It isn’t easy to kidnap a man, let alone do it without raising your heart rate – which would likely cause me to die on the spot. You might think I’m exaggerating. I wish I were. My affliction is called Grave’s disease, and it causes my thyroid to produce so much excess hormone that all sorts of things can go wrong. Irregular heartbeat is one. Seizures are another. Don’t forget tremors and muscle weakness. Plus the goiter in my neck makes breathing hard. If I were to break into a run and a heart attack didn’t get me, I’d probably asphyxiate all the same.
Yep, Grave’s Disease is a killer. But then again, as some of you might know, it’s really not, not in the first world anyway – since there are ways to manage it medically: beta-blockers and anti-thyroid medicines, radioiodine therapy too. Only a lunatic would choose to pass up treatment. So maybe I am. Grave’s disease is also linked to irritability and paranoia, but I’ll take that over whatever mental disorders have been inflicted on you.
My wife doesn’t like it when I talk this way. It gets on her nerves – me and my theories – and so I try to keep quiet around her. Brenda and I have grown so distant recently, though the process started long ago. She doesn’t approve of my interests or my friends, and she certainly wouldn’t approve of my kidnapping plot. No, she really would not.
I’ve got sympathy for her, though I’m aware she hasn’t got much left for me. She didn’t bargain for this, an invalid husband. When she married me, I was a healthy man, my disease well controlled. We were doing all right, had good jobs, a bright future, plans to start a family. I remember clearly those days when Brenda was first pregnant: her lying on the examining table during her prenatal hospital visits, with ads for Briars ice cream and Heinz pickles playing on the screen overhead. That was how it all started, if you recall, those innocent ads.
Some of us might have missed the legislation behind them – I know I didn’t pay much attention back then – healthcare prices were soaring and the system was on the verge of collapse when advertisers stepped in to save it. And if there were a few protests about the ethics of it all, those voices shut up pretty fast when premiums went down by half. Honestly, it all seemed innocuous enough. Brenda and I used to sing along to the jingles as a distraction while awaiting the results of a test.
By the time we neared the delivery, I knew all the songs and slogans for Pampers and Gerber, plus a dozen more. I recall playing a game, in the hours I waited: I’d wander the halls and try to guess patients’ ailments according to what ads played beside them: weight loss and health club ads for cardiac patients, extravagant getaway packages for the terminally ill.
Did any of these suffering souls mind these displays? Maybe they lacked dignity, but so does the whole experience of being a patient. Who especially noticed or cared, while being stuck with needles and strapped into machines, what images floated on in the background? Now and again, the ads even offered useful ideas. Brenda was a huge fan of that pregnancy meal-delivery service – back then she hated cooking – and frankly, we’d felt grateful for the trouble it saved us, and even more grateful when Proctor and Gamble picked up our hospital tab.
The worst of it really started two months ago when our little girl, Lilly, got sick. It was an ordinary evening: I came home to find Brenda as I often find her when I return from work – I’m still able to work, though I’ve been moved from salesman to manager at the shop, so I can just sit over papers at my desk. Brenda was cooking in the kitchen, though the space was already filled with dishes she’d been preparing throughout the day. They were stacked on the table alongside the home-furnishing catalogues. We’d fought over these things so often I’d learned to say nothing, just like she’d learned to say nothing – most of the time – about the state of my declining health, or my meetings with Gary and the other members of my group.
I came up behind her and kissed her on the neck. She stiffened and turned. She was upset.
“Lilly’s sick.”
“Oh I’m sorry. Like a cold?”
“Worse than a cold, I think. She’s had a headache and chills all day. I’ll bring her to the doctor tomorrow.”
There was an air of defiance in the way Brenda said this, as if she was expecting me to object. I didn’t, though she wasn’t wrong about the thoughts running through my head. I didn’t want those doctors messing with my little girl.
“Is she in her room?”
“She’s sleeping,” Brenda said, clearly not wanting me to get near our daughter, frightened of what I might say. Often in my own home, I’m made to feel like a threat. It’s easy to forget Brenda and I were ever happy, but we were. Before Brenda gave birth, we were very happy.
It was a hard delivery, though, and Brenda was bedridden for a while and overwhelmed by postpartum depression. The doctors became concerned she wouldn’t be able to care for the baby, so they prescribed Brenda a special anti-depressant – newly innovated, they claimed, to stimulate a nesting response.
Five years later, Brenda is still shopping for ways to improve our home. She is powerless to stop, despite my sitting her down a hundred times to look over credit card bills or point out how many bassinettes, then blankets, and potholders, and throw-pillows, we already have stacked in the closets and in the storage units I’ve been obliged to rent simply to keep pace with her compulsion to feather our little abode. Before the drug was administered, Brenda had planned on returning to her work as a public defender, but afterward, the only occupation that interested her was scouring catalogues from West Elm, and Wayfair, and Bed Bath and Beyond.
I pushed the catalogues aside to make room to set the table. Of course Brenda stopped me from helping. She needs to do such things, can accept no household assistance, so I left her and tiptoed upstairs to Lilly’s bedroom.
Inside the room, Lilly was in bed watching something on her screen. I’ve tried to insist on screen-time rules, to limit her exposure to ads, but Brenda does nothing to enforce them and it’s a losing battle.
In the light of the screen, Lilly looked like a shiny doll. I stroked her hair.
“Mommy says you’re not feeling so hot.”
“I’m not,” she said in her small voice, even smaller that night. “My throat hurts. And my head.”
“Your body’s strong. You’ll fight it off, Tiger.”
“Mommy’s taking me to the doctor. For medicine.”
I tried not to reveal my concern. Brenda and I have made an effort not to dispute each other’s point of view in front of Lilly. “Well, it’s good she’s taking you, and we’ll see if it’s necessary, the medicine, I mean.”
“Mommy says you don’t trust medicine, that’s why you don’t use it.”
I kissed her on the forehead. “You should sleep. The best medicine is rest.”