IT WAS FOUR hours before we were allowed in to see Tori. As we enter her room, the first thing I see are her glazed eyes and her flushed cheeks. She’s awake but staring into the wall across the room. Afraid of saying the wrong thing, I allow her parents to approach her first. They’ve got more experience with dealing with her like this. They say very little, though, and I’m guessing that’s what she needs at the moment.
“Mr. Cole,” an older doctor addresses me, placing his hand on my shoulder. “A word, please.” I follow the doctor out into the hallway, and Tori’s dad follows us. I may be responsible for her now, but I can’t blame her parents for their concern. Tori and I have only been together for a year and a half and they’ve been dealing with this half of her life, evidently.
The doctor brings us to a small, quiet waiting area a couple of doors down and closes the three of us inside. He takes a seat on one of the chairs, then pauses for a moment, nodding at the other chairs, suggesting we sit down. Tori’s dad takes a seat first and I follow suit. Maybe this is the doctor’s attempt to create the appearance of a calm environment, but in reality, I’m freaking out inside and there isn’t much a quiet room and soft voices are going to do to help this. “I know this is difficult,” he begins. “We had a psychiatrist come in to speak with Tori for a bit to find out the cause for her panic attack and breakdown.”
“Were you able to find anything out?” I ask hastily.
A tight-lipped, somewhat annoyed grimace stretches across the doctor’s mouth as he inhales sharply through his nose. “We were able to peel a single layer away, but as I’m sure you can understand; we have a patient confidentiality agreement preventing us from divulging details.”
Frustration fills me and instantly morphs into a type of anger I’ve been doing my best to keep at bay. Looking at the redness in Tori’s father’s face, I can assume I’m not the only one feeling this way.
“Had Tori threatened to harm herself before this incident?” the doctor asks.
“Just today, she mentioned it. Never before. She’s been mildly depressed since our son was born four months ago, and I’ve been encouraging her to see a doctor or a therapist. She has argued with me about it, and while she is supposedly seeing a therapist, I don’t know whether or not she’s suffering with postpartum depression since she has denied that was the case any time I’ve brought it up. She hasn’t even told me who her therapist is, or what she is seeing him or her for.”
The doctor relaxes into his chair and crosses one leg over the other, radiating calm. He’s good. He can shut it all out, go home and pretend like today didn’t happen. Me, though, my life is in ruins and I feel like my body is being shocked with thousands of tiny electrodes. “I might go out on a limb in agreeing with her on the postpartum depression part of the equation because some of her symptoms point to a much different diagnosis, one that has been present for much longer than four months.” I know the amount of information I’m receiving right now is probably as much as I’m going to hear, but I’m sorting every fact out in my head like a puzzle, staring at the clues and not knowing which piece to start with first.
“Tori has suffered breakdowns many times throughout her life, but she has been okay for several years now, and we thought it all might have been a thing of the past. Sadly, it seems we were wrong,” her dad volunteers.
“It seems as though there may have been a trigger to reignite this issue,” the doctor says. “However, that piece of information is not one we were able to extract.”
“Never have been,” her dad concedes.
“Has Tori ever been enrolled in an inpatient rehabilitation program before?”
“What kind of rehab?” I ask the doctor. “She’s not taking drugs or drinking excessively.”
“It’s a different kind of rehab, Mr. Cole. When we have patients who have made an attempt at suicide, we like to take preventive measures in getting the patient better before releasing him or her back into their normal lifestyle.” Oh my God. We have a newborn at home, and my wife is about to be admitted to a psych ward? Is that what he’s suggesting in nice words?
“How long is a typical stay?” I ask.
“It depends on the patient. Everyone is different.”
Selfishly, I want to know what this will do to us. This is so out of the blue for me and nothing I’ve ever considered happening. My biggest worry was that my wife had fallen out of love with me or realized she never loved me in the first place. I didn’t consider that a serious issue might be the underlying cause of her behavior and mood swings.