Quiet Room - Lori Schiller [20]
“You took all those pills!”
She nodded. I was stupid with fear. “You took all those pills!” I repeated.
I heard the doorbell ring, and without knowing why, I went to answer it. It was a girl from down the hall, and I shooed her away. “I'll talk with you later,” I said. I had never been so scared in my life. Lori was looking groggy. Was she going to die right here in front of me? What should I do? Who should I call? Who could get here the fastest?
My hands trembling with terror, I picked up the phone and dialed 911.
5
Marvin Schiller Scarsdale, New York, March 1982–June 1982
It was late at night when the phone rang. Nancy and I were just getting ready for bed. It was Lori Winters, our daughter's roommate. She was so upset that at first it was hard to understand what she wanted. It was something about our daughter, and the police.
“Calm down, Lori,” I said, trying to reassure her. “Calm down. Everything is going to be okay. Tell me what the problem is.” There was a lot of commotion in the background, and she could barely get the story out. Our Lori had taken an overdose, she said. The police were there. So were the paramedics. They were taking Lori to the hospital. She had tried to commit suicide.
“I'll be there as fast as I can,” I said.
Nancy was already sobbing, and shaking. I didn't want to upset her unnecessarily. I played down the news.
“Lori's fine,” I said. “She's going to be fine. She's taken too many pills and she's going to the hospital.” Lori was in no real danger, I assured Nancy. She's just made a little mistake with her medication. Everything will be fine in the morning. Nancy, I could see, was eager to believe me.
Driving with Nancy through the dark of the Hutchinson River Parkway, I more than half believed it myself. There was some misunderstanding, I thought. Lori Winters was just a kid herself. She was getting herself riled up over nothing. My daughter kill herself? That was impossible. Nothing ever happened to her that she couldn't handle. She had just had some little upset, and made a mistake, that was all. All this business about police and paramedics—well, Lori Winters must have been frightened and overreacted.
I had known that our Lori had had problems, of course. She had told us about them in college. She had felt some stress at school, it seemed, and she felt the need for counseling. That was nothing unusual in Westchester. Many of our friends’ children had troubles of one kind or another. Seeing a counselor was just a normal part of life in many families. Lori had seen someone at the university and I understood that she found those sessions to be helpful. She had told me that herself.
She was our oldest child and only daughter. We didn't have any standards to compare her with. It seemed like her problems were just what might have been expected from any moody teenager.
After she graduated, I felt she was in good hands with the psychiatrist we had chosen, a man we knew to be a respected member of our large circle of friends. She would sort out her problems with him, get herself together, and go on with her life, I was certain.
If Lori had been in any danger, by the time Nancy and I arrived at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan it was long past. In the ambulance, the paramedics had given her medicine to make her throw up, and in the emergency room she had had her stomach pumped. When she saw us, she started to cry.
“I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't mean it. I didn't mean to do it.” She was sobbing, and contrite. “I didn't mean to make all this trouble.” She turned to me. “Take me home, Daddy. I want to go home. I won't ever do it again.”
Lori Winters was with her, looking shaken. She pulled me aside to tell me the whole story. The policemen had arrived quickly, before the paramedics. But when they tried to take Lori out of the apartment, she became violent.
“It was awful,” Lori Winters said. “She was struggling with them, and trying to hit them. She said if they came near her, she would take their gun. Then she tried to