Page 2 of A Taste of Grace

Revelation

Two Days Later

“She’s up.” A soft country voice across the room spoke as I opened my eyes and turned toward it.

Two women wearing aqua hospital scrubs, one slim and the other thick, huddled in the corner with medical charts in their hands.

When I groaned, they turned toward me. The slim one smiled as bright as the light that shone from the rectangular windows behind them.

The thick one exited and quietly shut the door.

Oh no.

Panic filled me as the steady beeps of the machines interrupted my thoughts. This wasn’t heaven or even hell. I was still very much alive and in a hospital bed, hooked up to complicated-looking machines.

I raised my hand to massage my throbbing temple but couldn’t. Like a caged animal, I was tethered to the bed rails on either side of me.

“Uh!” I shouted and jerked the loose restraints that held my wrists firm. “Cut me loose!”

My voice rang above the room’s machines. The friendly-looking woman rushed to me and patted my right leg.

“Calm down, Gracelyn. You’re safe.” She repeated her pats and assuring words until my body stilled.

“It’s Grace.” I closed my eyes and took several breaths, inhaling the sharp smell of disinfectant.

Mama always kept a clean house .

“Where am I?”

“In the psych ward.” She spoke the harsh words like a lullaby, sweet and gentle like Mama.

My eyes panned the room as I struggled to control my shallow breathing. This wasn’t part of my plan.

The nurse turned around and picked up a clipboard, her pen held high.

“I know you have a lot of questions. The doctor will be in soon to answer them and to discuss your treatment plan.”

“May I go to the bathroom?” I honed in on the closed door to my left.

“We have a catheter in you now...” Her downturned eyes displayed pity.

I lay my head back and sighed, replaying the day of my mother’s funeral in my head. When was that? Yesterday? The day before?

“What day is it?” My eyes sought a calendar but found no indicator of the date.

“The ninth.”

The day after my birthday.

“How am I here?”

The heart monitor beat louder as my pulse raced. The nurse followed my eyes to the notification.

“My head hurts.”

I reached for the spot that throbbed at the back of my head but was stopped again by the restraints.

“Cut me loose.”

I wiggled and pulled the restraints hard before she rested her hand on my bare leg.

“It’s for your safety, dear.” She sat down in a chair next to my bed and stroked my hand. “You slipped backward off the Edmund Pettus Bridge and hit your head on the concrete. A guy saw you on the side of the road and called the paramedics. They brought you to us.”

“Hold up. Slipped? What guy?” I shut my eyes tightly, trying to recall what happened but could only remember peering over the vast water.

“He wants to remain anonymous, but you’re a very blessed woman. You have guardian angels looking out for you.” She leaned over and almost whispered her words.

“Let me outta here.”

“I need you to relax.”

“But…”

I wanted to argue but didn’t have the energy to process everything fully. Maybe it was the drugs.

“Rest, Grace. You need your strength.” The nurse touched my arm and smiled.

“I don’t even know your name,” I mumbled as a sudden wave of heaviness overtook me.

“It’s Patricia.”

I closed my eyes and held my breath, unable to quell the dam of tears that now flooded my cheeks. Patricia turned around and pulled several tissues from a box on my bedside table, wiping my face with care.

“What’s wrong, Grace?”

“Patricia was my mother’s name. I miss her so much.”

As the seventy-two-hour psychiatric hold in the Montgomery County hospital neared, Uncle Keith showed up as my one approved visitor.

He pulled one of the heavy chairs beside my bed and squeezed my hand, which no longer required restraints.

I squeezed it back, adding a faint smile despite being embarrassed that he had to see me in such a fragile mental state.

“What do you want to do, Grace?” Uncle Keith’s low, steady voice soothed me more than I expected.

I pressed several buttons on my remote to position my body upright in the bed and then shifted my back to get more comfortable. I gave him my full attention. For the first time, I realized how much his thick lips resembled my mother’s.

“The right answer is to get better, but the real answer is to be out of my misery.”

Unlike me, Uncle Keith didn’t have a poker face. His eyes bulged like he’d seen a ghost. I lifted my hands and shook my head.

“Not like that. I no longer want to die,” I said the words softly, still not comfortable admitting out loud that I had wanted to harm myself. “It’s just that I don’t know how to live without Mama or my job. I thought death would take my loneliness away.”

To my surprise, Uncle Keith leaned over the railing and received both of my hands in his. His touch triggered something in me, almost making me cry.

“Pain goes away.”

I shrugged.

“I guess.”

“I know. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, Grace. You would have left behind people who wanted more time with you.”

I chuckled, wanting to believe Uncle Keith but unable to trust his words. No one else cared whether I lived or died.

“Nobody cares about me. You’re here because of your loyalty to Mama, not me.”

“That’s not true.” Uncle Keith’s raised voice made me look him in the eye.

He lowered his head before speaking.

“I asked the hospital staff what I could and could not say to you. We agree it’s important for me to be truthful, so here goes.” Uncle Keith took a big breath. “Could I work with you to get better?”

Warmth touched my soul as I contemplated that question. As a single woman, I wasn’t used to having help, although I told myself that I desired it.

“I think so, but I don’t know what that means.”

“It means that I would have your back…like I should have had it all those years you took care of Pat. You did a good job.” Uncle Keith pursed his lips and smiled with his mouth closed.

My lip quivered as that unfamiliar yet recurring warmth overtook me again. Before Uncle Keith, only the hospice workers had said that to me.

For years, I cared for and wondered if I made the right choices with my mother as she battled a debilitating and rare neurological disorder.

I often had to make quick decisions and focus on minimizing her pain.

It wasn’t easy to do, often from a distance, as I managed a large portfolio of work projects that required more attention than I had to give them.

At one point, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to maintain the demands of my job and caregiving responsibilities.

Only at the end of my mother’s life, when paramedics wheeled her out of the home my father left her, did I feel that I’d done right by her.

“Thank you. That means a lot.”

“You were a good steward, so I want to be one too. I have a plan if you’re serious about wanting to live.”

I nodded.

Over the past few days, my parents came to me in my dreams. Mama kept telling me to go on, and Daddy walked me down the aisle in an intimate wedding.

Although I didn’t usually remember my dreams, those lingered.

I cried each time I woke up. Since I didn’t want to forget their words, I wrote them in a small journal Patricia gave me.

“I think there’s more for me to do in my lifetime. As my nurse said, guardian angels surround me. You’re one of them.”

Uncle Keith blushed.

“You’ve been given a second chance, young lady. You have a lotta work to do on earth.”

Uncle Keith was right. I don’t know why I thought suicide was a good idea when I hated pain so much.

“I agree. I hope God gives me a family and kids so I can be a good mother like Mama.”

With my admission, I felt like a kid. That innocence was refreshing and scary.

Uncle Keith smiled and clapped his hands.

“Then we have a plan. We’re moving you to a comprehensive psychiatric hospital. It’s time for you to remember how valuable and precious you are.”

A surge of hope tingled in my belly.

“I’d like that a lot.”

He pulled paperwork out of his bag.

“Let’s get you transferred to this program.”

Uncle Keith enrolled me in Whetworth Heights, an affordable private facility in the Atlanta suburbs. I spent the Christmas holidays and New Year there quietly celebrating what should have been the happiest time of year with strangers who were nicer than most of my family members.

My treatment plan involved stabilizing my mental health and treating me with medication, therapy, or a combination of both. The facility’s sunny yellow walls and natural light forced me not to hide the increasing joy that filled my heart as the days went by.

“You are worthy, valued, and more than enough.” I read these affirmations to myself daily from my journal, often in the mirror of the bathroom in my single-occupancy room.

At the end of the first week, I felt so good that I practically skipped around the facility, greeting other patients and checking out books from the onsite library. Even my wardrobe reflected my enhanced mood as I wore several of Mama’s colorful statement earrings around Whetworth.

My first Friday afternoon, Dr. Westmoreland, the facility’s in-house psychiatrist, scheduled a one-on-one session with me.

“You look great, Grace.” She smiled widely with her silver braces and nude-colored lips as she tapped her pen on her clipboard and flipped through several pages.

“Thanks. I feel a lot better than I did coming in here.” I smiled sheepishly, happy to admit I had made progress despite my initial embarrassment at being so depressed.

“Are you ready to be Dr. Gracelyn Toliver again?”

Over the past few weeks, I had been given a reprieve from the pressures of my former life. As I was taught during sessions, however, I acknowledged the grief I felt about work but didn’t allow the feeling of failure to hover like fog.

“Yes. The new and improved version of her.”

Dr. Westmoreland nodded then smiled.

“I like that.”