have to pump your stomach as you brought up most of
the pills in the ambulance but you’re still going to need monitoring for the next twenty-four hours.’
I clutch Matthew’s arm. ‘She must have misunderstood. The paramedic showed me the pills Dr Deakin
prescribed for me and asked me if they were the pills I took, so I said yes, because they’re the pills I take. I didn’t mean I’d taken an overdose.’
‘I’m afraid our tests show that you did,’ the doctor says.
I look beseechingly at Matthew. ‘I took the two you brought me with my breakfast but I didn’t take any after that, I swear. I didn’t even go downstairs.’
‘These are the boxes the paramedics took from the
house,’ the doctor says, handing a plastic bag to Matthew.
‘Would you know if there are any missing? We don’t
think she took a lot, maybe a dozen or so.’
Matthew opens the first of the two boxes. ‘She only started this one a couple of days ago and there are eight pills missing, which is right because she takes four a day, two in the morning and two in the evening,’ he says, showing the doctor. ‘As for the other box,’ he goes on, checking the contents. ‘It’s full, just as it should be. So I don’t know where she would have got them from.’
‘Is there any way your wife could have stockpiled
some of them?’
Upset at being dismissed from the conversation, I’m about to remind them that I’m present when I suddenly remember the little pile of pills in my drawer.
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‘No, I would have noticed if there’d been any missing,’
Matthew says. ‘It’s usually me that gives them to her, you see, before I leave for work in the mornings. That way I know she’s not going to forget to take them.’
He pauses. ‘I don’t know if you know – I told one of the nurses – but there’s a possibility that my wife has early-onset dementia.’
While they talk about my possible dementia I try to work out if I somehow took the pills from my drawer without knowing what I was doing. I don’t want to believe that I did but when I remember how wretched, how hopeless I’d felt and how I had craved oblivion, maybe, after taking the two pills that Matthew had brought me, I’d reached into the drawer and taken the others. Had I subconsciously wanted to end the life that had suddenly become unbearable?
Already weakened by what I’ve been through, the
remaining energy I have drains out of me. Exhausted, I lie back on my pillow and close my eyes against the tears seeping from their corners.
‘Cass, are you all right?’
‘I’m tired,’ I murmur.
‘I think it’s best if you leave her to sleep,’ the doctor says.
I feel Matthew lips on my cheek. ‘I’ll be back
tomorrow,’ he promises.
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 28th
In the end, I had to admit to taking the pills, because the evidence was there in my bloodstream. I admitted that I’d had some pills hidden away in my drawer but insisted that I hadn’t stockpiled them with the intention of killing myself, explaining I had simply put them there because on the days when Matthew was at home with me I hadn’t felt the need to take them. When they asked why I couldn’t have told Matthew that, I found myself explaining that I hadn’t wanted him to know that the pills knocked me out to the point where I couldn’t do anything. Matthew, looking sceptical, pointed out that what I’d said wasn’t strictly true because, as far as he was concerned, I was still able to function at an acceptable level. So I amended it to barely knew what I was doing.
The only good thing is that because I took so few, they put it down to a cry for help and not an intention to kill myself.
Title: The Breakdown ARC, Format: 126x198, v1, Output date:08/11/16
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When Matthew brought me home the following
evening the first thing I did was go upstairs to the bedroom and look in the drawer. The pills had gone. I know that Matthew doesn’t believe I took them accidentally even though he hasn’t actually come out and said it. But it feels like another nail in the coffin of our relationship. It’s not Matthew’s fault; I can’t imagine what it must be like for him to go from a wife who, at the beginning of the summer, was a little absent-minded to a wife who, by the end of the summer, is demented, paranoid and suicidal.
He insisted on taking the rest of the week off, even though I told him he didn’t have to. In truth, I would have preferred him to go to work because I wanted to be able to think about where I was going. My accidental overdose made me realise how precious life was, and I was determined to get back in control of mine while I still could. I started off by refusing to take the new blue pills that had been prescribed for me, telling Matthew I preferred to try to cope without them because I needed to get back to living in the real world.