Journals of Eleanor Druse, The (Digital Picture Book) by Eleanor Druse

chimes and workplace stress.
    The pills had other effects. When Tiffany or Jennifer or Nancy’s family came to visit, I felt strangely tentative and uncertain, but without the mild anxiety that I expected would attend such a state—like being shy without feeling self-conscious, if such a thing is possible. This was only one paradox in a mental state that seemed constructed of such paradoxes. When the medication reached peak concentration, I felt unwilling or unable to act or speak but also satisfied with my condition—not happy or joyful, by any means, but also not concerned, as if thinking or taking action were not quite worth the trouble, because actions might lead to worry or regret.
    My inner mental state seemed to be packaged in Styrofoam peanuts, protected from the buffets and accidents of the outside world. It was quite the opposite of the unitary state of enlightenment that I’d aspired to my whole life, a oneness with nature and the entire universe. Instead, the meds induced a kind of accentuated duality, one in which my insular inner self was protected from the slings and arrows of outraged fortune by neurochemical bubble wrap. The predominant sensation was that I was calm, if not at peace, and that the safest thing to do was always nothing, or at least as little as possible. Less risk, and an increased chance of maintaining the satisfactory status quo.
    As an academic, I felt the pills would be ideal for C students. They would remove the vanity, discontent, and restlessness that motivates a C student to try for a B or an A. They would also remove the anxiety of not trying hard enough and incurring a D or F. Thus a C was satisfactory, the aim and end state of the perfect medication.
    For several days, I sat in my own drug-induced private Idaho and realized that I had only to take a pill each day and I could remain forever in this limbo state of not exactly happy and not exactly sad. Another troublesome, loopy, time-consuming old biddy of a patient neutralized and rendered as contented as an oyster in her shell, while my insurance company went on making regular payments.

INSTANT KARMA
    Soon my days were all the same, muddy and indistinct, each one flowing into the next. I was repeatedly warned to stay on my medication and to cooperate with the physicians or my insurance might not cover the entire cost of my care. I decided to take the pills long enough to obtain an honorable discharge from Boston General.
    Very early one morning, I heard Tiffany and Jennifer giggling behind the curtain about Dr. Stegman. For just a second (probably a side effect of the accursed medication), I was stumped. I knew that name, Stegman, but I couldn’t remember how or why. Then a visceral nausea erupted in the vicinity of my second chakra (abdomen and lower back), as if the flow there had been suddenly blocked. His name alone was a positive energy sink, a drain on my élan vital, before the rest of me could even remember who he was.
    As I pieced together snatches of the nurses’ chatter, I learned that they had arrived earlier than usual with extra toiletries to give Nancy a special bath and to wash and fix her hair, with a nice blue ribbon. I heard them whispering about a yeast infection in the poor woman’s mouth. “Oral thrush,” Jennifer called it. And they made each other take turns swabbing the infection with something called methylene blue. They must have assumed I was senile or deaf or well medicated and couldn’t hear them whispering, “Ew, gross,” or “Yuck,” or “I can’t look at it anymore, you do it.” The chorus continued through the debriding of the woman’s pressure sores and the insertion of a brand new catheter tube and feeding tube and fresh clean cotton wrist restraints.
    Toward the end of it all, I heard Stegman’s name again and learned the reason for this early morning overhaul of Nancy Conlan and her appurtenances. Stegman was presenting Nancy to an army of physicians in something called Grand