Escape to Malibu: Part 12

As the real time, day-to-day hellish nightmare unfolded, it turned out that I was not to get back home for five weeks.

To this day I am not sure Bernie fully appreciates the fatal damage he instigatd to the marriage during those weeks. It is immaterial now. The children understand, & it is they who count. They hold the future in their hands. The ambulance pulled into the emergency entrance of Emesis where we were greeted by Dr. Highny. I called her some unflattering things including fat ass. As we learned in psych nursing, my "lid was off my id" & I was saying exactly what I thought without the veneer of courtesy or civilized manners.

My freedom was forcibly being taken away & this superwoman was in cahoots with my now ex-husband. Bluebeard Bernie. What inflamed me about the whole scenario was that these two people, along with my own sweet self, held & still do hold public trust in the roles we trained ourselves to fulfill to protect mothers & children from abuse; he as a teacher, she a pediatrician, & I a pediatric nurse.

Yet the very course of action they chose to pursue in their professional opinions, led to incalculable rage, anger, sorrow, & mental & physical torment, both for the mother & the children. They intervened & severed one of the most basic & primal & sacred of all bonds, that of nursing mother & infant, with a misplaced & misguided faith in "modern day" psychiatric practice which still employs medieval forms of manipulation & abuse in "therapy" such as locked rooms for isolation & 4-point leather restraints, pills & major tranquilizers which are routinely injected with no regard for the individual's thought or wishes.

This is what happened to me. My individual identity & free agency were disregarded & suspended by others who thought they "knew better" & who became drunk with their own God-forsaken power trips. The Vietnam training; the Army man came to the fore in Bernie. The ball-crushing he-she came out in my former colleague & pediatrician. They joined forces & me, who I was, to them became reduced to a malfunctoning maternal unit which could be fixed by the right formula of psychiatric drugs, isolation, humiliation, degradation, & meetings with yet another sold-out feminist non-young-bearing bitch in the medical profession named Dr. Heifer.

I had a brief encounter along the way to this semi-permanent team of truant medical people with a Dr. Badweather, a dark, stout, hirsute man who first attempted to assault me & batter me with a tranquilizing hypo, only to back off when I clearly stated that I was an R.N., knew my rights, & would sue him for assault & battery if he touched me.

I caught his coldly curious gaze in the room on the 3rd floor wing, the psych floor of Emesis, & asked him who he thought he was, God or something? to be interfering in a marital dispute. And he did realize he was messing with a registered nurse who would not hesitate to sue him for assault & battery should he decide to contaminate her God-given breast milk supply with drugs?

He turned away, singed by the truth of the matter & withdrew into the corridor to huddle with my husband. I was in my same ill-chosen, longing-for-spring clothes, ready to throw the mattress at the next person who came in to mess with me. My body, as worn-out as it admittedly was, is a temple.

A battle raged on within & without. I wanted, craved, needed sleep desperately, but could not in such a dangerous & precarious position. Every time I closed my eyes I saw a swirling pink tornado & an ugly, witch-like woman gleefully leering at me, tormenting me. I was panic-stricken.

And without, the military strategist I had erroneously married was plotting the next move. He walked in the room & said in a falsely, wolf-like cajoling voice, "Honey we are giving you two choices about where to be right now; one is MacLean's & the other East Forest Lodge."

Well now, any self-respecting 60s child knows James Taylor did his time at MacLean. I had gone to school in Boston & was well acquainted with what went on at MacLean! They had decided I was material for the funny farm. They didn't UNDERSTAND.

I needed beaucoup DOMESTIC help to alleviate my sleep deprivation, NOT psychotherapy. They were way off the mark. A live-in mother's helper would have fit the bill. Someone to help make & shop for meals, do laundry, play with Joshua, clean-up spills, bring Adelaide to my bed where I longed to stay & feed her.

My breasts were filling. These people were wasting my time.

But wait, what was this East Forest Lodge? The name sounded like a quiet retreat, a place where I could get some undisturbed sleep. And my body ached for sleep, yearned for sleep like a lost lover.

The enemy surrounded me. I wanted to loose my spirit again & fly out the window into the blue sky, beyond the fluffy clouds back to my little home that wasn't too crowded now. Back to my darling, beloved Adelaide. My breasts leaked with unsuckled breast-milk. I was trapped like wild animal, a lioness or tigress. I despised my trainers.

"Well honey, East Forest Lodge or MacLean? Going home is out of the question right now."

"East Forest Lodge", I said brokenly.

"But I must stop by the house to feed Adelaide, my boobs are killing me", I begged with tears in my eyes.

"Sure, sure", they all nodded with a collective air of those who treat a very spoiled child. "We'll go by there", the ambulance attendant assured me in a saccharine-quality voice.

He had no intention of doing what he said. Personal integrity meant nothing to these "professionals". They were drunk on the wine of the lie they shared. They had woven their web & trapped their fly. The next & final step was spiritual death.

The following hours & days were devoted to obliterating my spirit, assassinating all that my character was at twenty-six. Every play attempted, every charade acted out, all anxiously observing me like a bug under a microscope. They needed to immobilize me & pin my butterfly wings to a board; make me their trophy, their prize possession.

They wanted a Stepford wife to replace the Charity Queen they could not predict or control. They nearly succeeded.

First they loaded me into the waiting ambulance, Dr. Badweather having washed his hands like Pilot, of the abominations to follow. We headed out Route 2 & missed the turn they should have taken to my home, to bring me back to my daughter to syphon off the painfully brimming milk I needed so much to unload.

"Hey what are you doing?" I asked. "Where are you taking me? You forgot to go to my house!" I started yelling. I was so angry I lifted up my blouse & squirted the attendant right in the face with my hot milk.

"Do you KNOW what you're doing?" I screamed. "I'm a BREAST-FEEDING MOTHER, where do you think you are TAKING me?" I was furious.

"We are going to East Forest Lodge" he responded simperingly, like he was addressing a five year old.

Actually five year olds deserve more respect than the pseudo talk certain unenlightened adults use when they address children, as if they were a subspecies or something.

"You TOLD me we could see Adelaide FIRST", I said desperately. We had already hit Rt. 128 & were headed toward Natick. Wild horses would not have changed the course of this ambulance. My now ex-husband sat like a sentinel near me in stony silence. He had taken me over & his henchmen were at his service.

I loathed him then. All the nagging doubts I'd ever quelled about this man coalesced. He was Hitler. He was Mussolini. He was the modern day embodiment of Blue Beard. I hated him.

My one hope was in the name of the destination, East Forest Lodge. I remember chanting as a cheerleader, "Beat East Forest" & the kinds of kids that town sprouted. They were strong, interesting, & spirited. I liked them & respected them. One of my old camp counselors had hailed from East Forest. Decent karma, I reckoned.

We drove into the graveled, wooded driveway. As we did, in water-color-bleeding fashion my mind dissolved back, way, way back in time & I saw a humble yet beautiful woman, great with child, riding a donkey.

I identified with her, the blessed mother, who bore her suffering, all her suffering with meekness & patience. She was accompanied by Joseph, her benevolent husband. There was a couple who endured untold, uncounted misery, for the great work they wre willing to perform during their earthly life; the work of raising the savior to manhood.

What special, blessed parents! But why this vision? Why now?