The brakes on the CTA bus screeched as Maggie's stop came up, just as they did every day, year after year. The late spring day had turned dark and cold as brisk winds whipped through the trees sending a chill down her back. Maggie grabbed her coat and tightened its collar around her neck as she walked the four blocks to her home. It was Friday; the start of the weekend, but Maggie had no plans. This weekend would come and go as they always do, and she would be all alone. Her face was expressionless as she dragged her way back home. Each step she took seemed like her last.
Maggie looked pale, worn out and beaten. Her once long and wavy cinnamon-red colored hair that used to tumble down her shoulders and onto her chest, was now tied up in a loose knot upon her head. The once vibrant twenty-five-year old required all she had to make it through another day at work. Wearing no makeup and dressed in a long, drab-colored skirt and sandals, she could almost be mistaken as a bag lady picking up cans along the curb.
When she reached her home, the old wooden porch gave out a slight creak as she stepped up onto it. A quick fumble with her keys and she entered her home.
"Hello Winston. How was your day today?"
A large tabby cat greeted her at the front door, rubbing his face along her ankles.
Inside her home the blinds were pulled down halfway, giving the house a semi-dark Goth like appearance; a cross between twilight and dusk. A stack of
Cosmopolitan
magazines was spewed out across the coffee table, pushing several empty Chinese take out boxes to one side. A lone fish swam endless circles in an aquarium next to an end table. The clock on the VCR forever flashed twelve-pm as a few skirts were hanging on various doorknobs, while some shirts hung from the door jambs. A stack of dirty dishes over ran the kitchen counter. Between the overflowing laundry baskets and Winston's litter box, the house had an odor, a combination somewhere between a men's locker room and a bottle of ammonia.
"What a day Winston, I'm really glad to be home."
Winston arched his back and rolled over trying to nudge a belly scratch from Maggie.
Maggie fell back into the couch exhausted and stroked Winston's belly, except for a ticking clock on the wall, the sound of his purrs filled the otherwise, silent home. Maggie was alone with nothing but her thoughts and her fears.
As she sat down on her couch her mind began to race, generating thoughts of things that happened and things that were yet to be. Suddenly, Maggie dropped her head into her lap and started to softly cry.
"Oh kitty, why did he have to die? Why? Please tell me why he had to leave me?"
The more her mind raced; the depression she had been battling with these last few months took on a new strength beating her up using her own thoughts. As she sat in silence, alone in the fog of her mind, the internal dialogue she had been fighting to keep under control all this time begun to spew out.
"I'm so very alone! No one wants me. No one loves me. I wish I was dead. I wish I had never been born."
More and more of her internal thinking came to life adding more fuel to her depressed mood. Perhaps it was the weather, the gray skies and all, but her mood was growing darker as the minutes of the day melted into the infinite realm of time.
"Oh Winston, I'm so lonely."
Soon her crying intensified, sending rivers of tears down her cheeks and onto the couch. Grabbing a pillow, she hugged it with all her strength, as she pulled her knees up against her chest. She began to cry uncontrollably as she rocked back and forth. Maggie slowly started to lose her grip with reality, her mind a cocktail of negativity.
"Oh God, I'm losing it!" she cried out with such intensity that, Winston jumped down and hid under a chair.
Maggie started to cry hysterically. The very fabric of her being was being pulled apart till the threads that held her conscience to the logical world began to unravel. As her mind started to disconnect from reality, she began to fall into the abyss of deep depression.
She reached out for the phone lying on the coffee table, but her hands shook so violently, she couldn't pick it up. She made a second, then a third attempt, at last holding the phone in both hands. She tried to focus on the phone's display, but her eyes were having trouble focusing through her tears. Finally, she entered a number in the speed dial. The phone began to ring.
"Hello."
"Joyce…"
"Maggie is that you?"
"Joyce, I don't feel so good," she said trying to keep the phone to her ear.
"What's wrong honey?"
"I'm tired of being alone. I… I don't want to live anymore… Oh Christ, I miss him. I just want to die. Please make the hurt go away…"
"Maggie! You still there? Maggie, listen to me Maggie. Answer me Maggie!"
"Joyce, you've been a good friend."
Joyce could hear Maggie crying in the background and tried again to get her to talk.
"Maggie, listen to me. Did you take you meds today?"
"A few…"
"Maggie, I'll be over as fast as I can. Now you have got to promise me you won't hurt yourself. Do you promise me?"
Joyce heard no reply.
"Maggie, I'll be there as soon as I can. You just lay on the couch with Winston to keep him warm till I get there, okay? Maggie, if you don't promise me, I'll have to call the police, you don't want them to upset Winston do you? Promise me Maggie. I'll be right over."
"I promise…" Her voice grew softer.
Now Dale Earnhardt would have been proud as hell of Joyce as she made her way down Chicago's busy streets and over to Maggie's house. Pushing and at times exceeding the speed limit, running though yellow lights, time seemed to slow to a crawl as Joyce fought traffic. Her mind was racing. Did she make a mistake by not calling the police or EMS? Would she find Maggie in a bathtub of crimson-red water? Perhaps she would just tire and just fall asleep.
As Joyce pulled into Maggie's driveway, she could smell the heat from the brakes and hotness of the car's engine. Not stopping to shut the car's door, Joyce ran to the front of the house and she pushed the door open.
"Maggie! It's Joyce! Are you okay?"
She heard nothing but the tick-tock of the wall clock. She called out again, "Maggie!"
Then she saw her, lying on the couch, one hand outstretched on the carpet; several empty pill bottles were within reach.
"Oh no! Sweet Jesus no!"
Joyce checked and found a pulse, her breaths were slow and shallow, but she was still alive.
"The phone! God, where's the phone!" Joyce shouted in desperation, franticly scanning the area with her eyes searching for the telephone Maggie had used to call her.
"911 Operator. What's your emergency?"
"My friend! She's taken an overdose of pills! Oh God, please hurry!"
"Do you know what kind and how many?"
"They're ah, mostly antidepressants, some others, I don't know!"
"Are the bottles near by? Can you read them to me?"
"Molipaxin, Yentreve, and Alprazolam. They're all empty! Oh my God, you got to hurry!"
"The system has your address up, and I have dispatched both an EMS and EMT squad to that location. They're in route and should be there within a few minutes. Do you want me to stay on the line with you?"
"Just tell them to hurry. I'll be here."
With that, Joyce hung up the phone. She placed Maggie's head into her lap and stroked her long hair with her fingers. "It will be fine. It will be just fine. You will see. It's going to work out just fine. Oh Maggie, suicide is not the answer Maggie. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem."
Joyce looked out at the oak tree in Maggie's front yard, the tree was in bud, and she wondered if Maggie would get to see the oak bloom again next spring. In the silence of the room, Joyce could at last begin to hear sirens in the background, growing ever louder as each second ticked into history.
At last, the squads arrived and they began taking vitals on Maggie. "She still with us," one of the medics called out, "Dispatch, we have a twenty-five-year old white female, approximately one hundred twenty pounds, with a possible drug overdose."
Joyce heard cracking over the radio, "Start Ringers, D5W, transport as soon as possible."
"May I come with her?" she asked one of the paramedics.
"Okay, you can ride with us to Mount Sinai Medical Center."
As the squad rumbled though Chicago's streets, Maggie was still clinging to life drifting in and out of consciousness. Tubes, wires, and other medical equipment were attached to monitors. They beeped and chirped together amid the drone of the ambulance's sirens. And while none of this made any sense to Joyce, when the EMT tending to her called out, "Step on it Paul, Step on it! Faster buddy, gotta go!" Joyce instantly knew Maggie's was teetering on the knife-edge of life.
From the perspective of where Joyce was seated, she by chance looked up into the rear view mirror and for a second locked eyes with the driver. He could tell in her eyes the desperation and fear she felt. He pushed the accelerator to the floor, and the mighty Allison diesel responded in kind with the roar of a thousand caged tigers. The ambulance lurched forward with enough force Joyce had to grab the hand strap. The boost turbines fired up with an angry wail, jamming volumes of air and fuel into the engine. They screamed so loud that for several seconds, they drowned out the sound of the sirens.
"We need to get there in one piece, Paul!" the EMT called out from Maggie's side.
They had cut her shirt off and were attaching more wires and patches to her chest, connecting even more electronics to her. As both EMT worked on her, one reached over and pulled a red box from the side floor and opened it up.
"Charge to 500 joules."
The machine in the box let out a high-pitched 'ta-weeeeee,' and Joyce could see a display counting up. Several seconds ticked by, and a small red light blinked ready.
"Is she having a heart attack?" Joyce asked trying to be heard above the noise within the ambulance.
"No, but I like to be ready just in case."
As Joyce looked around within the ambulance time appeared to slow down. The voices from the radio and even the EMTs working on Maggie seemed to be talking as though they were a record being played at the wrong speed. Every movement appeared to be in slow motion.
