Off the Deep End (67)

“I didn’t feel the best . . . I . . .” His words trailed off, and he was too embarrassed to continue.

“Go ahead, son. I’m a doctor,” Dr. Knoll encouraged.

“I had diarrhea last night,” he said, and his face instantly flushed bright red. He rarely blushed, but telling a doctor you had diarrhea was enough to mortify any teenager.

“Was it bad?”

Isaac nodded.

“Did you drink a lot of fluids afterward to rehydrate?”

“Not really.”

Dr. Knoll nodded. “That might explain what’s happening.” She turned to look at me. “It could be that Isaac is extremely dehydrated after his bout with diarrhea. That might be responsible for what I’m seeing, but I’m just going to draw some blood and do an EKG just to be sure.”

Dr. Knoll stepped outside to get what she needed for the test and the blood draw. Isaac turned to look at me. His face was pale. His eyes dilated. His voice shook as he spoke. “Mom, I have to tell you something.”

“Honey, what is it?” I got up, recognizing immediately that something was wrong and rushing to stand next to his exam bed.

His eyes filled with tears. “Don’t be mad. Please don’t be mad at me, but I took some pills.” He blurted it out fast like if he talked too slow, he might not tell on himself.

“You took pills? What kind of pills?” My head spun with the news, trying to make sense of it.

“My antidepressants,” he whispered like someone might hear him and he’d get in trouble.

“How many did you take?” This was exactly what I was afraid of. The pills making him worse instead of better, but I tried to keep my face calm and my voice low. I didn’t want him to think I was angry with him. This wasn’t his fault.

He shrugged, but he looked worried. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know how many pills you took? You have to know how many you took.” My voice rose. I needed to rein myself back in. Getting scared was only going to push him away and ensure he never told me anything in the future.

“Does it matter?” He raised his eyebrows at me.

“Yes, it matters. You could’ve died,” I snapped. As soon as I said it, I realized what I’d said. What he’d potentially done. That’s when the waves of dread and fear filled my insides.

“Do you think I’m going to be okay?” he asked in a somber whisper.

That question was the reason I’d kept quiet about what he’d done and hadn’t told Mark about the incident. I hadn’t told anyone. Isaac was worried about being okay, and if he was worried about being okay, then that meant he’d changed his mind about being alive. That’s what mattered. That was the most important thing. He had sounded so scared and terrified that day. Like when they used to send kids to prison on Dr. Phil and scare them straight. That’s the kind of scared he was, and if taking the pills had done that to him, it might’ve been worth it.

It was the first time I’d kept something the kids had done from Mark. We shared everything when it came to them. Always had. They were our most important priority and the thing we loved the most in the world, so neither of us wanted to be left out of what was happening with them.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t thought about telling Mark. I had. I just didn’t want to hurt him or create any more unnecessary pain. I told myself I was protecting him, but truthfully, I was protecting myself too. And Isaac. He didn’t want to talk about it afterward either. He seemed more embarrassed by it than anything.

“It was stupid, Mom, I’m fine,” he said on the ride home from Dr. Knoll’s office when I tried to bring it up again. It wasn’t like I hadn’t tried to talk to him about it or watch him like a hawk afterward.

But I stopped worrying about it because things changed afterward. There was the first genuine turnaround in his behavior. For the last month, Mark and I had grown increasingly troubled by all the time he’d been spending with Jules, and we’d been harping on him to stop spending so much time with her. It’d been nothing but a battle because he didn’t want us telling him what to do, but suddenly, from out of the blue, he stopped hanging out with Jules and cut off their communication without us having to have another heated discussion with him about it. He wouldn’t tell me why he’d done it, only that he’d blamed it all on me. He told her that I refused to let him have any contact with her even though that wasn’t true, but I didn’t care what he told her as long as it was over. I was so proud of him. He couldn’t move forward when he was bound by her toxicity and messed-up thinking. He’d even invited a friend over after school. Just that one time, but it was a start. I’d walked in on them in his bedroom and been so stunned to find him in there not alone that it’d stopped me in my tracks.

“Mom! What are you doing?” he screeched when I opened the door without knocking. I knocked on both my kids’ doors before entering, but I hadn’t heard him come home.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you come home from school.” I stood there dumbfounded, with the laundry basket perched on my hip bone and staring at the kid sitting cross legged on the floor. The room smelled funny. Like they’d been vaping nicotine or pot. I couldn’t tell. He had long stringy hair that hung in his face and shifty eyes that glanced up at me when I talked. The boy had terrible acne. The angry red kind.