"She's been like this for ten days now, Kath, I don't know…I don't know how long we can sustain this."
"Ten days is nothing," Katherine said.
"Nothing? Nothing?" her wife said incredulously. "Ten days of being completely catatonic is not nothing. She doesn't do anything except to get up and sit in the bathtub for three hours. She can't feed herself, she can't dress or undress herself, she can barely even walk by herself. We are helping as much as we can but there has to be something else. She has to go see a therapist."
"She'll never go for it, you know this," Katherine said.
"Yes, I know this," Margaret agreed.
"So what are you proposing we do?"
They were coming back from the grocery store, still bickering like they had been for the past ten days, never able to agree on exactly what was the best course of action to help Cami. It wasn't that Margaret didn't want to help her sister, it was just that she thought that Cami needed more tough love than Katherine would let her give. Kath was always such a softie about stuff like this, but Margaret thought that nothing would ever get done if Cami wasn't given a little push.
"We come up with an excuse to get her in the car, we don't tell her where we're going, we take her to a doctor. She'll need to see a therapist and a psychiatrist, it's obvious that she'll need medication," Margaret said.
"So we should just kidnap her, is that what you're saying?"
"We should just let her keep staying in bed every single day, not eating, not getting better, it that what you're saying?" Margaret shot back.
Katherine rolled her eyes and took her hands off the steering wheel to throw them up in the air. "I will never win with you. Yes, she needs help, yes we need to figure out something to do, no we can't keep letting her lay around the house all day sinking deeper into her depression, but we have to be delicate about this. As soon as she feels cornered, as soon as we say something wrong, as soon as she feels like—-oh, I don't know, like she's being kidnapped— she will flee, or she will retreat further into herself, or she will do something equally as destructive and counterproductive. We have to be sensitive, Madge! This takes some serious tact. And the way you want to go about things, it'll just scare her off!"
"Well, fine. Tell me, then, Oh Wise One, please tell me if you've got any brilliant ideas, because I am all ears."
"I don't know, I haven't come up with any yet," Katherine said.
"Oh there's a surprise."
They pulled into the driveway of the house and parked the car. Katherine took off her seatbelt and turned to her wife, taking Margaret's hands in hers and looking her in the eyes. "Darling, my love. I hate fighting like this. We're going to disagree about this, I know. But the bottom line is that we both want her to get better, and we are a team. Let's just go in there and see how she's doing, and we can table this discussion for later. I will do some online research. I just am really afraid that if we put her in the car and just show up at a shrink's office without any warning, we'll scare the pants off her. There's got to be a good middle ground."
"Okay," Margaret conceded, kissing her wife's hands. "Do some googling, and we'll see what other ideas are out there." They kissed briefly before they exited the car and went inside.
To their surprise, they found Cami sitting at the dining room table, hunched over a cup of warm tea. Cami hadn't been downstairs at all since she had arrived. In fact, she hadn't been anywhere besides her room and the bathroom since she had gotten there. So Katherine and Margaret were quite startled to find her up and about. It was obvious that she had been around the kitchen, as various cupboards were open and an open box of teabags was sitting on the counter.
Margaret glanced into the living room where the TV was on, and the throw blanket was on a heap on the back of the couch. It was obvious that Cami had been the most active and mobile that she'd been in at least ten days.
"Cami?" Katherine said cautiously, stepping closer to her. Cami hadn't made eye contact or even made any acknowledgement that she knew her sister and sister-in-law were there.
To be fair, Cami really hadn't noticed that Margaret and Katherine had come in until her sister-in-law had said her name. She had been concentrating so hard on the thought that had stood out in her mind all last night, all morning, consuming her entire attention ever since it had entered her head.
All her energy had been going towards thinking of the right way to phrase this idea that had come into her mind and wouldn't leave. She had gone over hundreds of variations, calculating the thousands of possible reactions that Margaret and Katherine might have to what she needed to say.
But in the end, it just came out, slipping past her lips in a most indelicate, direct way before she could stop it. And when she was done saying it, it hung in the air with a shocked silence.
"I need help."
While her sister and sister-in-law had been out at the grocery store, Cami had sat up in bed. Although she still felt all-around horrible, like she might have a literal rain cloud hanging above her head, a sudden spark of energy had lit within her. She had spent a full half hour watching TV, a trashy reality show that she didn't really enjoy, but she had had enough clarity to follow what was going on.
Cami had noticed, too, that she enjoyed just having even this little bit of extra energy. Even though she only felt about 2% better, she had realized right then that she could not go back to being completely catatonic. Lying there all day, staring at the wall or the ceiling in the bedroom, staring at the wall or the ceiling when she was sitting in the bath, she couldn't continue to live like this.
And so she had gotten up, stood unsteadily in the doorway to the bedroom. Being out from under the bed covers had made her shiver violently, even though the house was relatively warm. She had stumbled, shuffling slowly out of her room and into Margaret's room, where she had half-heartedly searched for a sweater to put over her pajamas. She had taken the first one she found, a blue cardigan with pink peonies on it, and stuffed herself into it.
Slowly she had made her way downstairs, taking one step at a time as she went. Her legs felt like wet noodles, unstable, unwilling to support her weight or help her move. Still, she had persevered and had made it downstairs, although she was of yet unaware as to why she had come downstairs in the first place.
Continuing to shuffle, she had rummaged through all the cupboards in the kitchen, seeking tea in the hopes that it would keep her warm and help her focus her thoughts. After the tea had been made, she had sat down at the kitchen table and put her face close to the cup of steaming hot liquid, savoring the warmth against her skin.
Her thoughts had turned back to the darkness once again. But instead of wallowing in it like she had since things had reached their crisis point, she clung desperately to the tiny voice straining to be heard in her head: I need help. This needs to stop. I can get better, things can get better. It was the first non-hopeless thought she'd had in a long time.
"I need help," she had practiced saying aloud. She had repeated it about twenty times before Margaret and Katherine had gotten home.
When her sister and sister-in-law had gotten home, she could barely look at them. It took all the strength in her body to utter the line she had been rehearsing over and over again.
She was exhausted now, just from admitting that she was in trouble.
Margaret and Katherine stood and stared at each other for a long moment, obviously shocked, before they set their groceries down on the counter and joined Cami at the kitchen table. Margaret cleared her throat uncomfortably before saying, "Um, we were just discussing this and…we agree. How can we help? What can we do to get you help?"
Cami's energy had been completely spent at this time just from being up, from making her confession that she needed help. So she sat there in silence, continuing to stare at her rapidly cooling cup of tea.
Her sister could tell that Cami was done speaking for the time being, and that it wasn't likely to get much more out of her. "Can we take you to a therapist? Maybe even a psychiatrist to see if medication would help?"
Cami nodded silently, not making eye contact. Margaret's suggestions barely registered with her, but she knew that she was being asked a question, and that she was expected to answer.
"Okay, good," Margaret said, reaching for Katherine's hand. She reached for Cami's too, giving it a reassuring squeeze. "We're proud of you, and we love you very much. I'll make a few phone calls, and we'll see if we can get an appointment set up. We're going to get you some help, ok Cam?"
"Can I go back to bed now?" Cami said quietly, almost inaudibly.
"Sure, sweetie," Katherine said with a smile, standing and helping Cami to her feet.
For the next two days, Cami stayed in bed, not even getting up to take her bath. She just rested, trying to dredge up any remainder of the tiny spark of strength she had felt the other day. Nothing particularly came to her, but she took comfort in the thought that at least things probably couldn't get worse.
The next morning, she opened her eyes to see Katherine and Margaret standing over her, waiting for her to wake up. They kept staring nervously at each other, Katherine biting her lip before sloppily handing Cami a mug of tea. Struggling to sit up, Cami accepted the tea, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. "What's up?"
"Well, Kath and I wanted to make sure that…well the other day, with our little discussion…. when you said you needed help…" Margaret started, her words trailing.
"Yes, I remember," Cami said meekly.
"We wanted to make sure you still felt that way. That you'd still be okay with going to see a therapist," Katherine said.
Cami looked between her sister and sister-in-law, seeing how desperately they wanted her to say yes. She, in fact, hadn't changed her mind about it at all, but rather had just gone back to feeling numb about it and about everything else in general. But seeing their earnest, yearning faces reminded her that she still needed help, and if she couldn't convince herself to get help on her own account, then she should do it for them.
"Yes, I want to go."
The smiles that bloomed across their faces sent a shock of warmth through Cami's body, and she found herself smiling too, if only for a half second. Katherine and Margaret noticed the brief, fleeting grin, and that made them beam even brighter.
"Ok, wonderful," Katherine said. "I've made an appointment for you tomorrow at 3, if that's ok? The doctor said she's flexible with times if there's a different time you'd rather go."
"No, 3 is fine," Cami said. "It's not like I'm doing anything else." As she said this, she thought bitterly of her former boss Richard, and how she didn't have a job anymore, and how she had brought that upon herself.
The negative thoughts were starting to crowd into the room again, and she decided it would be better to go back to sleep than to let them take over and drown her. So she thanked Katherine and Margaret for the tea, and for making the therapy appointment, and then rolled back over, closing her eyes.
"My name is Dr. Helms. You can call me Dr. Helms, or Sheila, if you're comfortable with that."
The woman extending her hand for Cami to shake was short and squat, in her late forties with stripy hair from patchy dye jobs. Cami figured the woman was past the age of trying to impress her clients, ditching any sort of business casual attire for yoga pants, a plaid shirt, and a fleece vest.
"Do you go by Cami or Camille?" Sheila asked.
"Either," Cami said. "Mostly Cami."
"Cami it is, then."
They stared at each other uncomfortably for a few seconds as Cami got settled on an old leather sofa across from where Sheila sat in a desk chair.
"Alright, Cami," Sheila said after another few moments of awkward silence. "Your sister…Margaret? said that you've been having some trouble lately. Why don't we start with some intake questions that I have all my new clients go through, and then we'll start to get to know each other a little bit more personally?"
Cami nodded, and the doctor continued. Sheila asked all the standard questions: have you ever felt in danger of harming yourself or others, does your family have a history of mental illness, what symptoms are you experiencing. Cami tried to answer all of them as best as she could, but her energy was waning quickly, and everything in her head was getting jumbled up, taking longer for thoughts to formulate and longer still for them to leave her lips.
After the intake questions, Sheila put down her notepad where she'd been writing down Cami's responses, and looked at her for a long moment. The doctor took in her unwashed hair, her dirty sweatpants, the dark circles under her eyes, and nodded sympathetically. "Your sister said you're having a hard time. Now that we've got all the bureaucratic stuff out of the way, I want to hear what you have to say, and what your experience has been like."
"I've been having a hard time," was all she could say.
The doctor nodded again. Inside, Cami was kicking herself, her thoughts telling her that the doctor thought she was stupid because she couldn't give any elaboration. But the doctor seemed unfazed by Cami's short answer. "Would you say it started for any particular reason?"
"Not that I can think of," Cami said truthfully. In reality, there hadn't been a singular event or anything that had started her decline. She had just noticed that week after week, month after month it was the same thing as always, she felt stuck like she was going nowhere. But she also felt like things were snowballing out of control down a mountainside. And she wondered how her life could simultaneously be stagnant and a runaway trainwreck.
Sheila sat back in her chair. "I can see you thinking in there," she said. "Do you want to share the thoughts you were just having?"
Cami shook her head quietly.
"Okay," the doctor said, "That's fair. You never have to share anything with me if you're not comfortable. And I'm proud of you for asserting your independence and telling me no. It's not always easy for clients to say no to a doctor, or to admit they're uncomfortable. I'm glad that you're able to do that."
Cami looked at the floor, giving a short nod to acknowledge she heard the compliment, but still feeling uncomfortable that she had received one in the first place.
"So here's what I think," Sheila said. "Are you ready?" She raised her eyebrows at Cami, clearly expecting a response. Cami nodded for her to continue. "I think that you've got a lot of potential. I think you have the potential to do absolutely anything you set your mind to. Now here's the trouble, see: your mind is really sick right now. There's a chemical imbalance going on up there and—"
"I know what Depression is," Cami interrupted. She felt a little like she was being patronized, and she didn't like it. She certainly understood what depression was, and that she probably had it, and she didn't need to be schooled on it like a little kid.
"Right," Sheila said, the corners of her mouth dipping briefly into a frown. "I don't have an official diagnosis for you yet, but it is very likely that you have depression. In order to properly diagnose you, and see how you'd like to move forward in recovery, though, I will need to see you again and soon."
"Can I come see you every other day?" Cami asked.
"Well, I think that's a grand idea."
They agreed to meet again the day after tomorrow, same time. When Cami got out to the car, Katherine and Margaret were excitedly waiting for her to divulge the outcome of her appointment. "Soooo," Katherine said, a tinge of excitement in her voice. "How'd it go?"
"Good. I'm supposed to come back on Wednesday at 3."
"That's wonderful!" Katherine said. "So really, how was it?"
Both her sister and sister-in-law were anxiously staring at her in the backseat via the rearview mirror as they drove back to the house.
Cami felt her eyelids start to droop. Getting up, getting semi-dressed, walking downstairs, staying awake and half-alert and semi-responsive to another person's questions for a whole hour had knocked the wind out of her sails. All she could manage was, "I'm exhausted," before drifting off to sleep.