Healing Stones (42 page)

He wanted to laugh. He was afraid he'd cry. He did neither and simply sank back against the love seat.

“Now—are you ready to go to work?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Then the Lord be with you.”

“And also with you.”

“Let us pray.”

Sully's young wife, Lynn, had been so tranquil during her pregnancy. The anticipation of having a baby wrapped her in an almost-euphoria that at times glowed on her
skin, at others sent her into reveries even he couldn't intrude on. Some evenings he watched her sleep, probably more deeply than the baby herself, and felt boyishly left out of her dreams.

He couldn't wait for Hannah Lynn Crisp to make her entrance— so that he, too, could be a part of her life. When she was born— peach-colored and fuzzy-headed and warm—he stood, first on one foot, then the other, while Lynn breast-fed her so he could hold her and croon her to sleep. He squeaked the floorboards as he paced endlessly to give Lynn a break from the colicky crying. As for diapers, he prided himself on being able to change even a poop-up-the-back in less than five minutes. It was all joy.

Lynn, however, didn't seem to share the pleasure. She wasn't sleeping. She wasn't eating. And the pregnant glow was replaced by a pallor that finally forced Sully to call her doctor when she refused to.

“This sounds like postpartum depression,” the obstetrician told him, as briskly as if he were diagnosing tonsillitis. “Bring her in and we'll get her on medication until those hormones right themselves again.”

He'd reassured Sully that her condition was common and easily treated. Maybe she'd benefit from some good therapy in case there were issues about being a new mother, but the medication would ease the symptoms so she could enjoy the baby and be able to look at things clearly. Sully collected himself in relief, packed Hannah into her car seat, and bundled Lynn into her coat. On the way to the doctor's office, he gave her an upbeat rendition of her condition and the ease with which it was going to disappear. She seemed less than convinced, but Sully knew she was just too tired to resist.

Sully had the prescription filled and bought the formula and fixed the first bottles, because on medication Lynn didn't want to breast-feed. He constantly reassured her that she was still a wonderful mother, and didn't mention it when he noticed little Hannah cried less and thrived on her new diet. Slowly, Lynn began to sleep and eat and even laugh. Hannah again became the light in her eyes. Three weeks after she started medication, Lynn told Sully she was ready to stop taking the pills.

“What does the doctor say?” he asked.

“I haven't told the doctor.” Lynn directed her very-brown eyes to a tiny speck under Hannah's miniature fingernail. “Belinda says I don't need them.”

Sully experienced a chill he later pinned down as a premonition.

“Who in the Sam Hill is Belinda?” he said.

Lynn's voice immediately rose in pitch, and her cheeks blotched the way they did anytime she and Sully headed into uncharted territory. “She's a Christian counselor I'm seeing. I met her at Bible study—she's licensed and everything.” She pulled her hand through her hair and let it fall, defiantly, to her shoulders.

“You're seeing a counselor? Since when?”

“Since yesterday. The doctor said I could benefit from therapy.”

“But you're doing fine on the medication.”

“That's just it, Sully.”

Hannah whimpered in her arms, and Lynn hurried to the swing to enthrone her there.

“That's just what?”

Lynn put her finger to her lips and shot him a look. He lowered his voice.

“What did this Belinda say about your medication?”

“Her name is Belinda Cox.” Lynn's words were like a picket fence between them.

“You didn't even tell me about this.”

“I wanted to meet with her before I told you.”

“But I don't understand why you felt the need—”

“I'm feeling guilty, okay?” She put her hand over her mouth and breathed into it.

“Baby—guilty about what?”

“About not breast-feeding Hannah. Belinda said doctors give you medication to get you to stop calling them.”

“What?”

“Sully—shhh!” She turned to Hannah, who dozed nicely to the rock of the swing.

“She says what I really need is a deeper faith in God, that He can guide me to be the kind of mother I want to be.” Lynn's voice caught, and Sully watched in dismay as her face twisted against tears. “This is a lot harder than I thought it would be—being Hannah's mom. I don't want to mess it up.”

“Oh, baby.” Sully went for her, his arms already curved in the shape of her, but she backed against the wall.

“I think Belinda's right,” she said. “I haven't gone to God with any of this, and that's why it all built up in me and I felt like I couldn't do it.”

Sully dropped his arms to his sides. “Is this Belinda Cox a physician?”

“No—but she has the deepest faith of anyone I ever met. She knows truth, Sully.”

“Lynn. Dr. West is a Christian. I'm a theology student—you don't think I have faith? Both of us know what this medication is doing for you—it doesn't mean you can't still go to God.”

“As long as I'm depending on something other than God, He isn't going to help me.”

The statement sounded so rehearsed, Sully had to look twice to make sure she wasn't reading it from a tract.

“Is that what
you
think?” he said. “Or is that what this Belinda person told you to think?”

He didn't mean for it to come out like a swipe at her ability to decide for herself. But the instant he said it he knew that was how she took it, and a door slammed in his mind—the sound of Lynn shutting him out.

They reached an uneasy compromise. She would ask the doctor how to come off the medication. The leaflet that came with the pills— the one he'd read the night they got them—warned the patient not to stop taking them abruptly. And if she showed signs of depression again, they agreed they would revisit the issue. He didn't offer to make the call himself, and he forced himself to trust her and not phone Dr. West on the sly. But he couldn't avoid watching her, scrutinizing every morsel of food she didn't eat, every sigh in the night.

The change was obvious within days. She woke up crying—fretted when Hannah wouldn't take the breast again—hurled herself on the bed when Hannah spit up. He begged her to at least call the doctor.

“This is just withdrawal,” she told him tearfully. “I'm making progress with Belinda. God is here.”

Sully prayed to God himself—and he had no sense of peace that any of this was right. The day he came home to find Lynn rocking a screaming Hannah, tears rolling down her own face, he broke his vow and called Dr. West from his study upstairs.

As soon as Sully told him what Lynn was doing, he said, “Do whatever you have to do to get those pills into her, Sullivan. And bring her in here first thing tomorrow morning.”

Sully stopped. He realized there was now a plate of cold chicken and potato salad in front of him. Food always appeared as if by angel delivery at Porphyria's. He nibbled at a wing, poked his fork into the salad.

“Now I'm scrutinizing what you're not eating,” Porphyria said. “Take a break and get that in you. You need sustenance for the rest of this.”

Sully abandoned the wing to the plate and smeared his hands on his jeans. “The rest of this” stretched before him like a dark endless road, lit only by red taillights. He would rather swallow that chicken bone whole than go down it. But there was no road behind him to retreat on. He was stuck here, where he could only sink down—or he could move ahead into pain he wasn't sure he could endure.

He must
be a sadist to be in the business of therapy. How many times had he coaxed clients to press on down similar paths, reassuring them the demons wouldn't get them, when those same demons had been threatening them for years? He could see Demi cringing in terror halfway down her road, Zach Archer snarling behind her, and no light before her. And he had left her there alone.

“Don't you do it,” Porphyria said.

Sully snapped his face toward her. “Do what?”

“What you're doing—trying to find a bunny trail to go down so you don't have to face this.”

“I think I can do the rest on my own,” Sully said.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“What does that mean?”

“I never took you for a coward, Sullivan Crisp.”

“I've been a coward for the past thirteen years.”

“And that brow-beating you're doing on yourself isn't working either. Come on, my friend. You know what you have to do. Rest. Eat. Then we'll go on.”

He stared down at his hands, twitching in his lap. “I don't know if I can do it without going over the edge. I told you about the panic attack.”

“Did you go over the edge then?”

“Nearly. You want to know what's ironic?”

“Mm?”

“The man that talked me down was the husband of the woman I'm working with—the man who won't take her back.”

He let his voice fade as Porphyria shook her head.

“Bunny trail,” Sully said.

“And you don't need it.” She grew still. “It takes courage to go on with an experience like that behind you. You're always afraid your psyche will assault itself again.”

Sully swallowed hard.

“You know the minute you emerge from that place of terror that you have to learn to live differently.” She leaned in. “You have to learn to be your own friend and confidant and comforter. It takes courage to believe you can be.” She sat back again. “Now—either eat your lunch or start moving through. You got no other choices. But I will tell you this.”

He looked at her, and he knew his face begged her to tell him something that would take this cup from him.

“You cannot be the man you are, the man I know, and believe that God is going to let you drop off the ledge when you're facing the truth—His truth, Sully. Do you think for a minute that
I'm
going to let it happen?” She gave a marvelous grunt. “Who did you learn from, son?”

“The best,” Sully said.

And so he stepped forward, back to May 6, 1995.

CHAPTER THIRTY - FIVE

S
ully had made a point of coming home at breaks between classes to check on Lynn. Usually she was in the rocking chair holding Hannah. Dishes were piled, crusty, in the sink. Laundry erupted from the basket and spilled out onto the floor. The refrigerator refused to produce food when the last of it was gone. Sully was sure she sat in that chair with the baby all day. Whenever he came into the house he heard her whispering to their child—until she knew he was there, and then she shut herself down.

That evening in early May, Sully hurried home after a late class. A torrential spring rain had left lakes in the streets, and he fishtailed twice between Vanderbilt and their rental house in east Nashville. Whether the storm kept her from hearing him, Sully never knew, but he was able to slip into the kitchen and listen from the doorway. He could only catch a few words between Hannah's cries.

“Remember how . . . Mama loved you . . . if I can't, Hannah . . . always remember . . .”

Sully blew into the living room. Lynn clutched the baby to her neck as they both sobbed. His wife's eyes were so swollen, her voice so raw, he knew she'd been at it since he'd left that morning.

Sully went straight to her and pulled Hannah—hot, moist, and smelling of urine—from her startled arms. He picked up a half-empty bottle from the coffee table and put it in her mouth. Her sobs quieted as she gulped at it.

Lynn's did not. “Give her to me, Sully,” she said.

“No. I want you to focus on me for a minute—please.”

Sully propped Hannah up with pillows and the bottle on the couch and went to his knees in front of Lynn.

“You promised we would revisit this medication thing if I saw signs of depression,” he said. He grabbed her hands so she couldn't use them to hoist herself out of the chair. “I'm seeing it, baby, and it's scaring me.”

“I don't want to depend on pills.”

“It's only temporary. This happens to a lot of women—it isn't your fault.”

“It is—it's my sin.”

She tried to wriggle past him. Sully pressed her back by the shoulders.

“Lynn—stop this. It's clinical depression. You have to take the medication until your hormones—”

“Don't, Sully—don't get between me and God.” Her face was scarlet, her eyes stormy and unfocused. “I have to repent. I have to rebuild my faith.”

Again she tried to break free, but Sully held on, with his hands, with his eyes.

“That's Belinda talking, Lynn, and she's wrong. I know you think she's your friend . . .”

“She
is
my friend! She loves me—she understands me—and nobody else does!”

Sully went cold. Hannah coughed and let out a scream, and Lynn squirmed away from him and snatched the baby into her arms.

“I can't listen to you when you talk like this, Sullivan!” she screamed at him. “Belinda says I can't let you change my mind.”

“You don't think I understand you?” He had to shout to be heard over her hysteria, over the baby screaming. “I'm watching you disappear right before my eyes, Lynn.”

“I won't disappear! She says I won't disappear. I just have to believe.”

“Believe
me
. You have to take the medication—and we'll get you some real help.”

“She's helping me.”

“Let me help you.”

“You can't help me, Sully. She says you can't help me, and I have to listen to her.”

“No, you do not!”

“Stop!”

Hannah rose to a new level of screaming. Lynn pulled her tiny face into her chest and ran with her into the kitchen.