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By Root 1434 0

In the course of the short conversation (other patients were waiting to use the community phone), Frank told Leonard three separate times to “hang in there.” He invited Leonard to come to Brussels when he was feeling better. Frank was thinking of moving to Antwerp now and living on a house boat. “Come on over and we can make a little boat trip on the canals,” he said, before hanging up. Rita cited her herniated disk (the first he’d ever heard of it) for her inability to travel. She did speak with Dr. Shieu, however, and one night called Leonard on a phone at the nurses’ station. It was late, about ten p.m., but the night nurse let him take it.

“Hello?”

“What am I going to do with you, Leonard? What? Just tell me.”

“I’m in this hospital, Mom. I’m in the psych unit.”

“I know that, Leonard. That’s why I’m calling, for God’s sake. The doctor said you stopped taking your medicine.”

Leonard admitted this by remaining silent.

“What’s the matter with you, Leonard?” Rita asked.

Anger flared in him. For a moment, it felt like old times. “Well, let’s see. First of all, my parents are alcoholics. One of them is probably manic-depressive herself, only undiagnosed. I inherited my condition from her. We both suffer from the same form of the illness. We’re not rapid cyclers. We don’t go from high to low in a few hours. We ride these long waves of mania or depression. My brain’s chemically starved for the neurotransmitters it needs to regulate my moods and then sometimes it’s oversupplied with them. I’m messed up biologically because of my genetics and psychologically because of my parents, is what’s the matter with me, Mom.”

“And you still act like a big baby whenever you get sick,” Rita said. “I remember how you used to go on and on whenever you had a cold.”

“This isn’t a cold.”

“I know it isn’t,” Rita said, sounding chastened for the first time, and concerned. “It’s serious. I talked with the doctor. I’m worried about you.”

“You don’t sound like it.”

“I am. I am. But Leonard, sweetheart, listen to me. You’re a grown person now. When this happened before, and they told me you were in the hospital, I rushed right out there. Didn’t I? But I can’t be rushing out there the rest of my life every time you forget to take your medicine. That’s all this is, you know. It’s you being forgetful.”

“I was already sick,” Leonard said. “That’s why I stopped taking my lithium.”

“That doesn’t make sense. If you’d been taking your medicine, you wouldn’t have gotten sick. Now, Leonard, sweetheart, listen to me. You’re not on my insurance anymore. Do you realize that? They took you off my policy when you turned twenty-one. Don’t worry. I’m going to pay for the hospital. I’ll do it, this time, even though I’m not swimming in money. Do you think your father’s going to help? No. I’ll do it. But when you get out, you have to get your own insurance.”

As Leonard heard this, he felt his anxiety spike. He clutched the phone, his vision growing dark. “How am I supposed to get insurance, Mom?”

“What do you mean, how? You graduate from college and go find a job like everybody else.”

“I’m not going to graduate!” Leonard cried. “I’m taking three incompletes!”

“Then complete your incompletes. You have to start taking care of yourself, Leonard. You hear me? You’re grown-up now and I can’t do it. Take your medicine so this doesn’t happen again.”

Instead of coming to Providence herself, she dispatched his sister. Janet arrived for a weekend, flying out from San Francisco, where she’d taken a marketing job at Gump’s. She was living with some older, divorced guy who had a house in Sausalito, and she mentioned a birthday party she was missing and her demanding boss to impress on Leonard the extent of the sacrifice she was making in order to come and hold his hand. Janet seemed genuinely to believe that her problems were more significant than whatever Leonard had to deal with. “I could get depressed if I let myself,” she said. “But I don’t let myself.” She got visibly freaked out by some of the other patients in the dayroom and kept checking her watch. It was