THEARPY and I DON’T WANT TO LIVE ANYMORE From A PLAY BY BARB AND CARL By Carlyle Brown
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THEARPY BARB, CARL and a PHYSICAL THEARPIST BARB (To the audience) There is something about love that is like survival. It’s a jungle full of feelings. Full of desires. Full of dangers. He loves me. I know that now. I didn’t know it before, but I know it now. He loves me. I can see it in his eyes the way he looks at me… or is that pity and a sense of duty I see in his eyes. After all, how could he love me, why would he love me…look at me. I’m broken, misshapen, deformed. No one understands me. No one wants to talk to me. When I speak I sound like a Jabberwocky, and my face look at my face; I’ve seen the mirror. It’s all twisted. And my nails, my poor once beautiful shiny nails are all split and broken. And now I’m “a dependent”. Yes, what an apt phrase that is, don’t you think, “a dependent”, nothing special, just one of many, “a dependent”. Someone who can’t speak for themselves. Someone who will have to have someone speak for them, be their voice, their spokesperson, their oral representative. It seems like almost anyone can do the job and just about everyone thinks they can do it and so they go on and on about what you mean, and what you are saying and how you really feel…EVEN THOUGH THEY CAN’T EVEN FREAKING TALK TO YOU! CAN’T EVEN UNDERSTAND A WORD YOU’RE SAYING! Or not saying. Can’t understand a word you’re not saying. Listen to me. Listen to what I have to say to you. Don’t let what happened to me happen to you. If you see the signs, droopy face, arm weakness, speech difficulty, don’t wait, call 911. Time lost is brain loss. Your brain cells will die by the hundreds of thousands and then you’ll be cripple, alone, a dependent… CARL Sorry Honey, I can’t understand what you’re saying. Are you angry? BARB violently nods her head YES! CARL Are you angry with the therapist? BARB shakes her head NO CARL Are you angry with me? BARB No.
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CARL Are you angry with yourself? Barb thinks about that for a beat and shakes her head NO CARL Just angry with life? Is that it? BARB gives CARL a look CARL Yeah, I know. Me too. PHYSICAL THEARPIST Well, shall we get started? Ready to walk Barb? BARB No. PT No? CARL She doesn’t mean “No”. PT What do you mean? I just head her. She said, “no”. CARL It’s a default. PT A default? CARL A default. She can’t speak, but she knows what she wants to say, but when she says whatever it is she wants to say it comes out “No”. A consonant and a vowel. It’s easy to say, “No”.
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PT And how do you know that? CARL I’m her husband I know. PT But you’re not a health care professional, are you? CARL What do you mean by that? PT I mean you don’t necessarily really know. CARL And neither do you, unless you’re somehow clairvoyant. What is this all about. I give you some information that affects my wife’s care and you got an attitude about it. What did I do emasculate your authority or something? Look, let me tell you something… BARB No. CARL focuses on BARB and takes her in BARB Noooo. …Okay? CARL Okay. With some difficulty BARB stands up from her wheelchair ready to walk BARB Okay.
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CARL (To the PT) A vowel and a consonant, O-K. PT All right now Barb, shall we? Now put your quad cane out. Not too much. …Yes, that’s right. Now with your weak side kick your foot out and step, lift here at your knee and kick. Yes, that’s it. Just throw it out there. Step through with your left foot. Quad cane and kick. Kick it. Kick it. CARL Kick it Barb. PT Kick it. Yes. Good. Good job. Excellent. Now, again. Quad cane, kick it…step. Again. Quad cane, kick it… step. Quad cane, kick it…step. The Physical Therapist watches as BARB and CARL go on alone PT I am a health care professional. When you encounter someone like me, you’re very glad to see me, even though I’m the last person you ever hoped to see. We are those complete and total strangers who literally hold your life in our hands. We take care of you. We comfort you. We witness you at your most vulnerable, when you are helpless and afraid. And therefore, you count on us, depend on us, put your faith and your hopes in us to keep you from entering into that great darkness into which we all must go. Kind of like the opening act for the undertaker, that’s what we are. Clock merchants selling the ticking minutes to people who wish to buy themselves some more time. That kind of thing takes empathy, compassion. It’s a big responsibility. You have to be… You have to be… Nice. You have to be nice to people. It’s in the job description. But you see that kind of thing, the empathy, the compassion, being nice, and spending your every working hour surrounded by nothing but suffering, all of that can take its toll on a person. You have to protect yourself. You have to somehow keep some measure of distance. …Barb’s husband Carl he thinks we’re poor communicators. He’s a writer. It’s all about language with him. He says we use too many abbreviations and acronyms. Too much jargonizing. Using vagueness in futile attempts to describe what we don’t know and refuse to admit. That’s how he perceives the distance and he’s always trying to close the gap. “What does that mean? Why is that? “I don’t think I understand what you’re saying.” He’s a pain in the ass. That’s what makes him a good advocate, a good care giver. And while he’s standing there riling at you, pissing you off and getting on your last nerve, she is looking at him with so much love in her
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eyes, with so much gratefulness for his devotion to her that it just humbles you. And all you can do is whatever you can do‌to help them.
END OF SCENE
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I DON’T WANT TO LIVE ANYMORE CARL It’s lonely at home without you. I can’t seem to get it together. The place is a titanic mess. There’s shit all over everywhere and then you’re not there to tell me where to find stuff. It’s getting to where it’s starting to be unmanageable. In some ways I’m glad you’re not there to see it. You’d have yourself lots to fuss about, I’ll tell you that. BARB gestures to know more CARL Well, to be honest with you it’s the mail. I haven’t been opening the mail. BARB is disapproving CARL No not all the mail, just the bills. BARB What? CARL Why should I open them? I can’t pay them. I don’t want to know how much I owe, I’m stressed as it is. I’m doing everything I can just not to be overwhelmed. I’m down to one stitch at a time, one day at a time, minute to minute, breath by breath. That’s it. That’s all I can do baby. Thank God we are poor enough and destitute enough to be wards of the state. That you qualify for health insurance. Otherwise we just might as well go on and kill ourselves. With concern BARB rubs CARL’s belly CARL No, I haven’t been eating much lately either. No appetite. Just not hungry. If I didn’t make myself cook for you every day…I don’t know, I’d probably starve myself to death. And I can’t sleep. Sleeping in our bed without you makes me feel even more lonely. I just lay there feeling sorry for myself. So, I’ve been watching a lot of TV…the news. The talking heads bloviating on and on about the intractable, disastrous state of the world is somehow numbing. It’s the repetitiveness that puts me to sleep. BARB begins to cry
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CARL What is it baby? What’s the matter? What’s wrong? Are you in pain? …Is it what I said? I don’t mean to upset up you. It’s just that it’s just the two of us. I don’t have anyone else to talk to. It’s a paradox you see. The only person I can talk to is my wife and she has Aphasia. BARB I… CARL Yes? BARB I… I… CARL Go on baby. You what? BARB I… don’t… CARL You don’t what? BARB I…don’t want… CARL What don’t you want baby? BARB I…don’t want…to live anymore. CARL I…don’t…want…to…live…anymore. One, two, three, four, five. Barb, that’s six words, eight syllables. You’re a regular freaking orator.
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BARB Oh… They laugh CARL It’s a sign darling. It’s improvement. It’s reason to hope… We should take it. It’s all we got…Look Baby, it’s the brain, as mysterious and unfathomable as life itself. Nobody knows anything and anything can happen. We have dreams and plans. Places we want to go and things we want to do. We don’t want to give up on that do we? We’ve got our whole lives ahead of us. We should live it. I don’t want us to just survive anymore, I want us to thrive for a change. Don’t you? …What do you say? BARB begins to cry again CARL What is it baby? A pause BARB I want… CARL What do you want baby? BARB I want you to do… CARL What do you want me to do? BARB I want you…to do what you want…not me. CARL Are you giving me permission to leave you, to abandon you? Is that what you’re saying?
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BARB nods yes CARL That’s out of the question. A pause BARB Thank you.
END OF SCENE
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