“Do you want my jacket?”
I’m dazed, sitting in too-big hospital scrubs on a gurney. I have been in the ER for about twenty minutes, after a scary few weeks and a frustrating, unhelpful conversation with our local “Mental Health Urgent Care” that ended in them telling me there was nothing they could do for me.
There are a lot of dehumanizing parts of being in the ER for a mental health intervention. My room has a CCTV camera mounted behind glass in the corner. My door is always open, even when the doctor seeing me is talking to me about extremely personal questions. But the worst part, by far, is that they’ve taken my clothes and other personal items away from me. I’m in a pair of hospital scrubs, a clear signal to anyone walking past my open door that I’m here for a mental health intervention.
I don’t know if the room is cold or I’m having a stress response, but I can’t stop shaking.
The husband gives me his jacket and wraps his arms around me.
***
The husband has recently been diagnosed with autism.
It’s not the kind of thing you’d really notice about him unless you’ve played a board game and suggested house rules or had an argument with him about time management. I’ve done both (the worst fights we’ve ever had have been over board game rules), and wasn’t terribly surprised by his diagnosis.
He doesn’t know it, but I often see his autism as a kind of super-power.
Before that will make a ton of sense, you have to understand some things about my husband beyond the fact that he has autism. He has a warm and generous heart, often reacting to hard times in someone else’s life by asking “What can we do to help them?” He adores his family and loves telling stories about their oddities or speaking with tremendous pride in his younger sister. And, of course, he is thoughtful and kind to me.
Here’s why he’s my super-hero.
The husband is extremely logical. I nicknamed him my Vulcan years ago. Living with anxiety means that I’m always looking for what people mean beyond their words and actions. I read texts with the highest possible amount of brusqueness intended, even when it's not. I analyze all of my interactions to death and attribute emotions or motives that are usually not there. He’s also honest, sometimes brutally so. But I am learning that he never means harm, and that I can always trust him to help me assess a situation. He can focus intently on things for hours when I am frequently restless and jumping between eighteen projects at a time.
This isn’t to say that he’s perfect, or that his autism doesn’t have negative effects on our lives. He isn’t and it does, but I am grateful he is the person he is.
***
I pull on the husband’s jacket. It’s a warm, and a bright color in the dinginess of the building. I’ve told him a few times that I don’t want to be admitted here as an inpatient, but I also recognize that I’m not making great decisions right now and will listen to what he and the doctors recommend.
But when the mental health staff comes in to separate us and talk to us individually about what should happen to me, I start shaking all over again. Sitting in a hospital room with strange clothes and unknown outcomes and having him taken away from me is the worst moment of my life.
His jacket smells like him, though, and it helps.
When the mental health staff leaves to interview him, I wonder what he’ll say. I’ve been a mess for weeks, and I imagine that it might be nice to be rid of me for a week, if only to get his own sense of equilibrium back. Just a few hours earlier I had told him, in detail, what my suicide plan was. I wouldn’t hold it against him if he told me he wanted me to be admitted to the inpatient program.
The mental health staff drops him back off about half an hour later on their way to talk to the admitting doctor.
“What did you tell them?”
He reaches for my hand and my heart drops.
“That I thought inpatient would make you . . .” he stops, laughs. “Go crazy.”
And despite the hospital scrubs and the open door and the people watching us through the camera I start to laugh. And then to cry. And then to do both at once.
He turns me to look at him.
“Hey, you’re going to be okay. We’re going to get through this together.”
I hear all of the logic and love behind his words. Right now, I don't believe in myself. But I believe in him.
