01: The Eye of the Storm

October 25, 2011

We were in the eye of the storm. It was still, silent, even peaceful for the first time in three days.

It was almost four in the morning. Gabriela hadn’t slept more than three hours in the last 72 and consequently neither had I.

Now she stood in the entry way with just her silhouette lit.  She was wearing the same jeans and tee she had put on three days earlier, she was barefoot, and her beautiful long brown hair was uncombed. I sat silently watching my only child knowing I had no idea how to help her.

My eyes felt like sandpaper and they burned like hell when I closed them for a moment to rest. My roommate Susan walked behind Gabriela and spoke softly as though Gabriela were listening.

“You’ve done everything you can. You have to not help her, it has to get worse, or they won’t take her.” Susan walked up the stairs to set the house alarm, lock her bedroom door, and try to get a couple hours’ sleep.

I felt my head nod in agreement. I knew she was right, I just didn’t know if I would be able to do it. Not help my daughter? I had been the only one helping her for the last 10 years. What kind of test was this…. Was it possible for me to watch as my daughter came completely unraveled?

I cried silently as I watched her from behind standing motionless in the entry. I examined her from top to bottom and noticed she was unaware that she had started her period; blood was saturating her jeans like a spilled glass of wine on a table cloth.

Then she dropped her head into her hands and, in such deep heaves, she cried from somewhere deep inside.

Her cry was hopeless. Not that sudden shocked high-pitched cry from pain, or the slow build up from the loss of a boyfriend … This was a hopeless wail that I had never heard from Gabriela before.

I went to her as she turned, and hugged her and softly asked if she would go with me to the hospital; but she just repeated that she loved me very much, over and over.

“Let’s go to the hospital,” I asked repeatedly. Gabriela cried, hugged, and professed her love to me.

The combined smell of blood, unwashed hair and body, and her breath was almost overwhelming but I held her and stroked her hair despite it, repeating “Let’s go to the hospital, please let me help you.”

Finally, crying softly into my shoulder, she agreed to go with me to the hospital. I moved quickly.  Getting her a clean dress and underwear with a napkin, I slipped her out of her clothes and into the dress. She was ready to go.

I reached for the front door, cradling her with one arm to gently guide her toward the car. I could see by the way she tilted her head up, as if she were listening to something or someone, that it was starting over again. Oh God I thought, just let me get her into the car, I have to get her to the car.

She turned toward me suddenly, eyes wide and terrified, “Can we go to a church? I need to go to a church!”

“There is a chapel at the hospital,” I calmly assured her.

“Oh,” she stared up to the sky. “No, it has to be a church!” She grabbed my arm.

I was willing to agree to anything as I situated her in the car seat and fastened the seat-belt…. “Yes, we will stop on the way.”

It was a thirty minute drive to the hospital even with no traffic. Gabriela was very involved in something of her own and oblivious to everything around her. She sat comfortably next to me; smiling occasionally as though she were reassuring me that everything would be just fine.

She answered her cell phone; I glanced over knowing that it hadn’t rung. There was no one on the other side of her budding conversation. What started with a simple chat about exorcism and the need for a church and Holy water quickly snowballed into a rapid-fire exchange with four individuals, each vying for Gabriela’s attention…she was being instructed on which church, what faith, and the location of the church where the exorcism was being held.

Intruding in her conversation first was a woman that wanted to stop the exorcism.  Gabriela told her, “Karen! Karen, is that you? Just STOP! Leave us alone!”

Then the next person, a young classmate from high school, Mark, she reassured, “Yes, I love you too.”

She called three of the four people in the conversation by name; they were all real people who had all really been in her life except the last person, who was a young dead boy she had spent the past month extensively researching. He was one year behind Gabriela in high school and was Mark’s younger brother.

Gabriela had built a very involved story of a relationship she had had with this young boy who died of a drug overdose. In actuality she had never met him but was now completely convinced that she and she alone could have stopped his sad drug abuse, which had resulted in his death.… They were “soul mates,” she would tell me. Now he was the green slime that was attached to her body trying to have sex with her.…he was the reason she needed the exorcism, the reason for the church and the Holy water.

I checked on her out of the corner of my eye as I drove. She was self-contained.

Gabriela’s conversation was non-stop with all four of the individuals. There were a few times that she checked in with me to make sure I was focused on getting to the Holy water, and advising me on the church.

As long as she stayed involved in her conversation, I knew I would be able to get her to the hospital with no disruptions.

While I listened to her conversations I remember thinking: Wow! This is my life? This is the way some crazy homeless people act! My daughter could be standing on a street corner having this conversation with nobody and she would fit right in.

It was a startling thought: My beautiful, articulate 22 year old daughter was acting like a crazy homeless person!