Lost and Present Time

July 23, 2010 by Dave.

These were true events that happened a few months ago. I wrote it to deal with some of the lingering emotions running around my head. It was supposed to be a simple blog entry but it sort of veered off into short story territory in length. All comments are appreciated.

“Just a minute” – these are probably the sweetest words I’ll hear for a long time. Nora and I have been friends for 8 years. We met through a mutual friend at one of their Christmas parties. She said something snarky about the political climate at the time; I laughed and thanked her for the comment I was too slow to make. We’ve been friends ever since. Even though I lost track of her from time to time – she moved away, changed her email, and/or dropped off the radar over the years – I still thought about her, often with lingering wonder if I’d find the ability to tell her how I felt. I’ve always been attracted to her. To be brutally honest, I’ve always been attracted to all my female friends at one point soon after meeting them. Was there anything different about how I felt about Nora? I don’t think so, no. But she was someone I tried to stay in touch with, one of those women who appeared in my life at moments when I thought they were gone from memory, one of those women who disappear very effectively leaving that lingering wonder behind. Now I was wondering about her for a different reason.

Depending on whom you asked, Nora went missing three to five days ago. The last time I saw Nora in person was just before the weekend. I dropped her and her friend/workmate, Carrie, off at the New Boston Garden to see the Celtics make their playoff run. Normally I wouldn’t battle game traffic for anyone, but they were both friends, they both had no way of getting there and they were both really drunk. If anything the alcohol fueled conversations during the trip there was worth the cost of gas. I dropped them off, got hugs and kisses from both, even a friendly “love you” from Nora as they disappeared in the crowd towards the entrance to enjoy the game. This was before I heard about Carrie’s panic attack, which forced them to leave early, causing an argument between the two ending with Nora walking back home to Chelsea alone. While this would be the last time anyone physically saw her, I spoke to her over that weekend. She told me her side of the argument and spoke about how things were lately, which I knew were going rough. Throughout the conversation I vacillated from being supportive and lending a good ear to telling of past hurts, but I still couldn’t get myself up to tell her how I felt. I wimped out again. When I tried to allude to it, cryptically mumbling over a bad cell phone connection didn’t make it any clearer. Still I figured I’d have another chance to fumble through another explanation again. Three days later, I wasn’t so sure I would anymore.

Soon after that conversation, I wrote an email to Nora saying what I couldn’t say on the phone or in person. If I am better at being honest in writing than in speaking, I might as well use those skills. I told her how I felt and wondered if she felt anything close to what I did, sent it off and waited for a reply. Sunday passed; other than a “like” on my Facebook status, nothing. Monday I texted her numerous times; nothing. Tuesday I called her office and spoke to her supervisor; she hadn’t been in so far that week. When Carrie told me that she also hadn’t heard from her since their argument outside of the Garden, that’s when I became concerned. The only thing I could think to do was drive to her apartment to see her, see if she was all right. I’d driven Nora home a couple of times since she moved back to Chelsea, so I knew the address. However I never knew her apartment number. If it was a two family house, I could figure it out easily. This was a serious tenement building, double doors, lobby, buzzer entry, fire escape plan and all. Standing in the lobby, the buzzers all had numbers but no corresponding names. The mailboxes were beyond the door and out of a readable distance. I stood there trying to telephone her again and again, hoping that she would answer or that someone would come home and let me in. Nora never answered and everyone in the building was either in for the night or out of town. After so many hang ups, I left a final message to please call or text me to at least let me know she was all right even if she never wanted to speak to me again.

Even though it was Tuesday night, it was still within the realm of possibility that she was just sick. Nora had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia a few years ago. It never got bad enough to put her on disability, but every so often she’d be bed ridden for a few days – sometimes without telling anyone. She was always very proud, hard pressed to admit when something is bothering her. She trusts me enough to tell me on occasion, but other times she’ll suffer in silence. The last time she had a flare-up, she spent two days curled in bed with a blackberry in her hand and an earpiece nearby. She barely called work to let them know. If she desperately had to call someone it would only be someone on her speed dial, as dialing hurt her fingers too much. This period was still within her occasional two-day disappearance. Wednesday rolled around and still her supervisor hadn’t heard from her. That’s when I got scared.

I was supposed to spend that morning calling leads as per usual. While I did, more of my time was spent calling people hoping to find her or hear what happened to her. Most of the people I spoke to thought I knew where she was since I talk to her most. All I could tell them was I wished I had. I tried hospitals to see if she had been admitted anywhere. None of those near her had her listed. Knowing she was upset, I tried psychiatric units. All I learned was that no psychiatric unit is legally allowed to tell me even if she was admitted. Carrie and I were in near constant contact with each other on text and FB chat. A few friends on FB were wondering where she was too. Fearing the worst, Carrie called the police to report her missing. They told her that it was the right thing to call them, and they would do a well being check on Nora. However they requested that someone Nora knows be at the address willing to assist. Since Carrie could not get off work and I already was and knew her address, I was the one to go.

I hoped for this and prayed it wouldn’t come to this simultaneously. The police are the ones to handle a situation like this, where who knows how she will be on the other side of the door. However I wasn’t sure I could handle what they might find if it turned out to be the worst possible news. Only the worst possible outcomes were running through my mind uncontrollably. But rather than fight it, I welcomed it. All my life I never got want I wanted. My career, my writing, my money situation, my life, my hopes, my dreams never went in any way that I thought it would. Often the more I wanted something, more I dreamed about getting it, the less likely it would happen. Driving on 95 North to head to Route 2, I suddenly realized that was the case. At that moment, the only thing that made sense to me was to hope I would find Nora dead, thus giving her a fighting chance to live. For the next 30 minutes, I played reverse psychology on the universe, fighting to see the traffic and road through my own tears, my own helplessness, and images of what I might find at her apartment flying about my addled brain. It makes sense only in some childhood magical thinking or within the musings of schizophrenics off their meds, but it was all I had to go on if it meant she’d be okay. 

I felt similarly a few weeks before. I learned Nora moved back to Boston and I was trying to get together with her, not having seen her seemingly in ages. That day, I dropped off Sophia with her mom and was heading through Chelsea to get home when I got a text from Nora saying she was heading to the ER. I almost rear ended a sedan when I saw that text. She felt something was wrong but couldn’t tell what and she really couldn’t explain it in a text. I tried to find out where she was and see if she needed any help. I finally reached her on the phone and found out she was heading to MGH. I asked if she needed a ride there, but she said that she was taking the T and not to bother. I had no clue what was happening, but I knew I couldn’t leave it at “don’t bother.” There was no way I could be told to not think of a purple elephant and obey. My car knew I needed to go home and sleep, but I wasn’t going to let that happen. Knowing nothing of what was going on or what the doctors would find, I drove to Mass General and headed for the ER admitting, probably about 10-15 behind her arrival there. She was still in the intake interview when I showed up. Nora had been growing her hair out since the days when she used to buzz cut it. The last time I saw her, her red hair was just above shoulder length. I almost missed her with her now chestnut hair running past her shoulder blades. She was going over insurance info when I walked up and said hi in person for the first time in several years. She seemed more surprised that I was there than anything else, but we exchanged pleasantries and she continued to give her medical info to the intake nurse. I stayed with her in the waiting room for the usually unbearable hospital wait time. During this we talked, trying to catch up with each other and take her mind off of things simultaneously. Eventually she got beyond triage to see the doctor. At that point, she had to order me to go since I wasn’t leaving until I knew she was okay, which could have taken even more hours into the night. I would have stayed camped out in the ambulance bay if need be, but she said the waiting was the hardest for her and she’d be okay from there on in. It calmed me down enough to go home telling her to text me when she got out. The doctors never found anything that night and I got home still worried but knowing I got to see her. Getting closer to Chelsea, I was hoping I’d see her alive.

The patrol car was waiting for me as I parked. I introduced myself to the officer and we walked across the street to get the building manager. The manager had to be present to unlock the tenant’s door rather than having to break them down. I finally got to go past the foyer and into the building itself this time. The manager said Nora lived on the second floor so we made our way to the staircase. Before walking up with them, I took a quick glance and the mailboxes that evaded my sight for the last two days to learn the apartment number – a mistake I was not going to make again. The officer waited for me to get there and stand next to the manager before his first attempt at the door. I was slightly calmer than I was driving over there, but now unsure what to expect. The policeman knocked on the door and we waited to see if anyone would answer. Somehow focusing on the door helped me stay in the moment as the wait for anything went on a few seconds. The officer knocked again and asked for Nora by name. Another second passed before Nora answered “Just a minute.” The building manager and I both breathed a sigh of relief as we heard the locks unlocking. Leaning my head against the back wall was all I could do to keep upright, feeling a huge weight off my mind. When she peered out of the door, she didn’t look too worse for wear. She obviously had been sleeping in what she was wearing, her hair in fresh bed head style even as she moved it behind her ears. It didn’t matter what she looked like as I was glad to see her upright and mobile.

The police officer and explained that this was a well-being call and asked if she was okay. She said she was fine, and with that the officer shook my relieved hand and took his leave with the manager. I finally got my back off the wall and made my way over to Nora, still keeping herself between the door and her apartment room. It took me a moment to be able to look at her straight in the face. I stared at the floor trying to tone down the overly contented grin I had on my face since she opened the door. I’m not that great at reading people as I think I am, but she looked blank when I walked up to her. While her benign question behind a closed door brought great relief, her next words shattered that.

“Who sent you?” Nora asked. It could have been the quavering of her voice or the simple paranoia behind the statement that shocked me. All that could come out of my mouth at that moment was “what?” – not truly comprehending why I was asked. She asked again, slightly more fearful, and I told her no one. I almost said that both Carrie and I were worried about her and called the police, but given her suspicions at the moment, implying a third person into a conversation after you’ve said “no one sent me” was a bad idea. I suggested we get out of the hallway, but she refused. She stepped blocked the entrance in a panic and shut the door nearly locking us out of her room. I backed up a foot not sure what was going on. With that, she rested against the door frame and slid down it, slowly winding up nearly cross legged on the tiles. My first instinct was to catch her from falling, but she was moving so slow that no harm would come and not knowing if touching her in the slightest would set her off even further, I didn’t. She sat against the wall sobbing and all I could do was watch. I knelt down trying to find out what happened the last few days.

“Do you remember that medicine I take that if I don’t take it I can get really sick?” Nora asked me. A few months earlier, she ran out of a medicine that she needed to get refilled. I forgot what it was and what it was for, but I remember her desperately needing the refill and nearly missed a day’s work to get it. “I ran out of it Friday night,” she said.

“Where’s your pharmacy?” I asked her.

“It’s a 10-15 minute walk. I couldn’t stand up for more than five minutes at a time,” she said. I now understood why she was sitting in the hall now. She sobbed a little more and curled her knees into her chest.

I leaned in and tried to talk her to get out of the hall. “Can we continue this conversation elsewhere, please?” I helped Nora to her feet and she opened the door.

“Don’t judge me,” she said as we entered her apartment.

Carrie told me when she was in Nora’s apartment the other week that it was a mess. Carrie always considered a messy room to be an example of one’s mental state. I did too, if only because I watch my room get worse depending on my mood. Stepping inside, it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. I’d seen worse rooms than hers, often in my own, but then I’ve always been a slob so it’s hard to tell if I’ve been depressed all my life or simply messy. However I didn’t own ferrets. When I first met her, she owned a ferret that she raised from a baby. That pet died shortly before she moved away. When she moved back this time, she brought back two young ferrets that she adopted from a friend. Even tucked into a corner, their cage set up a good chunk of the studio space. This wasn’t a top of the line habitat, but it was close: chew proof, four foot tall, three-split levels linked by stairs and ramps, built in litter box at the base. She used cedarwood as litter, as evidenced by scattered wood chips around the floor of the cage and some scattered around the room. The faint aroma of cedar wasn’t overwhelming, but very much on hand. When Nora and I entered the room, they scrambled to the side the fence keeping a guarded eye on me and didn’t move for most of my time there. We got to the middle of the room and she had to sit down again amongst various books and a magazines. I knelt on the floor in front of her, trying to keep her attention on me hoping that focusing on something other than her surroundings might help.

“What do you need?” I asked her.

“I need to get to the pharmacy,” Nora replied. “I almost called you back last night to take me there.”

“Why didn’t you?” I asked, still not getting it.

“I didn’t want you to think I missed all your calls on purpose,” she said.

“Don’t worry about that,” I told her. “Do you need to call your doctor? What medicine do you need?”

“Klonopin,” she said. That’s when I got it. Sophia’s mom takes the same medicine in larger doses. She’s a mess with or without it, though it’s often worse without. If I catch her in the morning before she takes it, all hell breaks loose. I was prescribed Klonopin a while back for my own depression/anxiety, but it left me unable to function in the mornings. I hated the side effects so much that I quickly changed medicines. Nora had been on it for a while, and told me that the withdrawal from the medicine could cause seizures or worse if not careful. Imagine having a panic attack while going through the first 20 hours heroin withdrawal. Your body needs the drug that you need to kick in the first place. If you’ve been on it long enough, you have the tunneled mindset focusing on the next hit and nothing else and the anxious thinking that comes with that. The panic attack amplifies those darting snippets of consciousness and waking sleep. You know what you need, but how to get it is all white noise. The physical weakness from withdrawal ensures you’re not going anywhere. And if all you can do is lie in bed and listen to your own frenzied thoughts, trying to reach out to someone sounds reasonable in spurts, but it’s completely out of your capability. This is was her weekend. “I’ve been trapped in this panic bubble for the last few days. I didn’t know what to do.” She started sobbing again.

I sat down closer and put her head on my shoulder, letting her sob some more. She kept her gaze on the floor, sometimes averting her eyes from mine. I hated seeing her in this state, but considering the last few days it was good to see her at all. She calmed down a little, but was still not in great shape. In situations like this I don’t know what to say. What gets me stuck is hoping to find the right words to say to make everything easier, as if there were magic words for such occasions. There never are but I wait for them to show up anyway. Doing this I miss any chance of being helpful. Trying to be seen in the best light and play an angle, I give up being human. I’m not sure exactly how present I was at that, but I knew she’d already been through a lot in the past few days by herself. The last place I needed to be was trapped or even hiding inside my own head. I put my forehead against her head and tried to look in her eyes. She continued to stare at the floor, but her sobbing stopped.

“You know, I love you, but you drive me crazy,” I told her. She chuckled at that, her shoulders relaxed a little and quivered as she laughed. “You had me worried that… how I might find you here or if you really did something to hurt yourself.”

“I would never do that to myself,” Nora said. “I couldn’t do that to people who really care about me, my family…” she went silent again. I gave her a gentle hug still seated next to her on the floor. She leaned in a bit and put a hand on my arm at an awkward angle. Paws scratched against a metal cage as the ferrets scrambled about trying to come to Nora’s rescue. I didn’t care. I said how I felt even if I buried the lead a bit, and even that didn’t matter. I sat with Nora on the floor a little longer, talking a little more, revealing a little more of how I felt. It would be five or ten more minutes before we’d leave for the pharmacy. It would be another hour before I’d leave for work again, knowing she was all right. Another day before she returned to her office, much to the relief of Carrie and her office mates. Another four days before Nora finally replied to my email. Another five days before I realized that the smell of unrequited love isn’t bitter almonds as Lorca wrote, but really is the faint scent of cedarwood. Another week before I realized I was the one breaking my own heart. And another two weeks before knowing I could probably never reconcile that in my mind. Sitting with Nora in the middle of her apartment floor trying to comfort her, none of that did or would matter. She was safe and alive, and that mattered more.

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