I was late to rounds, so I snuck in quietly with other students at
the back. The crowd moved on to the next patient, so I took a closer look
at our suicide attempt. Her lips were black from the charcoal that she
had been made to drink.
Later, I stepped into her room to take a history. Her large brown
eyes filled a pretty face. And then she smiled. It stopped me from the
purpose of my visit and instead left me gawking. Her face seemed so
familiar, but I couldn't place her. Then it came to me: She was Vivien
Leigh playing Scarlett O'Hara.
"My name is Anthony. I'm a final-year medical student," I said.
"I'd like to know more about you—I mean, talk to you so that I can
present your case to the professor."
She had been dating a guy and found out she was pregnant. Neither
of them wanted the baby, so she had an abortion. After that he stopped
spending time with her. "He told me I was suffocating him," she said.
"Men fall in love with me and then they leave me. Obviously, I'm not good
enough. So I took a big piece of chocolate cake and I swallowed a whole
bottle of pills, and then I went to bed."
She bowed her head and started to cry. I gave her a box of tissues
and took her hand.
I still didn't have a sense of why she had wanted to kill herself.
She was so young, so vibrant and so beautiful. She told me that her life
was not worth living after her boyfriend left. Why would anybody want to
leave her?
Shortly after meeting in the hospital, Michelle and I began dating.
I had accepted an internship in Taos, New Mexico, and I realized that if
she were to join me, she would need something to keep her busy.
"I'll paint. I'll make you a beautiful home. I'll cook for you, and
I'll love you. Just never leave me. I have never felt such intense love
from anybody. I can't stay here in Miami. If you abandon me, I'll just
have to look for somebody else. I can't be alone."
Even Michelle's mother warned me about "abandoning" her:"Anthony,
you can't build up her expectations and then take yourself away," she
said. "You see how happy she is. You are her saint. If you left her, we
would have to pick up the pieces yet again."
"But I'm off to do my internship. I can't change that," I
protested.
"Just don't leave her; it will destroy her."
I had no choice. I would not abandon her. Others warned me that she
had borderline personality disorder, but I did not believe them. What
Michelle needed was love. I telephoned the local justice of the
peace.
With the excitement of our wedding and year-end parties, exercise
had slipped. One day I stood on the scale. My new lifestyle had taken its
toll.
"I'm off, darling," I told Michelle.
"Where to?" she asked.
"For a run. Look at this: I'm getting fat." I wobbled my
gut.
"So what if you're getting fat?"
"I need to lose some weight."
"Who are you trying to impress?"
"Nobody; it's just healthy to do. Anyway, my pants are getting
tight."
"So it's more important to you to go for a run than to be with
me?"
"What are you talking about? I am with you. I'll be back in half an
hour."
Michelle took a half-empty wineglass from the nightstand and
smashed it to the ground. "What the hell are you doing to me? You
promised me that you would never leave." I stepped back from her. She
started to cry.
"I promise you that I will never leave you. If it means so much to
you, I won't go for a run."
A few days later Michelle proclaimed triumphantly, "I have
something for you. Close your eyes." She led me into the hallway. "Okay,
now open them." A sheet covered a large frame. She pulled the sheet
off.
It was an oil painting. I stared at it for a long time. Michelle
had painted a flower arrangement that overflowed with yellow lilies and
blue irises with a fiery sunset-red background.
"I started on it after we met. I'm sorry about the other
day."
I had seen enough good in her that I felt if I could just cut out
the bad, I would have been happy with what was left. But I also knew that
she was who she was because of her entire self and that it was this
complexity that had, in part, tantalized me.
Soon after, we drove from Miami to New Mexico to start my
internship. The long trip was passed with naps and painless chatter. But
there were also moments when Michelle was thinking about her struggle:
"Do you know how difficult it is for me to change? Do you think that I
choose my fear that you will abandon me, that I choose my depression? I
can't stand it. If I had a knife, I would cut it out."
I realized that I was mistaking her unpredictable behavior for
freedom of choice. This made her appear freer and sexier than anyone I
had known. Ultimately there was no such freedom. Her emotional intensity
was the uncontrollable manifestation of her occasionally chaotic
mind.
We continued west and reached a gravel road with a sign that
promised to take a hundred miles off the trip. Twenty miles into the
desert, the only sign of civilization was the deteriorating road we were
driving on. Michelle said suddenly, "This is what it's like sometimes. I
am alone in an empty world that I can't even recognize. It's better to be
dead."
Tags:
beautiful home,
bipolar,
borderline,
bottle of pills,
box of tissues,
brown eyes,
charcoal,
chocolate cake,
closer look,
crowd,
depression,
internship,
lips,
love,
medical student,
meeting in the hospital,
men fall in love,
mental illness,
o hara,
pretty face,
spending time,
taos new mexico,
vivien leigh
