Normal People(55)

Connell later heard from friends that Rob had been drinking a lot in the preceding weeks and seemed out of sorts. Connell hadn’t known anything about it, he hadn’t been home much last term, he hadn’t really been seeing people. He checked his Facebook to find the last time Rob had sent him a message, and it was from early 2012: a photograph from a night out, Connell pictured with his arm around the waist of Marianne’s friend Teresa. In the message Rob had written: are u riding her?? NICE haha. Connell had never replied. He hadn’t seen Rob at Christmas, he couldn’t remember for certain whether he’d even seen him last summer or not. Trying to summon an exact mental picture of Rob’s face, Connell found that he couldn’t: an image would appear at first, whole and recognisable, but on any closer inspection the features would float away from one another, blur, become confused.

In the following days, people from school posted status updates about suicide awareness. Since then Connell’s mental state has steadily, week after week, continued to deteriorate. His anxiety, which was previously chronic and low-level, serving as a kind of all-purpose inhibiting impulse, has become severe. His hands start tingling when he has to perform minor interactions like ordering coffee or answering a question in class. Once or twice he’s had major panic attacks: hyperventilation, chest pain, pins and needles all over his body. A feeling of dissociation from his senses, an inability to think straight or interpret what he sees and hears. Things begin to look and sound different, slower, artificial, unreal. The first time it happened he thought he was losing his mind, that the whole cognitive framework by which he made sense of the world had disintegrated for good, and everything from then on would just be undifferentiated sound and colour. Then within a couple of minutes it passed, and left him lying on his mattress coated in sweat.

Now he looks up at Yvonne, the person assigned by the university to listen to his problems for money.

One of my friends committed suicide in January, he says. A friend from school.

Oh, how sad. I’m very sorry to hear that, Connell.

We hadn’t really kept up with each other in college. He was in Galway and I was here and everything. I guess I feel guilty now that I wasn’t in touch with him more.

I can understand that, Yvonne says. But however sad you might be feeling about your friend, what happened to him is not your fault. You’re not responsible for the decisions he made.

I never even replied to the last message he sent me. I mean, that was years ago, but I didn’t even reply.

I know that must feel very painful for you, of course that’s very painful. You feel you missed an opportunity to help someone who was suffering.

Connell nods, dumbly, and rubs his eye.

When you lose someone to suicide, it’s natural to wonder if there’s anything you could have done to help this person, Yvonne says. I’m sure everyone in your friend’s life is asking themselves the same questions now.

But at least other people tried to help.

This sounds more aggressive, or more wheedling, than Connell intended it to. He’s surprised to see that instead of responding directly, Yvonne just looks at him, looks through the lenses of her glasses, and her eyes are narrowed. She’s nodding. Then she lifts a sheaf of paper off the table and holds it upright, businesslike.

Well, I’ve had a look at this inventory you filled out for us, she says. And I’ll be honest with you, Connell, what I’m seeing here would be pretty concerning.

Right. Would it?

She shuffles the sheets of paper. He can see on the first sheet where his pen made the small tear.

This is what we call the Beck Depression Inventory, she says. I’m sure you’ve figured out how it works, we just assign a score from zero to three for each item. Now, someone like me might score between, say, zero and five on a test like this, and someone who’s going through a mild depressive episode could expect to see a score of maybe fifteen or sixteen.

Okay, he says. Right.

And what we’re seeing here is a score of forty-three.

Yeah. Okay.

So that would put us in the territory of a very serious depression, she says. Do you think that matches up with your experience?

He rubs at his eye again. Quietly he manages to say: Yeah.

I’m seeing that you’re feeling very negatively towards yourself, you’re having some suicidal thoughts, things like that. So those are things we’d have to take very seriously.

Right.

At this point she starts talking about treatment options. She says she’s going to recommend that he should see a GP in college to talk about the option of medication. You understand I’m not in a position to make any prescriptions here, she says. He nods, restless now. Yeah, I know that, he says. He keeps rubbing at his eyes, they’re itchy. She offers him a glass of water but he declines. She starts to ask questions about his family, about his mother and where she lives and whether he has brothers and sisters.

Any girlfriend or boyfriend on the scene at the moment? Yvonne says.

No, says Connell. No one like that.

*



Helen came back to Carricklea with him for the funeral. The morning of the ceremony they dressed in his room together in silence, with the noise of Lorraine’s hairdryer humming through the wall. Connell was wearing the only suit he owned, which he had bought for a cousin’s communion when he was sixteen. The jacket was tight around his shoulders, he could feel it when he lifted his arms. The sensation that he looked bad preoccupied him. Helen was sitting at the mirror putting on her make-up, and Connell stood behind her to knot his tie. She reached up to touch his face. You look handsome, she said. For some reason that made him angry, like it was the most insensitive, vulgar thing she possibly could have said, and he didn’t respond. She dropped her hand then and went to put her shoes on.