Free Sweet Tea: A Novel by Wendy Lynn Decker Page B

. . restrain . . . I understood now, and knew it was time for me to take my place on the proverbial seesaw. For CeCe’s sake.
    “Luke, go tend to CeCe,” I ordered.
    He was glad to go. He nearly ran out of the room.
    “You only have to stay here for a little while, Mama,” I said. “Just until the doctor finds the right medicine for you. To help you remember things again.”
    Mama slouched down in the bed and lifted the blankets to her neck. “You’re all ganging up on me. What did I do to deserve this? You want to hurt me. Why do you want to hurt me?” She asked like a child - wide-eyed and confused.
    “Nobody wants to hurt you, Mama. We want to help you,” I told her.
    Footsteps came up behind me and I turned to see a doctor enter the room.
    “How are we doing, Cassandra?” he said to Mama. “I’m Dr. Foster. I’m here to help you.”
    She rolled over and faced the wall. The doctor pulled a seat up to her bed and faced her. Luke walked back into the room with CeCe shuffling hesitantly behind him. A red streak from the brush slap ran down her left cheek.
    “These must be your children,” he said, and smiled.
    Mama continued to face the wall. “Yes. They’ve come to take me home.”
    Dr. Foster wrote on his notepad. “Well, that’s nice you have a loving family. And they’ll be able to take you home real soon. We just need to find the right medication for you first.”
    Mama sat up and pushed the tray of food away from the bed. The silver plate cover fell to the floor. I flinched.
    “I don’t need medicine,” she shouted. “I need to go home.”
    The doctor reached over to console her. She jerked forward and bit his hand. He yanked it away. Red-faced, he yelled, “Nurse!”
    “I’ll hurt you before I let you hurt me!” Mama said. “CeCe, Livia . . . ”
    The nurse rushed into the room with an orderly at her side. The orderly pushed Mama’s shoulders down and restrained her while the nurse gave her a shot. By this time, each of us could hear each other stifling our cries.
    Mama’s eyes rolled back in her head, and within a minute she was asleep. Dr. Foster told us to follow him to his office while he wrapped his hand with a gauze bandage the nurse gave him.
    We sat down again and listened to a bunch of long words that ran into one another. Instead of listening and trying to understand the doctor, I started spelling the words in my mind. After he finished, he stared at us and there was an awkward silence. I don’t know what CeCe was thinking, but I wished the doctor from the TV show was there. He had made things much easier to understand.
    I figured he must have realized we were lost in his medical montage and began speaking again, slower and more direct this time. “Mental illness is a very complex disease. I’m not certain of my diagnosis. It’s difficult to determine whether your mother is manic-depressive, schizoaffective, or a paranoid schizophrenic. She’s not cooperating. I’ll need your help to learn about the time and frequency of her episodes.”
    CeCe and I stared at one another. Although I’d heard these terms before, I never expected the doctor to ask us to help him figure out how to help Mama. He was the doctor. Why was he asking us?
    CeCe recovered faster than I did. She stood up and pointed her finger at him.
    “Sir, could you please explain to us in our language what you’re doing to help our mother?”
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “The bottom line is our first priority is to bring your mother out of the psychotic state she’s in.”
    “What exactly is psychotic ?” CeCe asked.
    Although I knew the answer after watching the TV show, I stayed quiet. CeCe needed to hear it from the doctor. I guess I did, too. Then there would be no way of denying it.
    “It’s when a patient loses touch with reality. Your mother doesn’t process things the way you and I do. She may seem as if she does from time to time, but it’ll be short-lived. And it will be only a matter of