I must have thrown myself down on the ground because the next thing I remember is thrashing about on Lisa’s front lawn, just screaming and screaming and screaming at the top of my lungs, my throat running raw from the effort. My poor father didn’t know what to do and just wrapped his arms around me, trying to calm me down, saying, “It’s all right, Layla! You’re all right!” over and over and over again.
A few of the neighbors came out on their front steps, drawn out by the unyielding sound, but I was in such a state that I barely even noticed. Mr. and Mrs. DeSanto came running out to us, but I think I spooked Lisa so bad that she wasn’t able to make it past her front door. Mr. DeSanto threw his arms around both my father and me, trying to help Dad get my thrashing under control as he yelled to Mrs. DeSanto, “Steph, call an ambulance!”
It must have only been a few minutes later when the emergency crew arrived. The whole scene from that point on is such a blur to me now, but I know the last conscious thought I had of the episode was seeing two female EMTs running over and yelling, “Hold her still!” before a white warmth spread throughout my entire body.
The next thing I knew, I was waking up in a hospital bed to the sight of my haggard and worried father leaning over me.
“Layla? It’s Daddy, sweetheart. You’re in the hospital, baby. Just relax, okay?”
I remember feeling so bad that I had put that look on his face. I was able to whisper out, “I’m sorry, Daddy,” but even that small effort was like passing broken glass through my throat.
Then he called out the door for a nurse before I blacked out for the second time.
It felt like forever that I was finally let out of the hospital, the doctors offering Dr. Chickensoup’s business card to my father upon my release. I spent the immediate days watching TV in my bedroom, trying to eat the meals Dad brought me on the tray that we’d always used for sick days or special-occasion breakfasts in bed. I had absolutely zero appetite, but did my best to clear my plate in the hopes that my father would lose that worried look on his face.
My third day home, I’d actually started feeling a little better. I’d never feel completely whole-I knew even at the age of twelve that those days were long gone-but at least I was feeling a strange sort of acceptance about the situation.
My mother was gone.
She wasn’t coming back.
I could either let that destroy me or I could learn to live my life without her.
That same day, Lisa paid me a visit. She walked in with a handful of hydrangea for me, and I actually laughed when she told me that she’d stolen them from Mrs. Kopinsky’s front yard.
I knew she had to be a little freaked out by the completely mental fit I’d thrown on her front lawn, and I started to try and explain.
She put her hand up in a halt. “You don’t need to explain anything to me, Layla. If you want to talk-about anything-I’m here for you. But please don’t feel like you need to explain. Ever. Okay?”
I was touched that Lisa had let me off the hook so easily. She was really the best friend in the world to me at the lowest point in my young life. She came over every day, nudging me back toward my old self a little more each time. She was the one who eventually got me swimming again. That first day back in the pool was like a baptism, cleansing and renewing. It became the one place I could count on to always make me feel somewhat normal.
For all the time Lisa spent that summer nursing me back to life, she never made me feel as though I should be committed to a rubber room. That was a blessing, because I’d spent enough time thinking that for the both of us.
The way I figured it was that my mother must obviously have had something wrong in her head to have left her husband and two young children behind. Over the years, I’d done some research on manic-depression, because that became the most reasonable diagnosis I could give to the mother who abandoned us.
After that, there wasn’t a day that went by when I didn’t worry over the state of my mental health, thinking that maybe my mother’s crazy gene had been passed down to me.
Even though I still tended to be a little obsessive about some things-my compulsion toward reading, my neatness streak and my superstitious tree-mauling, for examples-The Live-Aid Incident was the only time I’d ever actually gone balls-out, cuckoo-for-cocoa-puffs crazy. As more time went by, I was able to write the whole scene off as a one-time episode. Even Dr. Chickensoup felt that my tantrum that day was most likely an isolated occurrence, due to the immediate stress of my mother leaving me at such an impressionable age. She actually told my father that it was practically a good thing, the catharsis of experiencing a loss so soon and so completely.
I’d relayed the highlights from that therapy session to Lisa, who took the information in stride. In the years since, Lisa never once brought up the subject of my breakdown as though it were a major personality flaw. She’s never told another soul about it and had never treated it as though it were some recurring condition, waiting to jump out unexpectedly one day from under the bed.
Until now.