I of course had to tell Maya and Robert about the new diagnosis. Robert came to see me after he took the boys to school; I can’t tell y’all how awesome he’s been about doing my job for me. Ok, the drug test part wasn’t great, but it’s not like I wasn’t expecting it.
I told him I had news from my therapist.
“What is it?,” Robert asked.
“Maybe I should tell you and Maya together,” I suggested. “I think I can get up.” Having someone to talk to sometimes helps me snap out of the depression I feel in the morning, and Robert was having that effect on me. “Can I just grab coffee and a quick swim to wake up?”
“Sure. Let’s meet in Maya’s office at 12.”
“Cool,” I said. Robert left, I got up, threw on a tshirt and a pair of board shorts and headed to the kitchen in search of coffee. Belen had just made herself a pot of what the Mexicans call café de olla, which is sweet and has cinnamon in it. It’s pretty bomb, although I think it’s supposed to be an afternoon pick-me-up than first thing in the morning coffee.
“Buenos dias,” she said. “I’m glad you’re awake. I worry when you don’t get up with the boys.”
“I’m ok,” I said. “It started out as a bad morning, but I’m feeling better. Some coffee and a swim and I’ll be fine.” She poured me cup of the cinnamon coffee in one of the little cups she keeps just for that kind of coffee and sat down at the table with me.
“Have you ever heard of PTSD?,” I asked her.
“PTSD?”
“Post traumatic stress disorder. Like the soldiers got in Vietnam.”
“Oh…yes, I have. I have a sobrina – a niece – who has it.”
“You do??”
“Si. She went out one night, got borracha, went home with some man, and he took advantage of her.” I could tell she disapproved of the getting borracha and going home with a stranger. “She started having nightmares a little later and all kinds of mental problems. She went to a therapist and then a psychiatrist, has been on all kinds of medication…and that was two years ago. She’s still not good. Oh…,” she then said, “wait…is that what you have? From that woman accusing you?”
“Si,” I said.
“Women,” Belen said, “don’t like being told no. This one, even less than many others.”
“Meemaw always said my looks would get me in trouble one day,” I said, letting Belen pour me a second cup of coffee. “I just didn’t think it would be trouble this big.”
“We will just have to help you get you over this PTSD. You have a lot of support – your friends like Señor Keaton, and Miss Joyce, and all of us here. My brother, he’s a lot less supportive of my niece. He keeps telling her it is all her fault. I tell him he should have more sympathy for her, but you know what Mexican men are like.”
I kinda do. I play on a baseball team with a bunch of them. They’re all what Keaton calls machista to one degree or another. It’s not hard to imagine Chuy reacting that way if he had a daughter who got into a situation like that.
“Go swim,” Belen then said. “I’ll make you a Mexican breakfast for after.” That usually means eggs, beans and tortillas, with plenty of hot sauce. Turns out there’s more to breakfast than just biscuits, eggs and bacon.
So I took my swim, showered, had breakfast, and then it was time to report to Maya’s office. She and Robert were there, along with Jean-François and Ethan. The last two got up to leave when I came in, which was good. I mean, I like them both, but this was maybe a little too personal to spring on them all all at once.
“Hey, Hunter,” Ethan said as he passed me in the door. “Maya’s got some good news for you. I hope you’re as excited about it was we are.”
That sounded interesting, although that wasn’t why I was there.
“Come in, sit down,” Maya said from behind her desk. She’s still got that huge mirror propped up against he wall in her office, and I still can’t keep from looking at myself in it. I shaved when I showered, so I looked a lot less like shit than I’ve taken to looking. That was a good feeling. It’s not that I’ve given up on personal hygiene on mornings when I’m depressed, but I have gotten sloppy about shaving, and everyone on the show thinks I look better clean-shaven.
“So Robert says you have news about your condition?”
“Yes, my therapist said I have PTSD.”
“From what happened over the summer?,” Maya asked.
I nodded.
“Damn that woman,” Maya said, with real anger in her voice. “We should never have let her near this house. At least we were able to keep the scandal off social media. Even if you were exonerated” I think she saw me flinch “but that’s not going to solve anything.” She put her hands on the desk and took a deep sigh. It was nice to know she cared about me. “The question is how are we going to get you back to firing on all cylinders. We have a great new segment planned for you, and we want you to be able to devote yourself to it. You’re going to work with the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes…”
“The Dodgers farm team?,” I asked, excited. The Quakes are the Dodgers A-ball team. I reckoned I’d feel at home with them, whatever they were going to have me do with them.
“There are more Rancho Cucamonga Quakes than the Dodgers farm team?,” asked Robert, a little sarcastically.
“You’re going to do a series of segments about what it’s like playing in the minor leagues. We hoped you would like it.”
“And you’ll get to wear a shirt,” Robert added.
“So now we have to get you back together. Does your therapist have any ideas?”
“From what he’s said, there’s no real cure beyond psychotherapy. I don’t want medication anyway.”
“Maybe you need to see him more than just once a week?,” Maya asked. “I was seeing my therapist twice a week when I was going through my…thing, and I think it was a big help.”
“I don’t know if the insurance covers….,” I began.
Maya waved her hand. “We can afford to pay for a session a week at your therapist’s out of the show’s budget. The show needs you. And we’re awfully fond of you, too, Hunter. The boys adore you, and where would Gechitzik be without you looking out for him?”
As if on cue, our beagle shepherd put in an appearance through the door of Maya’s office, which I reckon we’d forgotten to close. He’s not usually allowed in there, but he was probably looking for me. It was about the time of day when we went for our walk.
I gotta admit I was excited about working with a real baseball team again. Like y’all know, I loved playing A-ball – my season in Hickory was some of the best times I’ve had in my whole life – and, while it wouldn’t be playing, and now I’m a little older than most A-ball players, it would put me back into pro ball. But, as they laid out their plans for the segment, it sounded like it would be a lot of work. Rancho Cucamonga isn’t exactly super far from San Marino, but it did means that I was going to be going back and forth a couple times a week, as well as taking care of the boys and the dog, and staying in shape since, let’s face it, summer was coming up and people were gonna expect to see me with my shirt off.
Maya worked it out so that I could see Dr. Oliver twice a week, without my needing to pay for anything. It really was a good thing that I came clean about what was going on with me, although, yeah, I’ll admit it, I only admitted it when I pretty much had to. It wasn’t easy, but it was a big load off my chest when I did it.
Dr. Oliver was pleased that I’d be seeing him twice a week. He also talked me into seeing a psychiatrist for a couple of visits for a second opinion. I was pretty sure that Dr. Oliver had nailed it with the PTSD diagnosis, but he said he wanted to be sure, and, since the insurance covered it…
So I went to see this dude, Dr. Jung (yeah…that really was his name.) He charges $375 for 45 minutes, and I told him my whole story all over again. Y’all know how I liked Dr. Oliver pretty much from the start? Ok, it was the exact opposite with this psychiatrist dude. I didn’t like him, and I didn’t get the feeling that he liked or cared about me. I don’t like being treated like a dumb jock who’s even dumber because he’s from the South, and that’s pretty much how he treated me.
He said he would need to see me twice, and, at the end of the second visit, told me what I already knew from Dr. Oliver: I was suffering from PTSD as a result of my sexual harassment experiences last summer. He added that my brand of PTSD was “with delayed expression”, and that he could give me medication that might help.
I know I’ve been saying that I didn’t want medication all through this, but I was also getting impatient, and, since I was already at the psychiatrist’s, I reckoned I might as well hear him out. “Is it going to have side effects?,” I asked.
“Every medication has side effects,” Dr. Jung said, sounding like a jerkoff. “I can also give you something non-addictive to help you fall asleep.”
“Non-addictive?,” I asked. I thought all sleeping pills were shit you could get hooked on.
He said something that sounded like “Tarzanizone,” like that was supposed to mean something to me. I took both prescription slips when he handed them to me, although I was already wondering if a sleeping pill was such a good idea for someone who couldn’t get up in the mornings. Even if he was also having trouble falling asleep at night.
“I’m giving you a 30-day supply. I’d like to see you again after that to see how much the medication is helping you.”
I shrugged and made a follow-up appointment, even if I was hoping I wouldn’t have to see the lameass psychiatrist again.
The first person I talked to about the medication wasn’t Dr. Oliver, it was Travis, since he’s taken way more “psych meds” (like he calls them) than anyone I know.
“He gave you Zoloft,” Travis said when I showed him the prescription when he came over to find out what the psychiatrist said and use the batting cage. “That’s an SSRI.”
“Huh?”
“Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor,” he said (I had to write that down after he said it the second time.) “Like Prozac. You’ve probably heard of that.”
I heard of Prozac, sure. But I didn’t know anything about it.
“I did some research,” Travis then said. “Zoloft’s supposed to help with what you have, but I should warn you, it’s also got some pretty major side effects.”
“Have you taken it?”
“Yes.”
“Did it help you?”
“Nope. But that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t help you. There’s practically no science to all these psych meds. They just keep trying new combinations until something finally clicks. It’s a very frustrating process. One reason why I ended up on the bridge that night.”
That wasn’t exactly encouraging.
“What are the side effects?,” I asked.
“Zoloft is infamous for killing your sex drive.”
“So much for that,” I said. I didn’t crumple up the prescription, but I didn’t exactly run to CVS to have it filled. “What about the other one? The one that sounds like Tarzan?”
“It’s an anti-depressant that makes you sleepy. It’s often used as a sleeping pill. I’ve taken it, both in and out of the loony bin. You need something to knock you out in the loony bin since it’s lights out at ten.”
“I guess I can have that one filled,” I said.
“Don’t let me talk you out of the Zoloft if the doctor thinks it’ll help.”
“I thought he was a jerkoff and I really don’t want something messing around with my brain chemistry. Oh, sorry,” I added, afraid that I’d insulted Travis.
“No worries,” he said. “I think they prescribe psych meds too often anyway, but, according to my research, there seems to be some solid evidence that Zoloft and Paxil – that’s another SSRI and it’ll mess with your sex drive too – can help with some PTSD symptoms.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I wouldn’t have known where to start researching it myself.”
“There is a thing called Google.”
“Yeah, man…remember how that got me listings for massage therapists?”
Travis laughed and asked me to slow the pitching machine down some. He’s an awesome dude, but not everyone can hit 90 mph fastballs. And then we talked about hitting, which came as a relief after all that dealing with my mental health.
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