Always Three Taps

[Sensitive content: mental health, suicide, self-harm]

Always three taps. Three taps on the bathroom mirror, always before 7:30 in the morning.

It was what she always did. It wasn’t really Ana that did it, it was her OCD. I’d suspected it long before she ever told me about it, but she shared it with me when I proposed to her after we’d been dating six months.

“Yes,” she said. “Of course, yes. But there’s something you have to know about me first.”

I could still recall her telling me about it, the whole “three-thing” as she referred to it. She was standing there in the moonlight in her pale blue and white sundress. Just Ana and me, on the deck of the sailing club, in the gentle breeze of the early summer. It seemed so long ago now.

It never really bothered me, at least, not most of the time. I was intentional about never letting it get me down. I knew she did her best to fight it and she’d tried everything. Medication, group therapy, individual therapy, exercise. She’d read enough books to fill the Great Library of Alexandria, or so it felt. But still it persisted. She couldn’t quite shake the three-thing.

Always three taps. Three taps on the bathroom mirror, always before 7:30 in the morning. If she didn’t do it, she said, something bad would happen that day. And it always did. You see, the problem was that she could create her own version of “bad” and so it was a self-fulfilling prediction, which only reinforced her obsession.

“You slept late this morning,” I remembered saying. “Past 7:30. But nothing bad happened today, did it?” I thought I was proving something to her.

“Oh yes it did,” she said. “I hit every red light on my drive to the office. I was almost late for my 10:30am meeting.”

“And?”

“Every red light! Don’t you see how unlikely that is?”

“But you made it to your meeting.”

“That’s not the point. It stressed me out. I’m sure the meeting didn’t go as well as it would have gone if I had just done it.”

And so it went. Whenever she missed her morning ritual, something inevitably went wrong, or so she concluded.

It never really caused us too many major problems, at least, not most of the time. But then came the day that it did. It was the day the doctor called us in about our daughter, Liv. It had been a routine test but something had come back as being abnormal. More tests followed and then a cancer diagnosis. It wasn’t the worst kind of cancer, although I guess all kinds are terrible for the family living with it. They said she had about an 80 percent chance of a full recovery and so we set about the treatment.

But Ana couldn’t let it go. Of course, the call from the doctor happened to come on a day when she had been late and hadn’t done her three taps. Three taps on the bathroom mirror before 7:30 in the morning. But it had been 8:00 in the morning that day and Ana blamed herself for what had happened to Liv.

“Ana, you know it’s not you. It’s your OCD. You’ve got to let it go,” I said, even though I knew that wasn’t helpful. We were sitting alone in the living room after we’d checked to see that Liv was sleeping soundly in her room.

There were tears streaming down Ana’s face. She wasn’t even trying to hide it and her breathing was coming in short, erratic bursts.

“It’s my fault. If I hadn’t overslept that day. If I had done my three taps, like I always do, this wouldn’t be happening.”

I took her in my arms and pressed my face into her long strawberry blonde hair.

“I love you,” I said. “It’s not your fault. Liv is going to get through this. You’ve got to stay strong to help her.”

I felt her body shaking as she descended into violent sobs and I felt the moisture of her tears wetting my shoulder. And so it went, most nights, for about six months.

She tried three different doctors, and three different medication changes.

“I just can’t shake it,” she told me. “I just can’t shake the feeling that it could have been different.”

So we went on existing rather than living, while I shuttled Liv back and forth to appointments by day, and consoled Ana by night. Liv made slow but steady progress and was able to return to school for her sophomore year. Her classmates were supportive and two of her closest friends even shaved their heads to match with her. She started laughing again and that made me happy. But strangely it had no effect at all on Ana.

It was October 3^rd when she called me in the middle of the day. It was a beautiful Fall day with a light breeze and bright sun. I remembered thinking how pretty the leaves looked on our trees as I backed out of the garage that morning.

“I need you to come home early,” she said. “Before you pick up Liv from school.”

“OK, what’s wrong?” I asked. It wasn’t like her to be quite so demanding.

“I just need you to come home early today, that’s all. I need to see you.”

“I’ve got client meetings scheduled this afternoon.”

“How many of them do you have?”

Coincidentally, I had three meetings scheduled. I called and canceled each of them.

“Something urgent has come up,” I said. They all dutifully said they understood. Each of them knew about Liv and it wasn’t the first time I’d canceled appointments at short notice.

“I’ll be praying for you,” said Mr. Harrison, who knew what it was like to lose a daughter.

I drove the fifteen minutes and thirty seconds that it took to get from my office to our house. I parked in the driveway and walked to the front door. It was unlocked, which was not at all like Ana.

“I’m home,” I called out. There was no reply. I walked into the kitchen but there was no sign of Ana.

“Honey,” I called again, and walked to our bedroom, then down the stairs to the den.

It was then that I finally saw her, lying asleep on the sofa. She looked peaceful, her chest rising and falling methodically.

And then I noticed the empty pill bottles stuffed into a bag on the coffee table. There were three of them. I grabbed the arm of the sofa with both hands, engulfed by a sudden feeling of dizziness.

“Ana!” I heard myself shouting but it seemed like I was watching it all unfold from outside, in slow motion.

I don’t recall dialing 911 but they told me later that I did. I know I accompanied Ana in the ambulance and I know I was sitting holding her hand while they worked furiously on her body. I was still holding her hand three days later when they turned off the machine.

She did leave a note, which I guess was a mercy in itself. I’ve read it hundreds of times now and I can actually recite it without assistance.

I’m really sorry to do this to you. I wanted you to find me, not Liv. I know this will be hard for you both but it’s the only way I can help now. I know you don’t believe me – in a lot of ways I can’t believe it myself - but somehow I just know that I caused all this and only I can put it right now. Please don’t hate me for doing this. You know I’ve tried. I need to do this for Liv now. She’s always been my baby girl and I want so much for her to get well. Please take care of her for me. I’ll be watching over you all from heaven and I’ll be wishing I could be there for you both, especially on the really important days, like when she graduates high school, and college, and when she gets married. But if I don’t do this, she might never get those days. So I have to do it.

Please trust me.

I know you and Liv are both going to do great things. I love you so much. I’m so sorry.

Yours in love forever,

Ana

****

Liv is grown now and has a daughter of her own, Kya. She’s only ten years old but she’s already catching up to Liv in height. They both have Ana’s thick hair and they both wear it in a high pony tail on most days.

“Go and brush it,” I hear Liv saying, and she sounds exactly like Ana used to sound. If I close my eyes, I can see Ana and it feels like she’s right there with us.

On Tuesdays I take Kya to dance class and then to music lessons. I look forward to Tuesday every week. It’s a special time. When I swing by to pick up Kya, Liv always comes out to wave us off. She says the same thing every week, but I like it just the same.

“Love you, Dad,” she says. “Drive safely, ok? Take good care of her.”

“I’ll be careful,” I say. “Love you, Liv!”

Then she always leans in and taps on my steering wheel. She does it every week. I count the taps each time and it’s always the same.

Always three taps on the steering wheel. Always three taps.