That got a small return smile out of Eliot, and Loren cupped his cheek the way he knew he loved, stroking it with gentle fingers.
“I’m all yours, El,” he whispered. Eliot kissed his palm and then took Loren’s hand in his own and folded his fingers down, holding it for a minute longer before opening his door and getting out, an air of determination about him.
“Come on, Loren,” he said firmly, “let’s go get me well.”
“Kick ass, baby,” Loren murmured with a grin, and he grabbed Eliot’s suitcase and followed him inside.
“BETTER NOT
be laughing at me, asshole.”
Eliot turned his head and looked straight at a large man with tangled white hair and scruffy gray whiskers on his cheeks and chin. His eyes were darting around the room even as he leaned in toward Eliot with a conspiratorial air. “Are you laughing at me?”
“I’m not,” Eliot said calmly. “I was thinking about my boyfriend.” A warm glow spread through him at being able to say those words, and then he was surprised when he noticed the other man was wearing a bright pink dress. “Uh… nice—dress?” Eliot said, and the man grinned, showing startling white teeth, although several were missing.
“Thanks!” he exclaimed, and then leaned closer, his voice dropping to a sibilant whisper. “Wanna see my pussy?”
Eliot’s eyes widened, and he was saved from a reply by a female voice saying firmly, “Marty. Leave him alone, okay?”
Eliot looked over to see a young woman in colorful scrubs walking up to them, and he gave her a reassuring smile.
“He’s not bothering me,” Eliot said.
“Even so,” she said, “it’s time for his meds, so he needs to come with me.”
All of a sudden Marty’s face clouded over, and he pointed at Eliot. “I think this motherfucker was laughing at me!”
“I’m sure he wasn’t, Marty,” the woman said, not fazed in the least, and she put her hand on his arm and started to lead him away. “He just got here, and I heard him say how beautiful your dress is. Do you have the matching purse, by any chance?”
That diverted Marty’s attention long enough that she was able to get him moving in the opposite direction, and Eliot stood there and watched them go. That was the thing about being in places like this; there was always someone crazier than he was not more than a few feet away.
That nurse had seemed nice. People in the real world had at various times looked at him in horror, or pity, or fear, but the staff, even in places like the county jail psych ward, always treated him and every other patient as people worth listening to and with something to contribute. It wasn’t like
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
, and never had been for him.
Eliot hung out in the common room until dinnertime, and he met a woman who was clearly manic and raving about the private jet she was going to buy with the tens of millions of dollars she could make forging and selling priceless works of art. She showed Eliot her drawings of several famous masterpieces, and they were incredible. He made the appropriate exclamations over them and extracted a promise from her to take him to Maui when she got her jet.
She grinned at him and danced off, flinging her arms out as she twirled and shouted, “You are just so
nice
! I love you!” He blew her a kiss.
Another man invited him for a game of chess, and Eliot spent a pleasant hour playing and talking with him, carefully ignoring the drool the man wiped from his chin with a series of handkerchiefs he kept in a neat stack next to his hand.
Side
effects
, Eliot thought with a rueful wince. As unpleasant as that must be for the man, Loren was right: it was a definite what-sucks-less proposition, side effects versus insanity. All of a sudden, Eliot felt like falling to his knees and giving thanks for the blessing of modern psychiatric medicine. Even a few short decades ago, he probably would have been locked up to rot.
A couple of other patients wandered over to watch the game in progress, and Eliot ended up enjoying himself, hanging out with people who didn’t bat an eyelash when someone burst into noisy sudden tears and then two minutes later was all smiles again, or when someone else began to hallucinate the English were invading. As with all psychiatric wards, there were people present in various stages of stability, some outwardly stable like Eliot, and still others it was clear were in the grips of their illness. Eliot had been on all points of the spectrum at one time or another during his hospitalizations. Being here amongst others like him, the acceptance was easy, and freeing in so many ways.
He picked at his dinner, bone-tired, and after his shower, a nurse brought him his sleeping pill, the same woman who led Marty away earlier.
“I’m Erin,” she said as she handed Eliot two small paper cups, one with his pill in it and one containing a large swallow of water. He downed the pill before acknowledging her introduction, and she flipped through the chart she held.
“You have an appointment with your psychopharmacologist in the morning, Dr. Babcock, and then you have an AA meeting in the afternoon. Are you interested in joining a writing group or an art group? We have several creative arts groups that you can try if you like something organized, and of course you know that we have the recreation room set up with games and art supplies if you’d prefer something that you can do on your own.”
Eliot nodded, knowing the drill. Structure was built into any mental health and recovery program, a time-tested strategy: keep the loonies as busy as possible.
“There are several different bipolar support groups to choose from, each with a different format, either self-moderating or led by a facilitator, and we do require you to choose and attend one at least three times a week.”
Eliot nodded again, and then his ears perked up when Erin said, “And when your partner is able to visit again, we have two couples’ support groups that meet on Saturdays or Sundays. I’d encourage you both to join one of those. Between you and me, the Sunday one is really great, led by an awesome couple. She’s bipolar, he’s not, and they’ve been married over seventeen years.”
“Thanks, Erin, we’ll do that,” Eliot murmured, and then he couldn’t help but grin when Erin said in a shy voice, “Your boyfriend is hot. What’s his name?”
“Loren,” Eliot answered. “And he is smoking hot.”
“Well, you two make a gorgeous couple.”
With that she turned and left, and Eliot changed into his sleep pants and T-shirt with another goofy smile on his face. Loren did that to him, always had. A memory popped into his head of watching Loren in high school, out on the football field, his strong legs pumping as he ran the ball into the end zone, the way his ass looked when he was bent over in a huddle, his beautiful smile as he celebrated a win. Eliot was delighted those memories came back to him after so many years, and he stretched out on the surprisingly comfortable twin bed, pulling the covers up to his chin, starting to drift off into a pleasant drugged haze.
Hope was a beautiful thing.
THE NEXT
morning, Loren pulled back into the parking lot of the hospital, sitting in his car for a moment and looking at the elegant collection of adobe buildings with its desert landscaping and pleasing curb appeal. It looked like a spa, and he couldn’t even begin to imagine the amount of money it would cost Dr. Devlin for these three months. Yet even with all the outward beauty, it was still killing Loren to think of Eliot essentially locked away in there.
He made his way into the reception area and signed in, got his visitor’s badge, and clipped it onto the pocket of his denim shirt, then followed the orderly who was summoned to show him to a small conference room back in the hospital administration area. Loren smoothed his hands down the front of his khaki slacks before pushing the door open and walking in.
Eliot was sitting at the shiny table across from an older woman with steel-gray hair and wire-rimmed reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. She was dressed in a frumpy high-necked blouse, and despite her severe appearance, when she smiled at Loren in greeting, it was a friendly, open, and frankly curious smile.
“I’m Ellen Babcock,” she said as she rose to shake Loren’s hand. “I assume you’re Eliot’s partner, Loren. I’ve heard a lot about you this morning.”
Loren murmured a greeting back, and then started in surprise when Eliot stood up and moved into his arms for a tight hug.
“You okay, El?” he whispered into his ear, and when Eliot pulled back enough that Loren could see his face, Eliot nodded.
“Yeah, I just missed you,” he said, and Loren kissed him softly on the lips before taking a seat next to where Eliot had been sitting.
“So Loren,” Dr. Babcock started off in brisk tones, “Eliot and I have been talking for the past half an hour before you got here. No, you’re not late,” she reassured him when he cast an anxious look at his watch, “but I was early and thought that maybe my patient here and I could have a little chat about compliance and lifestyle.”
Eliot leaned back and crossed his arms, but his face was relaxed, open.
“We worked hard the last time on the med combination and dosages, and I’m pleased to see that the jail pretty much followed that same regimen while you were incarcerated.” She flipped through the chart, her finger moving down over the various pages while she perused them.
“But Eliot, it would be really nice if we didn’t have to start over from scratch again,” she said. “If something’s not working for you, let’s talk about it instead of you quitting cold turkey and going off the rails, which as you saw had some pretty nasty consequences.” She turned to Loren. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions, but let me go over the basics of what Eliot is dealing with here. What do you know?”
Loren recounted the conversation he had with Rebecca back in her living room that first day after he saw Eliot again, and he said, “And of course I know that bipolar disorder basically means that he swings back and forth between the poles of mania and depression, severe highs and lows.”
“Yes, Eliot has early onset Bipolar Disorder Type 1, rapid cycling, with comorbid anxiety disorder. ‘Comorbid’ is just a fancy term that means coexisting.”
Loren asked, “So Eliot has had this all his life, that’s what early onset means? I remember always thinking he was kind of weird when we were kids”—he looked apologetically at Eliot—“but he never seemed—mentally ill until we were in high school.”
“What you refer to as Eliot’s childhood weirdness was in all probability a state that we call hypomania, which is also sometimes called ‘mania light,’” Dr. Babcock answered. “It’s a precursor to full-blown mania, and it’s a very pleasant state to be in, right, Eliot?”
Eliot nodded, his eyes watchful as he rested them on Loren. Loren reached over and took his hand reassuringly in his own, squeezing it and then threading their fingers together.
“It causes increased energy, feelings of well-being, bursts of creativity, things like that, without the agitation and out-of-control racing thoughts that can sometimes be present with mania.”
“What about the ‘black demon’ that he sometimes talks about?” Loren asked. “What’s that about?” Before Dr. Babcock could answer, Loren leaned in toward Eliot. “I apologize for talking about you like you’re not even here,” he said, “but I just have so many questions.”
“And Eliot knows he can jump in whenever there’s something he wants to answer himself,” Dr. Babcock said in a brisk voice. “We’ve had this discussion before when his mother’s been present. Eliot needs to be his own advocate as much as possible, but we both agree it’s easier for me to explain the technicalities.
“In basic terms the black demon is an auditory hallucination, and that can be present in someone whose bipolar disorder is quite severe, such as Eliot’s. The fact that these hallucinations appeared back then meant that his disease was progressing rather than staying static, and as is unfortunately often the case, being put on an ADHD drug enhanced the process and started his escalation up into true mania, and then the antidepressant he was prescribed later as an adolescent finished the job.”
Loren felt guilt flood him when he realized he’d urged Eliot to take the antidepressant back then despite Eliot’s assertions it made him feel “scary weird,” and he tightened his fingers spasmodically on Eliot’s.
“It’s not anyone’s fault, Loren,” Dr. Babcock murmured, seeming to read Loren’s mind, or at least accurately gauge the expression that must be on his face right about then. “The problem is that most people present to their doctor when they’re feeling depressed and hopeless, not manic, so the first course of action nine times out of ten is to prescribe an antidepressant. And children often do have ADHD, which also can be comorbid with bipolar, making it a double-edged sword. So you can see that this illness is very, very difficult to diagnose correctly the first time in children and adolescents.”
“Jesus,” Loren whispered, and Dr. Babcock continued, “And if a doctor got it wrong, what’s a kid to do? You and Eliot cannot blame yourselves.
“He finally had a complete manic break the day of the suicide attempt—or the
accident
,” she said in response to Eliot’s sound of sharp protest, “however, we are choosing to perceive that at this time. That manic break meant that his disease was fully progressed to Bipolar 1, which is where we are today. The main focus now is compliance.”
Eliot nodded and took a deep breath, and Loren squeezed his fingers again.
“So back to basics, Eliot, and I’m sorry to speak to you like a child, but you need to hear and understand this, and I want Loren to hear it too.
“Take your meds as prescribed and on time every day. You know it’s crucial to keep the pharmaceutical balance in your bloodstream steady, and with a brain chemistry as fragile and unstable as yours, a missed or even a late dose could cause it to shift. You know this, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Eliot answered softly.
“It’s imperative that you get a good night’s sleep every single night.” Dr. Babcock emphasized the last three words with sharp raps on the table with her knuckles. “Every night, Eliot. Sleep is crucial.”