All the Things We Never Knew (20 page)

I was trying to be polite, to piece together the story as I might if I were gathering facts for a news story. Go slowly, find the “who-what-where-when-why.”

“I'm an architect,” she said. “We knew each other years ago when I worked in Portland. I just reconnected with David about a year and a half ago.” A year and a half, about the time David really started missing his evening pickups for Sophie. I nodded, hoping she'd provide more details.

“I was out at the barn when he first came tonight. It's about an hour from my home. I had no idea he'd gotten in my house. He knew where I kept the gun,” she said, staring at the carpeting on the floor. “He knew I kept it under my pillow.” She twisted her keys, and tears filled her eyes.

The woman was clearly a long-time lover. This was not about me, nor this waifish woman David turned to in desperation. He was sick. He needed help.

“Excuse me, will you?” I said. “I'm going to check on David.”

Alice and Diedra exchanged confused looks with one another and then started to chat quietly.

I pushed open the doors to the emergency room. A couple of nurses sat at computers, bored, tired. I found David in the third treatment room, sleeping on his side. He was in a tiny blue paper-like hospital gown, tied at the back.

He was still tanned from the earlier days of summer; his skin had always been so beautiful. His feet and ankles hung over the edge of the bed, and he snored lightly. I sat at the foot of his bed for a minute, trying to conjure up something for him other than pity.

I'd fallen so hard for him in the beginning. I thought his intellect and wry sense of humor would cast their spell on me forever. Once, in a coffee shop, I'd laughed so hard at something he said that I reached
across the table and kissed him. He'd pulled away and scrunched his eyebrows, embarrassed by the public display of affection.

The first time I'd walked into his home, I'd been charmed. His art collection charmed me. The chickens had charmed me. I'd hoped his love for Sophie might keep him whole, even if I couldn't.

Now, a lifetime later, sitting at the foot of his hospital bed, I'd run out of hope—and solutions for David. A doctor popped his head in from behind the curtain. “He's pretty heavily sedated,” he said. “It may be a few hours before he wakes up.”

“Yeah, he hasn't slept in weeks,” I said. “So what happens next?”

The doctor was completely bald, with muscled, tan arms, the kind of guy who goes into medicine because he works hard, plays hard, and climbs mountains on his days off. He had dark brown eyes that seemed to tolerate little distraction. He shifted his weight in his running shoes as he talked. “It's a little out of our hands at this point. The county takes over from here.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Once someone has made a serious suicide attempt, the county demands a hold and a court-ordered evaluation. Someone will be contacting you to tell you where he'll be transferred.” He kept eye contact, a very precise delivery of information he'd obviously given before. “It's roulette on the weekends. There are so few mental health beds available. We may have to keep him here until one opens up.”

I'd reported on the overcrowding in Oregon's mental health system for so long. Now, it was my turn to feel the repercussions of years of funding cutbacks. “So, are you talking hours or days?” I looked through the curtain to see a police officer sitting outside in the hallway. I realized David was being monitored—David, the big bear, the guy who would never hurt anyone.
You've got it wrong; you've got him wrong
, I thought.
He's not like the rest of them
.

The doctor shook his head and smiled. “Sometimes weeks.”

My mouth fell open and my eyes did a double-take. “You're kidding.”

I knew he was not.

“The process is pretty ugly,” he said. “Since he's asleep, maybe you could use this time to do the same.”

The curtain moved, and Alice walked in. “Hello,” she said to the doctor. “I'm David's mother. Is he going to be okay?” She held out her hand and tugged on the hospital gown, trying to cover David's backside. I felt a pang in my throat; I couldn't imagine the hurt of seeing your only son wounded, vulnerable.

The doctor kindly repeated everything he'd told me. He excused himself when a second man in a police uniform showed up.

“Ms. Hamilton,” the officer said, “could I have a moment with you?”

I nodded and excused myself, leaving Alice alone with her son.

We stood in the hallway outside David's room. “We're going to need to get a report from you. If you don't mind.” He pulled out a notebook similar to the one I'd used on so many stories. I'd been on the other side of crime and drama so often, asking the questions. I didn't want to make his job harder.

“He was supposed to be at home with his mother,” I said quietly. “She fell asleep, and he went out.”

“Where were you?” He leaned against the white wall. The other officer moved in his chair to eavesdrop.

“I was at a birthday party with a friend. Your sergeant, I think, he's the one who called me.”

“Do you know the woman whose home he broke into?”

“It was his girlfriend,” I said. “And no, I didn't know her.” I looked at the tile floor, wondering how much bad news had been broken in this very spot, how many lives had been shattered outside this hospital room.

The officer bit the underside of his lower lip.

“Ms. Hamilton, we never found the gun,” he said. “We found the place where he went after he got the gun. It's an old abandoned house just up the road from Ms. Collins. There were some empty bottles, and it appears he tried to cut himself again, but we never found the gun, Ms. Hamilton. It worries us.”

A wave of nausea moved through me. I stammered, “Maybe when he wakes up he'll tell us where it is.”

“Ms. Collins doesn't want to file charges against him. It's unlikely the county would move forward on its own. But you need to find that gun, for his sake, Ms. Hamilton. For your sake, too.”

The next morning, I drove across town to pick Sophie up from the sleepover. I dreaded the next step and tried to imagine all the ways in which she might react. She was deeply intuitive and would immediately sense something was wrong if I didn't tell her. She was also still very much her daddy's girl and would be devastated by David's hospitalization.

At nine, Sophie was tall for her age, and her teachers said she was a natural leader, a gifted athlete, creative. She aced her studies without even trying. But at this stage, Sophie did not want to stand out. As a parent, it was a worrisome time. She had recently started dressing like everyone else at school, talking like everyone else, and eyeing herself critically in the mirror. She straightened her hair, begged to wear lip gloss, and wanted to grow up more quickly than I would have liked. I knew she'd return to her fiery, independent self soon enough; I just didn't want her confidence disrupted.

Sophie was in the “tween” years, as parenting magazines called it. I was also in between—caught between my protective instincts and the knowledge that she deserved and needed the truth. Sophie wanted to be like everyone else at this stage in her life. The news I was about to deliver would change everything.

The scene at the sleepover was casual chaos. Cereal bowls filled with Sugar Pops lined the coffee table. Sophie lounged in front of the television, looking a disheveled and tired kind of happy. “You ready to go, sweets?” I faked my smile.

“Nah, Mom, not yet, pleeeeze?” She tilted her head sideways. She was sitting in an oversized recliner watching an episode of
SpongeBob SquarePants
that she had to have seen a dozen times.
The kids had every line memorized, and they still loved him. I wanted to give in, to postpone the inevitable.

“C'mon, Sophs, let's get you going. It's already ten thirty.” I started gathering her things.

“I had soooooo much fun,” Sophie said, smiling. “We stayed up till, like, midnight.”

“That sounds like fun,” I smiled. “Tell everybody thank-you.”

Sophie was polite in a genuine way, saying her thank-yous and goodbyes and making eye contact even when she was sleep deprived. She held her pillow close to her tummy as we made our way to the car. It reminded me of the way she held Bear. She was nine, such a tender age for a girl. Had David thought of what this would do to her?

I turned the key in the ignition and started driving.

Sophie was quieter than usual, and I hoped she was just burned out from the night before. But soon enough she turned to me. “Mom, what's wrong?” she asked.

“How do you know something's wrong?”

“Because you didn't correct me when I said ‘like,' and you're not mad I stayed up so late.” She looked out the window on a bright, hot day.

I spoke slowly, trying to pay attention to the driving, at the same time measuring my words so I wouldn't sound as scared as I was.

“Daddy is in the hospital,” I said.

She reacted before I could continue, turning in her seat so the seatbelt strained against her shoulder. “What's wrong? Mommy, what happened?”

I couldn't tell her and drive at the same time. I pulled over in front of a row of houses where people were doing normal Sunday activities—pancakes, television, church. I hated David for robbing Sophie of her innocence. Her disheveled look had gone from happy to distraught, her chest rising and falling so rapidly I worried she might faint.

“Soph, he's very sick, but not like cancer or a broken leg. He is
so sad, honey. He needs some time in the hospital for the doctors to take care of him.”

Sophie pinched her eyebrows together and said, “Sadness isn't a sickness, Mom.”

My heart broke for her. “Sophie, honey. It is a sickness when someone gets so depressed they don't want to go on living.”

Sophie sighed and hit her leg with a clenched fist. She played nervously with the seat until it was reclined all the way.

“It's your fault, you know,” she said, turning away from me. “Daddy doesn't want a divorce.”

I drew in several deep breaths before I spoke. I'd protected Sophie from the negative details of our marriage in order to protect her relationship with her dad. I wasn't going to change that strategy now.

“Sophie, you can't understand now; you're not old enough. But we've known for a long time that we needed to separate, even before Daddy got this sick.”

She tried to sit back up in her seat and screamed, “Why can't I just have a normal life? Why can't you two get along? What's wrong with you? Why did you even get married in the first place if you didn't love each other?”

I couldn't hold the tears back anymore. “I'm so sorry to put you through this, sweetheart. I tried, honey, really, I tried for a long time. I did love Daddy, very much, for a long, long time. I just can't be with him anymore.”

Sophie flopped back down on the seat and did her best to turn her entire body away from me. “I've got a headache,” she said.

I took her straight home and let her stay in her room the rest of the day. My afternoon would be filled with phone calls from counselors, David's family, the police, the girlfriend, and my link to the mental health system, Robert Stellar.

Robert Stellar was a short Italian man with hairs sprouting from his nose and ears and a deep olive complexion. I heard his voice on
the phone and recognized it immediately: there weren't many New Jersey accents in Portland, and his was still thick. A mental health supervisor for Multnomah County Court, he'd once won a contest at our station and sat in on the show. He'd been mesmerized by the radio business. Now I needed to learn everything I possibly could about his business.

He told me he was calling on behalf of the county. “I'm sorry if this is awkward. You were so nice at the radio station, I thought I could help you.”

I sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee. “Thanks for anything you can do.”

Stellar explained that he would be the county representative overseeing David's commitment hearing and that he would monitor David's progress during hospitalization.

The heat from the day was beginning to rise in the kitchen. I'd always wanted air conditioning; the summers in Portland were getting hotter and hotter. David said it felt fake against his skin—he was so sensitive to air and textures and light and sound. He couldn't take air conditioning, or cotton, or traffic noise, or bright light. Now, I viewed those eccentricities in a different light, as part of his illness. My yellow Labrador was splayed on the hardwood floor, seeking relief by keeping still. Sophie's West Highland, Max, sat near me, sensing my anxiety. He whined, missing David.

Robert explained the details of the county mental health rules: once someone has made a serious attempt on his life, the county intervenes, evaluating that person for thirty days in a mental health facility. The problem was, there were waiting lists a mile long for the facilities, and families were not allowed to take their loved ones to a non-sanctioned facility, meaning moving David would not be allowed.