~ ~ ~

 

ABOUT TWO MONTHS after we returned to Mexico I called Mike.

“Hi, David,” he said. “What’s up?”

“Am I catching you at a bad time?”

“No,” he said. “This is a good time actually . . . I’ve got about seven minutes.”

Tight schedule.

I got right to it.

“How do I know when Laci’s bad enough to make her go to the doctor?”

“Well,” he said, “just the fact that you’re calling me and asking me that tells me that things have probably already gotten to that point. What’s going on?”

“She’s not happy. Anything sets her off. She cries all the time. She goes and works with those little kids everyday and it use to make her so happy, but now it just makes her sad. I mean, I’m sad too, but I’m getting better every day . . . I don’t think she is.”

“Take her,” Mike said. “Make her go. It’s treatable . . . they can do something about it . . .”

“She’s not going to want to take any medicine,” I said. “She wants to get pregnant again . . .”

“There are so many things out there now,” he said. “A lot of them she can take when she’s pregnant. Plus, sometimes you just need to be on them for a few months to get your serotonin levels back where they need to be and then you can go off of ’em and be fine . . .”

“Okay,” I said.

“And David?”

“What?”

“If the first thing they give her doesn’t work don’t give up. There’re a lot of different options. It may take a while to find the right thing . . .”

“Are my seven minutes up?” I asked.

“You need anything else?”

“No,” I said. “I just wanted to say thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. “Anytime.”

 

 

 

I sat her down and told her that I was worried about her and I told her everything Mike had said. She cried some more, but she nodded. I think she knew she needed help.

We went to see Dr. Santos. He prescribed something for her and I called Mike as soon as we picked up the prescription. He didn’t answer so I left a voice mail and told him the name of the medicine and asked him to let me know what he thought. I wouldn’t let her take the first pill until Mike called me back a few hours later and talked to me in English.

“I think it’s a good one to start with,” he said. “I talked with Dr. Jacobs on staff here and he said it’s a common first choice.”

I let Laci take her pill.

After about three days her tears dried up, but she complained that her heart was racing at times and she couldn’t sleep at night. We gave it two weeks, but decided it wasn’t the answer so we went back to Dr. Santos.

The next one he prescribed for her did the trick, and I slowly saw my old Laci coming back to me. She started smiling more often, she got excited about going to work every day, and when we passed a trash can that had a Happy Meal container laying on top she looked at it, but didn’t burst into tears.

 

 

 

“Are you sure it’s going to be okay for her to be on this if she gets pregnant?” I asked Mike when I called him at the end of the summer.

“I’m positive,” he answered. “Are you trying?”

“I guess so.”

“Good luck.”

 

 

 

In the meantime we got back into what had been our normal routine before we’d gone to Cavendish to have Gabby. While we’d been gone, Aaron had located another church that was willing to take in the youth group kids, so Laci and I got our house back except for the two days a week when the kids from the landfill came.

Dorito was doing great. He’d seemed so happy to see me when I came back from Cavendish . . . running to me and throwing his arms around my legs. I scooped him up and turned him upside down.

“You haven’t forgotten your English, have you?” I’d asked him. He just smiled at me.

“Who am I?” I asked, pointing at myself.

“Day-Day.”

“Who are you?” I asked, turning him right side up again and tickling his stomach.

“Dorito,” he giggled.

“Good boy,” I said.

I kissed him on the top of his head and set him back down.

 

 

 

I started picking him up two or three mornings a week so we could do the exercises that Sonya gave us and then we’d go to McDonald’s for lunch afterwards. We were usually able to get there before the lunch crowd and often had the play yard all to ourselves. The ball pit was his favorite part of the entire day.

“Come here!” he called one day, only his head sticking up from the brightly colored balls.

I hated the ball pit.

“What?” I asked, walking over to the black netting that kept him and all the balls inside. He stuck a bare foot into the air.

“Where’s your sock?” I asked. He tried to part the balls with his hands, looking for his sock.

“Oh, brother,” I said, crawling into the pit.

“Oh, brother,” he repeated.

I reached down through the balls, feeling the bottom of the pit. Finally I felt something made of cloth and I pulled up a black sock that almost could have fit me. The next thing I found was a pair of pink underwear with white unicorns printed on it.

“This is disgusting,” I said. “Come on, we’re getting out.”

“Why?” he asked.

“We’re going shopping . . .”

“Why?” he asked again.

“We’re going to buy you some new socks.”