Susannah Cahalan - Brain on Fire - My Month of Madness

By the time we arrived at their brownstone in Brooklyn Heights, I was too exhausted to fight anymore. I had nothing left, which wasn’t surprising since I hadn’t eaten or slept in a week. When we got inside, Giselle and my father headed to the kitchen. They began to cook my favorite meal, penne arrabiata, as I sat on the couch in the living room, staring dazedly at my father’s busts of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. My father’s house is an ode to American wars, filled with antiques and memorabilia spanning the Revolutionary War to World War II. He even calls one anteroom that separates the den from the living room the “war room.” There are muskets from the Civil War; M1 Garands that were used from World War I to Vietnam; Colt revolvers from the 1800s; a Revolutionary War sword and a soldier’s hat from the same era. Before the divorce, he’d kept most of these possessions in our Summit house’s family room, which scared off many boyfriends during my high school years.

They set the long harvest table and brought over a heaping, pulsating dish of reds, greens, and yellows—tomato, basil, cheese, and penne—in a blue Le Creuset pot. Pancetta glistened unnaturally in the blood-red tomato sauce. I stifled the urge to vomit or throw the penne against the wall and just watched as my dad and Giselle ate the pasta in silence.

After dinner, I went into the kitchen to get some water. Giselle was cleaning. She walked past me to put the dishes in the sink, and as she moved, I heard her say, “You’re a spoiled brat.” The words hung in the air around me, like pockets of smoke. I didn’t see her mouth move.

“What did you say to me?”

“Nothing,” she said, looking surprised.

My father waited for me in his den in a patterned antique rocking chair that had belonged to his aunt. I opted for silence about what I believed Giselle had called me.

“Stay here with me tonight?” I asked him instead, sitting on the leather couch by his side. The TV was off, so we made small talk, our conversation punctuated by uneasy blocks of silence. “I’m scared of being alone.”

“Of course,” he said.

Then: “Leave me alone! Get out of the room.”

And then, all over again: “I’m sorry. Will you please stay?”

This went on for several hours, moving from hysterics to accusations and then back to apologies. Beyond that, I can’t remember much at all of that night, which might be my body’s way of trying to preserve some self-respect. No one wants to think of herself as a monster. My father doesn’t remember what happened either, although it’s more likely that he has consciously chosen to forget. I do know that I said something terrible to him—something so awful that it made my father cry, the first time I had ever seen him cry in my life. But instead of generating sympathy, this just added to my twisted need for power. I ordered him to leave the room and go back upstairs to his bedroom.

A few moments later, a sickening blast and boom came from upstairs. POUND POUND POUND . I chose to ignore it.

I walked into his war room; picked up the Revolutionary War sword; removed it from its sheath, entranced by the blade; and then returned it. Then I heard Giselle’s voice. She was pleading with my father. “Please don’t hurt me,” she begged. “Don’t hurt me because of her.”

Again, the imaginary POUND POUND POUND.

I returned to the den and sat back down on the leather couch. A painting depicting the drafting of the Declaration of Independence bustled with activity. Over the fireplace, a large oil painting of a railroad scene came to life, the train emitting tufts of coal-covered smog. The bust of Lincoln seemed to follow me with its sunken eyes. The dollhouse that my father made for me when I was a child was haunted.

POUND POUND POUND.

It was the sound of fists hitting a hard object, like a skull. I could see it all clearly. He was beating her because he was upset with me.

POUND POUND POUND.

I needed to find an exit. There had to be some way out. I clawed at the apartment door frantically but found it locked from the outside. Is he keeping me in here to kill me next? I hurled myself against the door, ignoring the shooting pains in my right shoulder. I must get out. Let me out.

“Let me out! Let me out! Someone help me!” I screamed, banging my fists against the door. I heard my father’s heavy footsteps on the stairs above me. I ran. Where? Bathroom. I locked the door behind me and tried to move the heavy eight-foot armoire against the door to barricade myself in. The window. It overlooked a two-story drop; I figured I could survive the fall.

“Susannah, are you okay? Please open the door.”

Yes, I could probably have made the jump. But then I caught sight of a small Buddha that Giselle kept on the bathroom counter. It smiled at me. I smiled back. Everything would be all right.

Early the next morning, my mom and Allen arrived to pick me up. When I saw the Subaru, I bolted from my father’s house.

“They kidnapped me. They held me against my will. Bad things are happening there. Drive,” I commanded.

My father had already relayed the story of what had occurred overnight. After I had said those terrible things and insisted that he leave, he went upstairs to a room where he could monitor me through thin walls without my knowing. He tried to stay awake but nodded off. As soon as he heard me trying to break free, he ran downstairs to find me barricaded in the bathroom. It had taken him over an hour to coax me out and onto the couch, where he sat with me until dawn. He had called my mother, and they agreed that I needed to be admitted to the hospital. But they remained adamant about one thing: I would not be placed in a psychiatric ward.

Allen drove me straight back to Dr. Bailey’s office as I rested in the backseat, once again resigned to my fate.

“Her EEG was completely normal,” Bailey protested, looking through my file. “MRI normal, exam normal, blood work normal. It’s all normal.”

“Well, she’s not normal,” my mom snapped as I sat there, quiet and polite with my hands folded in my lap. She and Allen had made a pact that they would not leave Dr. Bailey’s office without getting me admitted to a hospital.

“Let me put this as delicately as possible,” the doctor said. “She’s drinking too much, and she’s exhibiting the classic signs of alcohol withdrawal.” The symptoms matched: anxiety, depression, fatigue, irritability, mood swings, nightmares, headache, insomnia, loss of appetite, nausea or vomiting, confusion, hallucinations, and seizures. “I know it’s hard to hear about your own daughter. But, really, there’s nothing more I can say. She just has to take the medication and knock off the partying,” he said and winked conspiratorially at me.

“Alcohol withdrawal?” My mother brandished a piece of redlined paper that she had prepared. “These are her symptoms: seizures, insomnia, paranoia, and it’s all just getting worse. I haven’t seen her drink in over a week. She needs to be hospitalized, now. Not tomorrow. Now.”

He looked at me and back at her. He had no doubt he was right but knew better than to argue. “I’ll make some calls and see what I can do. But I have to repeat: my feeling on this is that it’s a reaction to excessive alcohol consumption.”

He left the office for a brief moment, returning with news. “NYU has a twenty-four-hour EEG monitoring floor. Would you be happy with that?”

“Yes,” my mom said.

“They have a hospital bed ready this moment. I don’t know how long it will be open, so I would advise you to go to NYU immediately.”