Dear Cary - Dyan Cannon [116]
“Come on, now, just calm down,” one of them said.
I charged in between them, squeezed out the other side, and was about to shoot out into the hallway, but one of them managed to hook his massive arm around my waist. I kicked, I screamed, I threw elbows, I bit, I raked at them with my fingernails, I pumped my legs, I threw fists, and I writhed and I twisted like a million volts of electricity were blazing through me. Who are they? Why are they doing this to me?
The men came at me from every direction, but it was as if I was a human oil slick—as they tumbled, tripped, and slammed back against the walls, they just couldn’t get a grip on me. But finally, after a long tussle, one got a firm hold on me while another came at me with a hypodermic. I felt like a jungle cat on the nature show Wild Kingdom—about to be hit with a tranquilizer and relocated to a new habitat.
Linebacker Number Three hit me with the needle.
Lights out.
“Where am I?” I asked when I awoke, groggy and disoriented.
“Hi, Dyan,” said the man who was sitting next to my bed. “I’m Dr. James and you’re in a very safe place,” he said. He had corn-colored hair and wire-rimmed glasses. He looked kind of like John Lennon, except he was about forty. I recognized him, but at the moment I wasn’t sure where from. “You’re in the hospital. You’ve had a little setback.”
“Where’s my daughter?” I asked, suddenly alarmed.
“Your mother is taking good care of her and there is no need at all to be worried.”
“Oh.” That was all I could say. Oh. I directed my unfocused gaze at Dr. James’s face. He looked very kind. He said I was safe. That was all I could process at the moment.
“We’ll soon be talking about what’s happened, Dyan, but first I want you to shower, get dressed, and have something to eat. We want you to get up and start moving around. You’ll feel better a lot faster that way.”
Dr. James patted my arm and left. I pulled the covers up over my head. I didn’t leave my room for two days. Nor did I eat, shower, brush my teeth, or make my bed—all of which were directives from the nurse who came to my room several times a day. Why make my bed when I hardly got out of it? Mostly, I slept. When I didn’t sleep, and even when I did, I watched the grainy black and white TV set in my mind’s eye. At the bottom of the screen was an endless stream of banner headlines: Dyan ruined her marriage. Dyan is a worthless piece of garbage. Dyan was a lousy wife. Dyan can’t do anything right . . . Poor Dyan.
On the second day, Dr. James came to my room. I knew I was disheveled and I was aware of being tragically unwashed, but I didn’t care. I looked like I felt and I had completely exhausted my supply of fake happy faces.
“How are you feeling?” he asked. Well, I was staring into a huge bottomless pit of loss that I felt nothing could ever fill. But right now I just wanted out of this place. The doctor seemed sincere, though. He didn’t talk to me like I was crazy or anything, and although I was becoming increasingly angry over my confinement, I relaxed a little in his presence.
“I don’t understand why I have to be here,” I answered.
“You’ve had a bit of a breakdown,” he said matter-of-factly.
“What?” A breakdown? I really had no idea what he was talking about.
“Can you make yourself get out of bed today?”
“I need my medications,” I said.
“And what medications are those?”
I looked at him and thought about it. Blue ones, black ones, red ones, purple ones . . . He gave me a penetrating look through his wire-rimmed glasses and said, “Your mother brought me all your prescription bottles. I see you’ve got doctors in every corner of town writing you prescriptions. But, Dyan, these uppers, downers, and in-betweeners you’ve been taking are way too much for anybody. So we’ll be weaning you off them.”
“But—”
“No ‘but’s. Dyan, any doctor who spent five minutes with you would know