riley and Olivia.” Oh my God. That was brutal. The first time I've even hinted at what their leaving did to me. “I think…I think it's…safer not to tell them.”

My first month with Dr. McCallum, this past July, he wanted to talk a lot about my former friends and their abandonment of me, and how I felt about it. It was unbearable, fending off the weekly tearing away of that scab.

Dr. McCallum leans forward, elbows on his knees. “I understand why you feel this way. But you won't know until you try.”

I'm waiting for him to turn on the sound track to
Rocky
and give me a pep talk about trusting people, blah blah blah. Instead, he leans back and crosses one long, gangly leg over the other, exposing his sock and two inches of hairy shin.

“And
before
you make that decision to confide, you need to evaluate the friend and the relationship. Have they proved themselves worthy of you?”

I almost fall off my chair. Did I hear him correctly? “Worthy of me?”

Me?
My head is exploding with this novel concept.

Dr. McCallum smiles gently. “Yes, Catherine. Worthy. Of. You. What do you think?”

“I don't know. I have to think about it.”

Dr. McCallum nods. “You know, what we have to do here is separate the wheat from the chaff, separate the symptoms of your bipolar disorder from typical adolescent issues. I can't tell you how many of my patients who lose or terminate friendships in high school—maybe eighty-five to ninety-five percent. It's a common thing, especially for girls. Now, for you, this loss of Olivia and Riley…”

I hate and love how familiarly those names roll off his tongue.

“That loss seemed to be tied directly to two things: the traumatic death of your grandmother and the onset of your bipolar disorder. I understand how you might feel that your condition defines you and
caused that loss.
But what I'm trying to stress to you, Catherine, is that while you are dealing with managing your bipolar disorder, you are also tackling the normal highs and lows of being a teenager. And I have a strong suspicion that your relationships with Olivia and Riley would have ended regardless of your condition. That is most often the case, that the friends you have entering high school are very often not the same ones you have at the end of it.”

I find myself nodding. Because lately, that same renegade thought has been orbiting my head. The kindness of Michael and Kristal and their genuine concern has exposed the fault lines in my relationship with Riley. And I feel like I never really knew Olivia, despite all our years together. By the time the bipolar thing happened, our little trio had probably long passed its sell-by date.

“I want you to remember that very common pattern of relationships and not let the pain of Olivia and Riley hold you back from engaging in other friendships,” Dr. McCallum continues. “Use your judgment in deciding whether Michael and Kristal are worthy of you to confide in.”

Dr. McCallum moves the conversation to the next topic on his agenda: Zero. Or his clinical name,
depression.
“I want to discuss something that we touched upon at the beginning of treatment. You're doing well, Catherine, really well, and I think it's time for us to discuss a depression game plan.”

I must look a little puzzled because he continues, “It's our game plan for what we do should you begin feeling depressed. We've talked about the warning signs. Are you keeping that sleep journal like we spoke about?” I nod-lie. “Good,” he says warmly. “Now I want to talk about coming up with a plan in the event you begin to feel depressed. I'm talking moderate to severe depression. Remember, patients with bipolar can get depressed again after a period of stability. Even when they're doing all the right stuff.”

I think it's starting, but again, why bother saying anything? He can't cure me. He can't tweak my DNA, make it all better.

“It can be really discouraging,” Dr. McCallum is saying. “I want us to have a game plan so you know there are many, many options.”

“Are you saying we should have steps written down? Like if I get depressed, we'll do X, Y and Z?”

He nods. “Exactly. I'll tell you what I'm thinking and then you give me your thoughts, okay?”

I nod. How many freaking options can there be?

“First, in the event of a more moderate to severe depression, I'd highly recommend that you start on lithium again.”

“You know my mom will veto that idea,” I say immediately.

“I know, Catherine,” Dr. McCallum responds. “Your mom connects lithium to your suicide attempt. But you had been taking it for only a week or so at the time of your attempt, right?” He opens my folder. “Yes, it looks like it was a new prescription. I've explained to your mom that lithium greatly decreases the risk of suicide in bipolar patients. It's a no-brainer in my book.” He takes a big sip of his coffee. “Seeing how you responded to the Lamictal, I think the right dosage would be effective. Next, we'd amp up the psychotherapy. You've done well at the IOP. And I'd also like, at some point down the road, for the three of us to talk about other therapies that are out there. Things that you should be aware of. Some new things, some old, tried-and-true therapies.” He pauses, and I get the feeling something big is coming. “Like ECT. Electroconvulsive therapy.”

Holy shit.

“I know, it sounds extreme,” Dr. McCallum continues. “And in movies it looks inhumane and primitive. But there are many studies showing it to be highly effective for patients who are severely depressed. Catherine, please listen. Lithium and psychotherapy would be my first response. But we have other options. Maybe a different medication. Maybe two different meds. There are different routes we can take medicine-wise, different combinations.” He leans forward in his chair, shortening the distance between us. “I'm only mentioning ECT because I want you to be
aware
of it. I want you to know about it if in the event you get severely depressed, another therapy besides meds and counseling exists. There's also something new. For the more acute, severe cases of depression, some doctors are using ketamine injections. Ketamine has been used generally as an anesthesia, but it can lessen symptoms of depression for short periods of time.” He sits back again. “I'm in no way suggesting any of this for you now. I'm happy with how you're doing on the Lamictal. The only reason I'm telling you this is because I want you to be aware that there are other ways to get relief in the event of a severe episode. Any questions so far?”

I shake my head, but he doesn't speak. Five, ten, fifteen seconds go by.

“Catherine,” he finally says. “I know you are extremely perceptive, extremely observant. I can see that this label of bipolar causes you anxiety. That you worry about the quality of life you can have with it. Many of my patients with bipolar tell me this. It's a common fear.”

Again, I am nodding. I force myself to hold still.

“I'm telling you this to
inform
you. There are a number of different therapies to help you. You can manage this, Catherine. You
are
managing this.”

I want to say, sure, I can manage it now with Zero still at arm's length and my phone alive and still breathing incoming texts. But what happens when my world implodes, when my second round of friends evacuate, and Grandma's absence resumes its presence as a yawning hole in my gut? Zero is an opportunistic mother and I doubt a million electrical volts ripping through my skull will help me “manage” it.