This Is My Brain on Recovery

WILL

I’ve only been at the hospital for five minutes when my mom makes her entrance. I, and probably everyone in the ER, can hear the moment she walks through the door. Her voice cuts through all the background noise like a hot knife through butter. Sometimes I think she missed her calling as the female James Earl Jones.

“Hello, I am Dr. Ogonna, ob-gyn. I would like to know what room my son, William Domenici, is in. Sixteen-year-old male here for syncope. Oh, hello, Eric.”

If I strain, I can hear a male voice mumbling something about lab tests. I barely wince when the nurse putting in my IV knots a tourniquet around my arm, but I have to steel my expression when my thin privacy curtain parts and my mom strides in.

“Oh, thanks be to God, William.” She comes immediately to my side and whispers a silent prayer before touching her forehead against mine.

As it always does, my mom’s presence fills the enclosed space. It’s not that she’s that big of a woman, although she’s not tiny, either; it’s that she carries so much kinetic energy within her that everyone else seems slower and less significant.

She glances up at the monitor and nods. “I was so afraid when that man called. What was his name? Venkatram? He said something about you losing consciousness.” The questions keep coming before I even have time to answer. “Tell me what happened. Were you inside or outside? Was it the heat? Have you been drinking two liters a day like I told you? Did you have a seizure?”

The entire ambulance ride, I tried to get my story straight. I wasn’t planning on lying, exactly—I’m a journalist. I’ll give my mom the facts and make her fill things in. So I tell her that I’d had a long day at work, and then I’d gone straight over to Priya’s to do some video-editing work. The girls had gotten into an argument, and I’d started to feel light-headed. I was probably hyperventilating as I tried to resolve the conflict. And then I fainted.

“These girls.” My mother emphasizes “girls” the same way she stresses words like “problematic” and “supposed.” “One of them is the daughter of the A-Plus owner?”

“Yes. Jocelyn.” I make sure to keep my voice as neutral as possible. I know how to keep my cards close to my chest when I need to.

“Eiiyaah!” my mother murmurs, shaking her head. “That is unfortunate. It will take some time for you to recover in their eyes, no?”

I know without asking that my mother doesn’t mean physical recovery. The last time I had a panic attack this bad was years ago, at an Ogonna family picnic. We’d set up in the biggest gazebo in our municipal park, and you could probably hear us from the town over. Nigerians are not known for throwing quiet parties.

Just after the grilling had started, while most of my cousins and I were playing soccer, a police car pulled up in the parking lot closest to our gazebo. A blond-haired officer sauntered over, and he eventually had a “friendly” conversation with my uncle Akunna about local noise ordinances that led to some not-so-friendly shouting, and my aforementioned panic attack.

Except my mother never called it a panic attack. Instead, she made a big fuss about my being dehydrated and scolded my cousins for not having Gatorade before playing. She whisked me away to our car so I could sit in air-conditioning and “rehydrate,” at which point she made sure I knew that under no circumstances was I to mention to any of my cousins, aunties, or uncles that I was seeing Dr. Rifkin, or that I had been diagnosed with anxiety.

“People from Nigeria, they are not as understanding about these issues as people here,” she explained. I remember thinking it strange that she never used the phrase “mental illness” when she talked to me. “They consider anxiety and depression American diseases.”

I’m pretty sure that Mr. Wu would agree with my uncle Akunna, so maybe my mom’s right. Maybe I’ll look like damaged goods in his eyes, the way his son does. The way his daughter would if he could see what is right in front of him.

The curtains slide open with a metal screech, and Dr. Warren, the doctor who did my initial exam, walks in. “Ah, hello, Eric. Thank you for taking care of my son,” my mother says graciously.

“Of course. I’m happy to say that there wasn’t much for me to do. His labs and EKG look great. Everything seems to have stabilized.”

“Does that mean I can go home?”

Dr. Warren turns to speak directly to me for the first time since he walked in. “Pretty soon. I just wanted to ask you a few more questions to figure out what kind of follow-up I recommend, then I’m going to print out all your discharge instructions.”

I nod, and Dr. Warren’s eyes flicker over to my mother briefly before coming back to me. “So, Will, when I took your history you mentioned that you’d had something like this happen before, and that it usually presents after some external stress, with some hyperventilation, visual changes, accelerated heart rate. That sounds a lot like a panic attack to me.”

I lick my lips and reflexively look at my mom, who gives me a single nod.

“Yeah, that’s about right,” I say.

“Have you ever seen any school counselors about anxiety? Or your pediatrician?”

“I see a psychologist over at the college.”

“Oh, good, I’ll make sure that gets documented in your chart.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see my mom stiffen the tiniest bit. Not enough that Dr. Warren would notice. Just me. “As I’m sure you know, panic attacks are uncomfortable but rarely dangerous. Have you ever been on any medications for anxiety?”

“No. For the past few years I’ve been okay with breathing techniques, mindfulness, that kind of stuff.” I shift around in the hospital gurney. My whole body aches. No specific muscle group. Just overall, like someone’s wrung me out from head to toe. “I have a heart-rate tracker on my watch. That helps. I haven’t had a… an episode in a while.”

“He’s been through CBT, if that’s what you’re asking,” my mother tells Dr. Warren. “William gets a full evaluation every year and it’s never been determined that medications are necessary.”

My mom’s crafting her story the same way I did. It isn’t quite true that no one’s ever told me I should take meds. Dr. Rifkin’s always been clear in telling me that I could take meds, if I wanted to: “The choice to start medications is a very individual one. If you’re struggling I can make a recommendation, but every drug ever made has potential side effects. In the end it’s your choice.”

Here’s the rub: If you leave the choice up to an anxious and avoidant person, there’s a high probability that they’re going to come up with reasons not to decide. So I did nothing, by default.

I don’t tell this to Dr. Warren, who’s nodding at my mother, all smiles, as if relieved that he can go ahead and write my discharge. “Well, nice to see you again, Rose, and wonderful to meet you, William. There’s still some paperwork for you to do, so it will be a minute. The nurses tell me you have some friends out in the waiting room. Would you like me to let them in?”

I glance over at my mom, who must have called in my buddies. She just shrugs. “Sure, you can send them in.” Maybe Manny and Tim brought me some new comics to distract me. Or actually, it’s probably Javier. He’s not fazed as much by medical stuff, so he wouldn’t mind coming to a hospital to see me.

But when my curtain opens, it’s not the guys. It’s Jocelyn and Priya.

All of a sudden, I’m acutely aware of how thin the hospital gown I’m wearing is, how it doesn’t quite close up completely in the back. My monitor goes off, shrill and insistent, and when I glance over I can see the spikes in my tracing getting tighter and tighter. My mom notices, too, her eyes narrowing as she flickers back to look at Jocelyn and Priya.

“Hey, you feeling better?” Priya’s the first to say something. Jocelyn’s hanging back, her gaze tracking everywhere except to me.

“Yeah, they’re going to spring me soon. Thanks for coming,” I say weakly. “Sorry to ruin everyone’s evening.”

That gets Jocelyn to look at me. “Don’t you dare apologize,” she says, almost angrily. “It’s not your fault.” She looks miserable, and I know whose fault she thinks it is.

“Okay, it’s no one’s fault except my brain’s, then,” I counter.

Priya barks a laugh. “You could say that about every disaster in the history of the world. It wasn’t my fault, it was my brain’s!”

“If the shoe fits.” I shrug.