Your Voice in My Head Read Online Free PDF Page B

find out something from AMEX insurance—possibly, we might get away with sayingthat she had a psychiatric incident, as long as we bring her back to the UK. They certainly won’t cover any extended treatment.
    Other than that, please remember the garbage and freeze what needs freezing. I will probably stay until Sunday and use the flight you booked.
    I forgot my ear plugs.
    Love from me and from Emma too.
    Whilst the hospital keeps me, friendless Karen takes Mum to dinner at the Pink Tea Cup. I know Karen is grateful to be of service. She is like someone who loves fire, helping to put out a fire.
    MAY 2008
    Your father/husband helped to get me sober. He was a good, good man. I’m so sorry
.
    DOUGLAS ( NEW YORK, NY )

CHAPTER 6
    FOR A FEW DAYS after I’m out of the hospital, I’m completely lucid. I’m cheeky and brimming with joie de vivre. It’s not gratitude. I have successfully altered my mood. For a spell.
    SB and Teeter stick by me. But I lose a number of friends over the suicide attempt.
    “It’s understandable,” says Dr. R. “They’re frightened. It’s a frightening thing to do.”
    I
don’t understand why I’ve been disinvited from parties. I am not seeing the big picture.
    Afterwards, you can’t just fall back into life like someone appearing at the door wearing a monocle and top hat, saying, “Hullo! I was just in the neighborhood following my failed suicide attempt and I thought I might stop in for a cocktail!”
    “Are you surprised that people might not want to see you?” Dr. R asks me.
    “I think they’re jealous. It’s something they’ve thought about. But I did it.”
    “This isn’t exactly an achievement.”
    “No. I failed.”
    The ones who use the suicide to draw closer are loners on the edge, peering from their abyss into yours. Karen calls constantly.
    Dr. R wants to send me to Silver Hill, the Connecticut rehab/psych facility. But being one of America’s forty-four million uninsured, I can’t cover the thirty grand. If we go for an assessment and they deem me a danger to myself they will commit me anyway and I will have to find the thirty grand or face legal action. We decide to go back to London, although there really isn’t any decision; Britain’s National Health Service is the only option.
    I think this should be the new campaign of the British Tourist Board: “England: when it’s the only option.”
    Mum goes ahead of me to look into available treatment in the land of “Oh, do pull your socks up!”
    I arrive at the airport with hand luggage. My parents aren’t there. Dad has made them late, because he is afraid, Mum thinks. So there I am waiting at Heathrow arrivals, no idea where my family is, and I can’t remember how to use a pay phone. I don’t understand English money anymore. I can’t remember my parents’ phone number. I sit on the floor of the airport and cry. Crying makes the cuts on my neck swell. When my parents arrive, my dad is chastened. He can’t look at me.
    I go back to their house. As I recall, I climb into bed and Mum’s cats come to comfort me. But that’s not true because our cat, Roxy, died ten years ago, and Mum is not allowed cats until years later, when Lisa persuades Dad they are agood idea. So there is nothing crawling on me but my own anxiety.
    Mum is figuring how I can get help as an outpatient somewhere, until, waking on my first morning home, I have a nice cup of tea and then destroy the bathroom. Outpatient no longer seems so viable. I tore that room apart. I wrote on every wall. I got words written up on the ceiling. How? When you’re losing your mind you can manage the same unthinkable feats as a very drunk person. I don’t know how I got to the ceiling. I did it in a fever dream and was shocked when it was over, to see what I had done. Mum is terrified. “Your father’s going to go crazy!” When you’re unhinged, you make others unhinged. It’s like watching someone yawn. It’s catching. But that isn’t what