“I know,” I say. “But I also have so much to do to prepare. We only started talking about where and how the baby will sleep, and I’m so tired all the time.”
“You must try again with someone else,” Dr. Singh insists. “My office will call with another recommendation, hmm?”
I nod, and he smiles. I can’t help but smile back.
“While we are here, you can tell me, how are you feeling, in your head, not your body?”
I tell him the truth. “I don’t know. I want to have this baby, but it’s like the hurt of missing Finny cancels out the joy. I feel blank. I don’t know how to be myself in this new reality.”
Dr. Singh sighs and rubs his face. “That is not as much of an improvement as I would have hoped, and it speaks to your need to find a regular therapist. Tell me again why Dr. Kleiger did not suit you?”
“I felt like a bug he was studying,” I say. “The way he peered at me.”
“And Dr. Remus?”
“I was a book she was reading.”
“And how do you feel about our conversations?”
“Like you’re a paramedic and I have a wound that you’re treating,” I explain.
He loses his smile, but not exactly in a sad way. He sighs again and takes off his glasses to inspect them, then puts them back on.
“I am extremely busy, Autumn,” he says. “But I am certified as a therapist as well. I could see you every other week, hmm?”
“Really?”
“You would have to go to the group therapy sessions I run at the hospital on the other weeks.”
I can’t help it; I make a face.
“What is so bad about that?”
I look away from him and down at my hands. “When I was in the hospital… Dr. Singh, I’m sad. Depressed. Back at the hospital, I had group therapy sessions. There was one woman who talked about seeing demons. She said that even when the meds were working, she would see them, but as long as she remembered they weren’t real, it was fine. But then one of the demons said something to her, so that’s how she knew it was time for a med adjustment. I mean…” I’ve failed to articulate what I want to say, because part of me knows that I shouldn’t be thinking it.
When I lift my gaze, Dr. Singh looks absolutely exhausted.
“Autumn, you tried to end your life because you believed your life was not worth living without your lover, yes?”
I nod.
He sighs again and holds out his left hand. “So here you are, a bright young person full of possibility, and you saw nothing worth living for and thought you were better off dead. Now over here”—he holds his right hand like a balancing scale—“we have another young person. When she looks at the world, she sees demons sometimes.” He moves both hands up and down like he’s weighing us against each other. “To me, you are more or less the same. You are both seeing something that is objectively not true. But then at least she knows that her demons aren’t real.” He folds his hands on his desk. “So, eh? But that is how I see it as a doctor. You both have chemical imbalances in your brain that make you see the world incorrectly.”
“Finny really is dead. I’m not imagining that.”
“No,” Dr. Singh says. “But thinking that you are better off also dead? I know you cannot see it now, but it is objectively true that you are capable of living a happy life full of love—with or without this baby. You are so young. What a waste it would have been…”
He isn’t looking at me. He is looking over my shoulder, like his brain has short-circuited, and I recognize the feeling.
“Dr. Singh?”
He shakes his head. “And finally, Autumn, the group I want you to go to is for my patients with PTSD. It’s on Tuesdays, so you just missed it, but I’ll see you next week, and the week after that, I’ll see you here. Hmm?”
I agree. It can’t be worse than my in-patient stay at the hospital or trying another therapist who doesn’t listen to me like a person.
four
This kiwi smoothie is the ambrosia of the gods. I was unaware that anything could taste this good.
Angie asked me a question, but I don’t want to stop drinking to answer her yet. Finally I take my lips off the straw with a gasp.
“It’s not only soldiers. Anyone can have PTSD,” I say.
We’re at a smoothie-coffee shop that recently opened in the next town. Angie suggested we go out somewhere because she’s sick of being at home. She dropped Dave off at community college this morning so that she could pick me up and we could get lunch together. Guinevere is in her carrier on the chair next to Angie. She’s studying the rainbow teether in her hands like it is a Rubik’s cube, her blond hair sticking up wildly, making her look like a tiny Einstein. During the ride here, I’d come clean to Angie about my hospital stay, even though she’d already heard about it as I’d suspected.
“So you’ll be in a group with all sorts of grown-ups?” Angie asks. She picks up her sandwich and takes a bite.
“We are grown-ups,” I remind her before returning to my smoothie.
“Yeah, but how are you going to relate to someone in group therapy who’s, like, thirtysomething?”
I chew on my straw. “I don’t know. I figure Dr. Singh must have a reason.”
Guinevere squawks and shakes her teether with a tiny clack-clack. There’s a satisfaction to her sound that tells me that she’s solved her riddle, and I’m pleased for her. Angie smiles at her and touches her small foot.
“Oh my gosh, Autumn,” she says. “I thought the baby was dead this morning!”
“What?”
“Yeah, she slept in a little, so when it was time to take Dave to school, I went to the crib, and she was so still, I really thought that she wasn’t breathing. When I picked her up, she didn’t stir for a second, so for this horrible moment, I really, really thought she was gone.” She laughs. “But then she woke up and was so grumpy with me! She must have been having a good dream.”
“Why would she be dead though?” I’m confused by her story.
“Sometimes babies just die,” Angie says. “I’m serious. Usually, it’s in the first couple of months, but sometimes”—she shrugs and winces simultaneously—“infants stop breathing, and no one knows why.”
“No one knows why?” I repeat, my brain trying to process. I thought when it came to babies, doctors knew everything there was to know. “How can they not know?”
“There’re theories,” Angie says, “and stuff you can do to lower the risk. It’s rare. It’s unlikely to happen to Guinnie or your baby. It just scared me this morning when she was sleeping so deeply.”
I go back to drinking my smoothie. I also have a sandwich, but I don’t care about the sandwich, at least not right now. Angie is cooing at her daughter, who she had believed to be dead. I wonder if she always carries that fear. It’s probably not at the forefront of her mind. She probably always expects her daughter to be alive, yet that knowledge, that you could be one of the mothers whose baby never wakes up…I don’t think that ever leaves you. I don’t think it will leave me now that I know it.
Angie tickles her daughter’s socked feet. “What were you dreaming about that was so nice?” Her cell phone rings, and she smiles before answering. “Hey babe.” Her smile melts, and she bites her lip. “Well, I have to take Autumn home after lunch, and then it will be time for Guinevere’s nap. I—maybe—” She looks over at me and puts her phone to her shoulder. “Autumn, after we’re done eating, do you mind if we pick up Dave? Both of his afternoon classes were taught by the same guy, and he’s sick.”
“It’s fine. Not a big deal at all.” This smoothie is the only thing on my schedule today.
“Okay, but after that, I’ll have to put Guinnie down for her nap before I can take you home. I can’t mess up her schedule. What, Dave?” She puts the phone back to her ear. “Oh. Or Dave can take you home.”