Rapid Falls(4)

Three weeks after Maggie was born, Anna stumbled into our house, drunk at three o’clock in the afternoon. It was the first time she had met our daughter, and I was glad Rick wasn’t there to hear her ask if she could hold her new nephew. The late-night phone calls and requests for money I had been fielding since our daughter’s birth were enough to turn Rick’s patience for Anna to disgust. Between managing Anna’s needs and the demands of our new baby, I was too busy to find a way through his growing contempt for my sister.

He told me that I should cut off contact with her for good when she failed to show up for Maggie’s first birthday. I nodded and said that I would think about it, but I knew I could never stop speaking to my sister. Rick thought he understood everything about Anna, but he couldn’t. He didn’t know what it had been like for us, growing up in Rapid Falls. I made sure of that. Rick was a city kid from a wealthy family and had graduated from a prestigious art school. When we met he was about to start a job at a fast-rising snowboard and skateboard company run by classmates from his private high school. Everything came easy to Rick. I didn’t want him to know how different it was for us, given where we’d come from and what we’d been through. I knew that telling him more about Anna would reveal things about myself that I never wanted him to see. Anna’s choices brought awful things upon her, but I was someone who had earned a good life. Nobody thought Anna deserved happiness. Not after they found out what happened to Jesse.

I was never sure if the accident was the reason that Anna later became suicidal or if it was just one piece of the puzzle. What changed that tipped her over the edge? Was it Rick’s disgust with her? Or my lack of attention? Rick blamed her actions on the alcohol, and my mom backed him up. She sent us articles about how addicts deaden their ability to be happy, changing their serotonin levels with the constant influx of poison. My mother was convinced that after sixteen years alcohol had simply dissolved Anna’s willingness to live. It was nobody’s fault but her own.

Anna’s first attempt was a year ago. Her boyfriend phoned 9-1-1 after he stumbled over her unconscious body on the bathroom floor of her apartment. The boyfriend told me, right before he left me alone with her in the emergency room of the hospital, that it was an accidental overdose—too many antidepressants combined with cheap liquor. I wanted to believe that it was an accident, but I was furious to learn that Anna had been drinking at all. Just days before, she had assured me over the phone that she’d been sober for thirty days, and I had accepted her words without question. I had been too busy to do anything else but pretend she was okay.

While I sat in the uncomfortable vinyl seat by her hospital bed, Anna admitted that she had never really stopped drinking, that what happened was not by accident. Her boyfriend had threatened to leave her, she said. She didn’t know what else to do but drink a fifth of vodka and swallow a bottle of painkillers. I was mad that she had lied to me, but I asked her gently why she hadn’t called me, why her first instinct had been self-destruction. I must have failed to cloak my anger. She stopped talking. We sat in silence as we waited for the hospital psychiatrist. I bit back words about how futile her actions had been: that despite her dramatic gesture, her boyfriend had left her anyway. I wanted to tell her that maybe the problem wasn’t that he was gone but that she had chosen such an awful person to begin with.

First minutes, then hours ticked by. Emergency rooms can’t discharge a suicide attempt without an okay from a mental health professional. We needed a psychiatrist to evaluate her and devise a treatment plan before they would let her go. I wanted to leave, but a good sister would never do that. No matter how many times life gets turned upside down.

When the psychiatrist finally walked in, I was surprised to feel a wave of optimism. Maybe this doctor would have the solution for my sister. Surely someone would help her now. My hope faded when the doctor began rushing through his questions.

“So you wanted to die?” he began in a monotone without a greeting. Anna took his blunt tone in stride.

“Yes,” she muttered, staring at the grubby drop-ceiling panels above her. He ticked a box on his form.

“History of substance abuse?” he asked, looking down at his clipboard.

“Yes.” She plucked at the cheap blanket draping her body.

“Drugs? Alcohol?”

“Both.”

“Still thinking of suicide?”

Anna paused, then turned her head to look at him. We all knew what the correct answer to his question was. “No,” she said clearly.

“Great. I’ll draw up the paperwork for discharge.” He turned to leave. Anna had made his job simple.

“Is that true?” I asked, loudly, before he was out of earshot.

Anna shrugged and sighed. “It’s not like anyone cares.”

“I care.”

She shrugged and looked down again. I couldn’t blame the doctor for wanting Anna gone. I felt the same way about wanting her to stay. If she was in the hospital, I knew she was safe. Contained. Not my responsibility.

I drove her home and then called her every day for the next week, despite her clipped replies when she bothered to answer. I started to think I should heed Rick’s advice to leave her alone. Then, back at work one day, I found a gift basket on my desk. It was full of my favorites: chocolate-covered almonds, pistachio biscotti, and a bottle of buttery chardonnay. A handwritten note read: