Blue

As soon as I crossed the border into Virginia on I-85, I pulled into the Welcome Center, indicated so by the white-on-blue sign instead of the usual white-on-green signs of the Interstates. I parked facing the highway, watching the cars and trucks whiz by in the dusk, no doubt on their way to somewhere. Lucky bastards. I was on my way to…Nowhere Land for nobody.

I was down to the bare bones of my possessions. In the trunk I had three days-worth of clothes (I didn’t know for what season, as they were packed in a hurry), my laptop, my tablet, and all the necessary charging implements. I don’t know why. It was out of habit, I guess. I wasn’t planning to write anything down. That part of my life was over, as was just about every other part.

The one thing I hadn’t brought was one of Angela’s pistols. I knew I should have, but for some reason, I didn’t. I had been threatening to shoot myself in the head and running away seemed like the only other viable option. Suicide would devastate my son even more than taking to the road. This was my alternative. My compromise. At least, for now. There were plenty of high bridges on the road.

Suicide jumpers who’ve survived always say they regret their choice on the way down.

Once I was safe in Virginia, where my wife Angela couldn’t have me involuntarily committed, I called her to tell her I was okay. I was just going to go away for a while and see if I could find out who I really was.

No, that was a lie. I was running away from who I was. Run, runner!

I had been planning to hang up the phone after that and turn it off so I couldn’t be traced, but Angela kept talking, and my innate politeness wouldn’t let me disconnect the phone on her. I owed her at least that much for putting up with me all these years.

“Do you have your medications?” she asked.

“No.”

“Do you have your CPAP machine?”

“No.”

“Just what are you planning to do?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Just drive around. Maybe go south.” What I didn’t tell her was that I was planning to skirt North Carolina so there’d be no way for her to stop me.

“So you don’t know where you’re going?” I realized that she was interrogating me, cop-style, probably because she is a cop. I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t. It was all the more reason to terminate the call and be on my way.

“No. But I’ll be back before your trip to England. I promise.” The trip had been in the works for months.

“If you stop taking your meds, you’re going to have a psychotic episode,” she said without a hint of panic or persuasion. Her statement was totally a matter-of-fact, like she had told me the distance between the earth and the moon.

The conversation lasted fifty minutes. I kept trying to ease her off the phone by pointing out several times that she was at work, and she should be working. She said she wasn’t. She was doing this, and this was trying to talk me off the metaphorical ledge. She was using her cop powers of mesmerization to reason with the unreasonable, and it was working, goddamnit. I conceded point after point, knowing in the back of my mind that I could have a psychotic episode, and if I had one behind the wheel, I could kill myself, which wouldn’t be a big deal, but there’d also be innocent people who might be unlucky enough to be sharing the road with me at the time. It would be better to crash the car into well-anchored object with my seat belt off. However, that could lead to a protracted and painful death. I kept that method in my back pocket.

She won. She always wins.