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I’m about to follow Courtney when I hear a loud bang and a shriek.
I rush downstairs. When I see her lying at the bottom of the stairs, not moving, my chest constricts and it feels like I can’t breathe. But somehow, my feet get me to her side, and I continue to get oxygen into my lungs.
She’s moaning in pain. At least she’s conscious. I didn’t see what happened—I have no idea how bad her fall was—but she looks awful.
I pull out my phone. “Honey, it’s okay,” I say, trying to sound calmer than I feel. “I’m calling an ambulance.”
She immediately sits up, a terrified look on her face. “The last thing I want to do is deal with paramedics and police officers. Don’t call. Please.”
Her pleading tone catches me off guard.
“It would make everything worse,” she says. “You don’t understand.”
“You’re badly hurt.”
“It’s not what you think.”
To my horror, she gets to her feet. Before I can stop her, she starts walking, and she limps for the first two steps, but that’s all.
“It’s just a scratch,” she tells me.
She walks toward the guest bedroom. I follow. She sits down on the bed and allows me to roll up the bottom of her pants and look at her leg. There’s only a small mark.
It doesn’t explain anything.
“Before you ran downstairs,” I say, “you told me you needed to be alone. What happened? Did I do something wrong?”
“Oh, God.” She splays her hands over her face. “Don’t make everything about you. The world does not revolve around you.”
“I just want to understand.”
“No, you really don’t.”
“Talk to me, sweetheart. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Why are you calling me ‘sweetheart’?”
It just popped out of my mouth, but... “I care about you.”
I do. As I speak the words, I realize I care about her a lot.
“You wouldn’t if you really knew me,” she says.
“Tell me,” I say gently, “so I can decide for myself.”
We look at each other, Courtney sitting on the bed, her face red and blotchy, and me kneeling on the floor beside her.
She starts crying. At first, quiet tears fall down her cheeks, but then she’s bawling, sobbing ugly tears, and all of me aches for her. I want to fix it, but I can’t fix it if I don’t know what’s going on. I climb into bed and wrap my arms around her. She buries her face against me and continues to cry.
After a few minutes, her sobs are less frequent, less desperate.
“It’s okay.” I stroke her back. “You don’t have to talk to me.” I hate saying those words. I want to demand she tell me exactly what’s wrong, but that wouldn’t be the right thing to do. “Do you want to call your sister? Do you want me to drive you to a friend’s house? I don’t think you should be alone now, but you don’t have to be with me.”
“I don’t deserve you,” she murmurs.
I can’t stand those words.
“You’re not thinking clearly,” I say, a bit too irritably.
I ease her down so she’s lying in the enormous guest bed, and I hold her from behind like I did a few nights ago when I woke up to find her missing from my bedroom. I rub circles over her body.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m here with you.”
She releases a shuddering breath and snuggles closer to me.
“I have dessert,” I offer. “It’s apple crumble that I’m keeping warm in the oven. There’s vanilla ice cream, too.”
“Maybe later.”
“I could get you a gingerbread latte? Or I can make you a regular latte here. Or tea.”
She nods against me. “Tea is good. It’s on my list.”
I’m not sure what she means, but I’m glad to have something to do. “What kind of tea?”
“Whatever you have.”
I head to the kitchen and tap my fingers against the counter impatiently as I wait for the electric kettle to boil. Then I make a pot of Earl Grey and bring it to the bedroom on the breakfast tray, along with two teacups. When the tea is ready, I pour us each a cup, and she holds hers just below her nose and breathes in deeply.
“I can’t smell it right now,” she says glumly, “but I’m sure it’s high-quality stuff.”
I shrug. “I don’t drink a lot of tea. My mom got it for me.”
“What do you drink?”
“When I’m working, I have about ten espressos a day.”
“Of course you do.” She rocks back and forth. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry for all the coffee beans that go toward feeding my espresso habit?”
She laughs, but it sounds hollow.
“Are you a little better now?” I ask.
“I’m in control. Sort of. I started to feel depressed when we were eating, and then I completely lost it when I tripped on the stairs, but now...” She looks down. “I’m sorry. None of this is your fault, and I’m sorry you have to deal with me like this.” She hesitates. “It’s like I have these attacks of depression that come upon me suddenly—I think of them as being similar to panic attacks. It probably sounds weird, but it happens sometimes, and now that it’s approaching five years, they’re more frequent. Soon, I’ll be living in a constant cloud of gray. Every five years, I sink into a deep depression, and I can feel it coming on. I don’t know why it recurs on such a predictable schedule, but it does.”
I absorb her words, then put down our teacups—it’s too hot to drink anyway—and wrap her in my arms again.
“Is this what happened on the weekend, too?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t as bad. I think it was worse this time in part because I was trying to keep up a happy front since you went to so much effort to prepare a nice dinner. I appreciate that, I really do. I’m sorry I ruined it.”
“You don’t need to keep saying ‘sorry.’ For the next hour, don’t apologize to me at all.”
She nods. “These thoughts...they keep running through my head, and they’re awful. The food you made was delicious, but I stopped being able to taste it properly. Depression isn’t like being really sad. Actually, I consider sadness a positive emotion because it’s manageable. I don’t feel as helpless when I’m sad. It’s so much better, you have no idea. Or maybe you do. I shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”
I shake my head.
I don’t know what to do. I’m out of my depth. I just know I want to be here for her.
“I’m sorry,” she says again. “This isn’t what you signed up for. You wanted someone who knows how to have fun!” She says it with faux cheer. “That’s what you’re paying me for, and I’m failing miserably at it.”
“No more ‘sorry,’” I remind her. “And you are not failing. You’ve done a great job.” I pause as something occurs to me. “Ten years ago, when you were in university...”
“That was my worst episode of depression. I had to go on leave during my last year of undergrad, and then my boyfriend dumped me, which didn’t help.”
I see terror in her eyes as she thinks back to that time.
“There’s no trigger,” she says. “Everything can be going great and then it just happens. Even in between my bad episodes, I’m not quite normal. I have to be careful. Though usually I’m pretty good at caring for myself.”
“Have you tried getting help? There are—”
“Don’t,” she whispers. “Please don’t. That’s what everyone asks when they first hear about my depression—not that I tell many people about it. But from what you know of me, do you really think I would have suffered so much without trying to get help?”
“No, but maybe—”
“I’ve tried everything. I’ve lost track of how many drugs I’ve failed to respond to. I’ve tried therapy, and for whatever reason, that hasn’t worked for me, either. I refuse to do ECT—electroconvulsive therapy—because it sounds so damn invasive and because of the cognitive side effects. I know I wouldn’t be able to deal with the memory problems. I tried rTMS, and it felt like I was being hit over the head with a hammer for half an hour. Even then, I went back for a second session, but it was no better. They even talked about a study that would involve drilling a hole in my head to implant a pacemaker, but I draw the line at someone drilling a fucking hole in my head.”
I don’t understand all the things Courtney is talking about, and I make a mental note to look them up tomorrow. I’m not going to ask her to explain more than she already has.
“You said it happens every five years,” I say. “It’s not chronic. It goes away eventually, but not with the help of drugs or anything else?”
“Sometimes it lasts six months, sometimes well over a year. The one constant is that it goes away after I’ve given up on treatment, so that’s how I know none of those things have worked.” She reaches for her teacup. “It’s not supposed to be like this. You’re supposed to try a few drugs and find one that works. Maybe it won’t be the first drug, but you’re supposed to find something soon enough. But there are many people like me who have treatment-resistant depression. And if you suggest a little yoga or tai chi will fix it, I will stab you.”
“Fair enough.”
“Some people think those of us with depression just don’t appreciate the little things in life, which you know isn’t true for me. Sometimes I wonder if my depression is actually the reason I’m good at that. Every five years, I become incapable of enjoying gourmet ice cream on a hot summer’s day and other small pleasures, so when I’m able to enjoy them, it feels like such a gift. In fact, sometimes I think of myself as an innately happy person who suffers from depression.” She smiles at me weakly. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
We drink our tea in silence for a couple of minutes. There are many more things I want to ask, but I keep them to myself.
“Let’s watch a movie,” I say. “You pick.”
She picks Wedding Crashers because she wants something that doesn’t require much thought. We eat warm apple crumble with vanilla ice cream as we watch the movie, and I’m pleased with myself for baking something so delicious. I went to a local grocer to buy produce today, and I enjoyed looking at the selection of fresh fruits and vegetables. I rarely go grocery shopping—Elena takes care of that for me—and the novelty of it, combined with the way I’ve been seeing the world through Courtney’s eyes lately, made it a pleasurable experience.
Or maybe my baking skills aren’t all that impressive. Maybe the crumble just tastes so good because everything tastes good these days.
Courtney laughs occasionally during the movie, but it’s a brittle laughter. She’s not quite herself. The thought of her hurting so much causes an unbearable ache inside me; I can’t stand to see her suffer. I need to fix this for her. I have resources and contacts that she does not.
I put it on my to-do list for tomorrow, along with planning our trip to Montreal. For some reason, I want to plan the trip myself rather than ask Priya for help. Plus, I have the time to do it.
I ask Courtney if she wants some wine, but she says no, it’s probably best if she doesn’t drink more tonight. So I make another pot of tea.
When the movie’s over, I gather her up in my arms and carry her to my bedroom. She puts on one of my T-shirts for bed, as she’s been doing the past few nights. I like seeing her in my clothes.
“It’s nice to have you around,” she says, running her hand over my face, like she’s exploring me. “It helps. It can’t solve everything, but it helps.”
Five minutes later, she’s asleep.