Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [298]
The black cloud hanging over Lewinsky, as the weeks passed, only seemed to grow darker. Rumors now swirled that the president had engaged in a relationship with another intern, a report that almost “blew Monica away.” She had already been thrown for a loop when she had learned that Clinton was alone in the White House with Eleanor Mondale—the free-spirited and beautiful daughter of former Vice President Walter Mondale—to whom the president was rumored to be romantically attracted. The notion that Bill Clinton might have cheated on her while she engaged in an extramarital affair with him—combined with the humiliation of being the subject of round-the-clock news coverage and sex jokes—was too much for Monica to process. Although the “other intern” story proved to be apocryphal, Monica began bottoming out. She slowly slipped into a state of “catatonia.” One individual described her appearance during this period as “frozen,” displaying absolutely “no affect.”
The psychiatrist treating Lewinsky in Washington raised the question as to whether the young woman should be hospitalized, to remove her from the toxic situtation. Monica’s lawyers worried, though, that the media and tabloids would have a field day if they discovered her whereabouts. In the end, the doctor agreed that such a move might actually worsen Monica’s state. As a rule, the psychiatrist warned, it was better for a patient to develop coping skills to deal with this kind of emotional trauma. It didn’t take a shrink to understand that a person in Monica’s situation might suffer a massive jolt to her mental equilibrium. Unlike other sorts of psychological tailspins, this one would not correct itself simply by checking her into a hospital. Even after she was released, she would still have to deal with the facts involving her affair with Clinton—most likely for the rest of her life.
There were disturbing signs that Monica might be coming unhinged. She spent much of the time hidden in her grandmother’s apartment, upstairs in the Watergate, sleeping in a twin bed next to her mother and grandmother who shared a sofabed to keep watch. Her doctor feared that Monica could slip into “suicidal ideations.” Her lawyers arranged for the psychiatrist to visit or for an investigator to transport Monica in a nondescript, “soccer mom” van to her doctor’s office, where she received doses of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), potent antidepressants. At the same time, the lawyers took turns keeping watch over their client, assigning a young female assistant to sit with Monica in her room, holding her hand and trying to soothe her. As one observer noted, “Remember, this was a twenty-one-year-old girl in love with a fifty-year-old man. It may not have meant anything to him, but it meant everything to her. She thought it was true romance.”
Monica herself later confessed that these early weeks of the scandal were like being thrown into the mouth of hell. “I was pretty bad,” she admitted, still struggling years later to maintain her composure. “I think that I had a certain level of denial for some things.… I don’t know what kept me going. I really don’t.”
During those winter months of 1998, at the ripe age of twenty-four, Monica Lewinsky had become a prisoner of a national scandal in which, to her