Interlude, or, Thoughts from Code Name: Prison

I stand in a bathroom next to an open window. I am not allowed to flush the toilet. Someone waits for me outside the door. I expect if I turned on the water in the sink with the door still closed, there would be questions asked. The absurdity of it all hits me, so that I almost smile in spite of myself.

I take a breath and open the door. A young woman whisks in, glances at the toilet, and says, “OK.” That is my cue that I can finish now. I flush the toilet and wash my hands. The door opens onto the kitchen, and I see two or three other women congregated at one end of the kitchen island, waiting for their turn in the bathroom.

I can’t take time now to fuss with my hair, even though I’ve wanted a chance to freshen up. I will have to make due with the little mirror in the hallway, which leaves everything below the chin to the imagination.

This is Prison. At least, that’s my code name for it. It has a real name, and a website about eating disorder treatment, and there is a long waiting list to come here. I sign myself in on a Monday in April, exactly one week after running the Boston Marathon.

I want to sign myself right back out. Actually, to be fair, I cope pretty well for the first day and a half. Tuesday begins with a brain-scrambling caffeine withdrawal headache, since Prison does not permit refreshment in the form of diet Dr. Pepper. But I know I am stronger than the headache—the suffering is temporary. I have managed to unpack and organize my clothes, take a shower, and generally fall in line with the routine. It seems like I could make it here, only I can’t remember why I should try.

Sometime before the end of Tuesday, I center all my hopes on release. The Prison staff won’t have it. My opposition to treatment clashes with their good intentions. I think of the Borg from “Star Trek”: “resistance is futile.”

I distract myself by following baseball and choosing marathon pictures.

My existence in Prison evolves into a mix of real fear and ironic humor (my favorite kind). I am scared by the level of control I have relinquished to these well-meaning people, because I am convinced their very goodness will misguide them. I am scared because I don’t know when I can reestablish a sense of normalcy, or whether I can even find that again once I go home. I am scared because my running shoes are locked away in my car and my car keys are locked away “upstairs.” I’m afraid because it seems that control—however illusory—is all I have, all I can hope for or aspire to. And maybe that’s true, in Prison or out: choices may be limited, but agency can never really be taken away.

Sometimes the fear rises in my chest and my throat, and I have to tamp it down. I try to make myself laugh. Yeah, you are really being tortured here, I joke to myself. How awful, they are going to make you do yoga, and the very kind yoga teacher will expect you to lie down on a mat covered by a blanket that smells … unpleasant. This, you can’t handle?! Come on!

The humor helps. Still, it is hard to be here, and everyone else here knows it. I don’t argue with the staff when they imply that I must have been pretty desperate to come. I have no Italian villa to retire to, and even if I did, I’d go there and there I’d be—I couldn’t escape from the person I need a rest from, myself. So I didn’t retire to Italy. I drove two days to St. Louis to stay in an inconspicuous house where no one will let me run and where they talk to me about nutrition. Human beings need food, the dietitian claims. Humans need to eat whether they run or not. Well, I don’t, I think, but I learn to keep some thoughts to myself.

We have good times in captivity. I care about the people around me. I know I will think of them long after I leave. In Prison I am free to say things I wouldn’t usually say. I tell about feeling judged by the grocery store cashier who wants to chat about my purchases, while I sense the pulsing of the neon sign across my forehead blinking, “This woman does evil things with food.”

For the first time since 2009, I go days and days without running. I hear kids shooting hoops in the backyard next door and I think it sounds fun. I walk around the neighborhood with my fellow captives, noticing the interesting architecture of old houses. I sit on the porch in the sunshine and color. I dance. I start to dream about running again. I wonder wistfully about my shoes, whether they will be safe in my car. I used them for a run the morning I checked into Prison.

Two weeks and more pass. When my chance for release arrives at last, I know it will be hard to leave, just as it would be hard to stay. I try to focus on the moment. My first run is intense and sweet. My first sip of diet Dr. Pepper tastes like manna, or so I imagine. I promise myself to stay grateful for the privilege of being outside on my own.

At home, I walk down the aisles of the grocery store contemplating physical laws. In the treatment center, Code Name: Prison, some rules seemed suspended. I believe if I ate the way I ate in Prison for even a single day, I would gain weight. In Prison, I felt embarrassed to be hungry. Outside Prison, hunger comes as a sign of safety. If I am suffering, I must be doing what I’m supposed to. Outside Prison, I am preoccupied with numbers. I know the nutrition information for everything I eat. I also know that no matter how much I run, it will not be enough. I take that for granted by now.

I run anyway. Two weeks out of Prison, my speed improves, as if my body is revving up. I look forward to my next marathon, in Luxembourg on June 8. I try to appreciate moving outside in sunshine, shopping by myself, going to the bathroom without a monitor.

Life in Prison was hard, but the greater challenge is to escape the prison of my own making. For now, I try to keep the walls from closing in.

Boston, Part Two

Aftermath

“There’s been an emergency. Everyone must leave the station.”

When the announcement broke over the train’s loudspeaker, no one in the cramped subway car moved. We all clung to whatever handhold we’d managed to grab onto at the last station, as if the conductor’s words might be a joke or at least a mistake and the train would start up again, crawling with its burden of passengers toward the Boston suburbs.

The announcement sounded again. A small stream of people began to leak onto the train platform, where a man in a uniform—maybe a cop, maybe subway security—was repeating the order to evacuate and refusing to answer questions.

A woman approached the uniformed official and asked how she could get to her destination. Was the whole subway shut down? Was it just this station or this line? Would it be running again soon? The official put her off by claiming to know nothing. He couldn’t speculate about a nondescript “emergency.”

I stood close by when I heard the woman’s questions, in case she managed to extract any helpful information. I had thoughts of suspicious packages and sick passengers, the kind of thing that shut down subway stations or delayed trains in Washington, DC. I hoped the problem could be resolved quickly. I had so looked forward to the refuge of my car, where I had the means to provide an initial level of post-marathon comfort. I was conscious of the sweat-dampened layer of clothing closest to my skin; it kept me feeling cold, even with my jacket on.

Emerging from the station through the same exit I’d taken on my way to the expo, I surveyed my surroundings uncertainly. There was nothing obviously wrong in the scene, only there seemed to be an unusual tension in the people rushing by, and the traffic patterns were off. I realized some policemen were blocking off one of the streets at the intersection of Boylston Street and Massachusetts Avenue. The wind blew cold, and I searched the storefronts opposite me for a refuge. First priority, I decided, was to find a place to sit inside. Whatever the emergency was, I hoped I could wait it out and get back on the subway.

I noticed a Starbucks across the street and down half a block, so I made my way there. Stepping inside the tiny shop reminded me I was in the city, where space is precious. The three seats along the window front were already taken. I went back outside and walked farther down the block, to a Wendy’s. It, too, was smaller than I was used to, but it did at least have a dining area that wasn’t already packed. A counter ran along the entry hallway, apart from the dining area and the main front counter where orders were taken. I paused at the end of the hallway, at the fringes of activity, and rested my yellow marathon bag on the counter. I needed a moment away from the wind to think and regroup.

Two runners, a man and a woman, came in after me. The woman approached me and asked, “Are you from the area?”

“No!” I exclaimed. She and her husband seemed to feel as lost as I did. They were visiting Boston from Wisconsin and had parked at the end of the orange subway line. I had parked at the end of the green line. We seemed to be in the same predicament, except that they knew something I didn’t know.

“There’s been an explosion,” the woman told me. “We heard it.”

They had crossed the finish line and had begun making their way through the finish area when they heard what they thought might be a cannon firing. After all, it was Patriot’s Day. But it wasn’t a cannon, or fireworks as some others thought. It was a bomb, and there were rumors of more bombs still waiting to explode.

The woman seemed shaken. “We’d been talking about coming back to Boston and bringing the kids,” she said. “But not after this.”

Two men came in shortly after the couple, one older man with white hair and a younger one wearing a heat sheet and a marathon medal. With his shiny robe and medal, the young man looked like a prince. I think the older man was his father. The subway shutdown had stranded them, too.

The woman told them she wasn’t returning to Boston. “I’m going back to Wisconsin, where stuff like this doesn’t happen!” she cried. “Nobody cares about Wisconsin.” She made the remark into a compliment.

The white-haired man nodded and smiled. “We’re from Nebraska,” he said.

“I’m originally from Idaho,” I put in. “I get that, too. Nobody even knows where Idaho is!”

I felt comforted by the conversation, the chance to connect and get more information … but I had needs long unmet. I inched away around the corner, peering into the hallway that led to the restroom. The line for the women’s bathroom rivaled the lines for the port-a-johns in the Athlete’s Village. I knew it had been a fantasy to hope for a quiet, peaceful restroom, where I could take time to tidy up and maybe change my inner layer of clothing.

I drifted back toward the gathering crowd of stranded runners and spectators, listening for more details about the situation. I kept hearing that there were more bombs and the police were trying to neutralize them. I pictured chaos, maybe damage to the temporary structures around the finish line. So far, nothing seemed very bad. And then I heard that they had stopped the race.

“What?” I gasped. “They stopped the marathon?”

“They pulled all the runners off the course. The finish area is shut down.”

But the Boston Marathon has never been cancelled! I couldn’t believe it.

“This is bad,” I realized. “This is serious.” I thought about all the runners out on the course. Where could they go? They would be physically and mentally depleted. With the finish area shut down, they wouldn’t be able to get their yellow bags with the gear they had checked at the start. They wouldn’t have jackets or extra clothing. If I hadn’t picked up my yellow bag, I wouldn’t have my cell phone. Not that it was helping me much at the moment. It kept buzzing with incoming messages. “Are you OK?” the messages would ask. But when I tried to answer, nothing would go through. I noticed my battery was low.

I worried about the runners stuck without their gear, but I still wasn’t hearing much about injuries. I wanted to get out of Boston. If I could just get back to my car, everything would feel better.

Someone suggested a taxi. I had a wallet-size packet of information from the marathon organizers, and I knew it included a list of phone numbers for taxi companies. I found the list and began dialing. I heard ringing and then the call was dropped. I tried again without luck. I figured everyone would be using their phones right now—I had to give it a few minutes at least, and then try again. Meanwhile, I kept getting texts and phone calls, but if I tried to answer the call or reply to a text, my phone displayed the error message “System Not Responding.”

I crossed the dining room and sat down on a stool just behind the line of people waiting to order at the counter. There I talked to a girl who was texting with a friend in the finish area. I wanted to find out what was going on, and the girl was willing to share information, but she was getting conflicting reports, she said. I don’t remember all the versions she listed, because my mind grabbed onto “half a dozen injured” and refused to go farther. I accepted her uncertainty as virtual confirmation that no one had been killed.

After our conversation, I sat on the stool, waiting. I didn’t know exactly what I was waiting for. I knew it would take time for the phone service to normalize, and I felt bleak about my chances for getting a taxi. But I had to try, I had to do something. Just sitting was hard.

Several more runners had come into the restaurant, and some had ordered food and sat down in the middle of the dining room. I saw a man weep silently for a few moments while a woman comforted him. Later I heard another man remark, “That was a lot of training to come up half a mile short.”

I would listen, dial, sigh, listen, dial. I heard a man at the counter order a Baconator.

“A Baconator?” his friend questioned.

“Yeah. What’s that, like, ‘son of a Baconator’? Did you call me ‘son of a Baconator’?” he joked.

I laughed and he flashed a grin in my direction. I think anything to diffuse the tension, however fleetingly, came as a relief.

Finally I got through to a cab company on my phone and managed an entire conversation without the call cutting out. Still, it got hard to hear at the end. I was surprised at how casually the operator took my information and confirmed the request. I knew it couldn’t be that easy. So what was she saying at the end? “I’m sorry, I can’t hear very well,” I explained. “Would you repeat that?” She spoke again, but I couldn’t catch all the words. “Did you say watch for it?” I asked. “I should watch for the cab?”

“Yes,” she replied—I think.

“Yes, I’ll do that,” I shouted into the phone, and then the call was gone.

I moved to a stool near the front window and started a vigil of watching the street outside. I had worried that the road in front of Wendy’s might be closed to traffic. I could tell the traffic pattern wasn’t normal, with blockades still up in the intersection with Boylston Street, but I could see a few cars going by. My task of staring diligently out the window helped pass the time.

I continued to hear snatches of conversation around me. A man behind me was talking on a cell phone. “At first I thought when they said people were treated for trauma, they meant, you know, like, ‘That was scary, I’m so traumatized.’ And then I heard more, and I was like, OK.” He sounded mildly apologetic. I tuned out and didn’t hear more of what he said, until another man at a neighboring table started yelling at him.

“You think this is funny?” the second man challenged. “You’re laughing about a bombing? You know, you’re really p— me off.”

“Bombs go off in Baghdad every day,” the first man retorted.

“You’re really p— me and the people in this restaurant off!” the other man bellowed. I could feel the anger coming off him. He was young, and in his T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, he seemed eager to demonstrate his muscular prowess.

The first man left and the commotion subsided into the general din of the dining room. Later I saw one man tackle another on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. They looked like the pair who had confronted each other in the dining area. The fight didn’t last long, since there were a number of cops close by. A policeman walked toward the men before anything much happened, and they separated without having to be pulled apart.

My phone buzzed with more incoming text messages, and I decided to try answering again. I texted my friend Kristin. I pressed “Send” and waited for the error message to pop up. It didn’t. A few moments later, Kristin texted a reply. My message had gone through! I texted her back excitedly. Then I tried texting my mother. This time I got the error message again. Kristin had the magic phone, the only one that could link with mine! She offered to get in touch with people for me. My automatic response was to say, “No, that’s OK,” but then I realized I needed exactly that kind of help. I asked if she could contact my mother and let her know I was safe. Before long she confirmed that she had already done that. She was getting the word out for me: I was stuck in downtown Boston, but I was all right.

I checked the time on my phone. More than an hour had passed since I requested the cab. I think I knew it wasn’t coming. I slid off my stool and approached a nearby table. “Excuse me,” I interrupted the conversation. “Did I hear you say something about the green line on the subway being open again?”

One of the women at the table had a smartphone she’d been checking. “Yeah, but there’s only outbound service, and it’s only between Fenway and Riverside.” Fenway was two stops away from the Hynes Convention Center stop, where I’d gotten off after the train was evacuated.

I thanked her and went back to my stool. Could I figure out how to get to Fenway? I had a small map in my brochure from the marathon, but since its purpose was to show key marathon sites, it didn’t provide many details that would help me navigate toward the Fenway station. I decided to call the cab company again and check on the status. This time I could hear the operator well enough when she said, “There’s been explosions in Boston. Half our people have gone home. Our service is suspended.” I expected that; I only wished I’d heard it an hour and a half ago when I first called. Then again, maybe I needed that hope of a rescue cab to get me through the waiting.

I noticed some of the blockades in the streets had come down. After a while, I tried calling my mother again. The call went through. I meant to ask her to look up information about the subway system online, but when she answered, I started crying. I cried all through my request to check on the status of the subway. She confirmed that outbound service was running between Fenway and Riverside, the station where my car was parked.

“I think I can get to Fenway,” I sobbed. Then I had an idea. “Do you think you could find directions to the station online?”

She could try, she said, but then she had another suggestion. “Celia could find this information faster,” she noted, referring to our mutual super-Starr friend. “I’ll ask her to look it up, and one of us will call you back.”

We hung up, and I went to check the line for the restroom again. Hallelujah, there was no one waiting in the hallway outside the bathroom door! I did what I could to clean up a little, and then I heard my phone ringing. Celia was calling back with better news than I had hoped for. As she was looking up directions for the Fenway station, the system website had been updated to announce that normal green line service to Riverside had been restored. I wouldn’t have to find the Fenway station. I could get back on the subway at the Hynes Convention Center station and ride out to my car. I was so excited I almost started crying again. I thanked Celia hurriedly and then rushed out of the Wendy’s and down the street to the station.

It didn’t take long to catch a train. After such a dramatic day, the ride out to Riverside felt surprisingly low key. The train wasn’t overcrowded; I was soon able to take a seat. Some of the conversation was energetic, speculative about whether work routines would return to normal the following day. I think people still didn’t realize the scope of the tragedy. I know I didn’t.

I walked into the Riverside station parking lot in descending twilight. I’ve probably never been so happy before to see my car. I changed out of my running shoes and socks and made some other adjustments for comfort, and then I sat in the car and turned on the radio to listen to the news. I don’t know how long I had the radio on, maybe only 30 seconds. The details streaming in were overwhelming. I switched the radio off. At least for the night, I wanted to push it all away. Still, I couldn’t stop wondering about the runners who didn’t get to finish the race and the ones who couldn’t pick up their yellow bags at the end. They would be cold, tired, hungry, and maybe stranded like me. I thought about the row of photographers at the finish line and the volunteers who had given me my heat sheet, sticker, and medal. I remembered the man on the bus who had chatted with me on the ride to the start. And the man who had shared the bench in the subway station before I went up to Boston Common—what had happened to him? What had happened to all of them?

There were questions but no answers on the drive out of Massachusetts, as I escaped into Connecticut for the night.

Going Home

I usually turn on the news in the morning. When I woke up Tuesday and tuned in, I learned the real numbers: two bombs, three dead, nearly two hundred injured, ten amputations performed on bombing victims at the hospital on Monday (I know there have been more since).

Ten amputations. Flying debris causing horrific injuries around the bomb site.

I switched the channel. The details echoed across every station. I ended up getting dressed with Matlock playing in the background.

I went running in silence, but I couldn’t turn off my thoughts. They churned on, out of control. I remember thinking at one point that I didn’t want the media to tell me how I was supposed to feel. But how was I supposed to feel? I’d run a marathon—one I’d dreamed about for a long time. So I should be happy. But after I crossed the finish line, a gruesome tragedy occurred. I didn’t want to be associated with an event like that, in any way. I didn’t want to have any part in that story. The whole marathon experience seemed awash in blood.

When I left the hotel for home, I couldn’t turn on the car radio. I had some CDs, and for a time I drove in silence. But the sadness pressed so hard from inside and out, I couldn’t take it any more. I needed to hear voices. I found a sports radio station where the announcers weren’t talking about Boston. Only then they did talk about it, and it kept coming up. How could it not, on Tuesday, the day after.

I took a break for fuel and food at a service stop off the New Jersey Turnpike, and two TVs in the dining room broadcasted Boston news. At least the volume had been set low. At another stop in Maryland, I saw more coverage as I walked inside a travel plaza to use the restroom.

I sat in the parking lot of the travel plaza for a while. I had a hundred miles left to drive. I had come a long way since morning, and it seemed like a long way to go. I had hung my Boston medal over my car’s passenger seat. I could hear it clinking against the seat when I started up the car again and pulled out of the lot. I wanted to treasure that medal, but it felt tainted by someone else’s actions.

Not far from home, I called my mother and asked if I could stop by and show her my pictures and my marathon stuff. I parked outside her apartment building and showed her my medal, my T-shirt, and the photos on my camera, and then I talked and talked about my experience in Boston.

By the time I left, darkness was falling. I heard the medal clink again. I glanced over at it. It hangs from a blue- and yellow-striped ribbon, and the medal itself displays a unicorn, the symbol of the Boston Athletic Association.

I had wanted for a long time to earn it, and on Monday, I had finally run my Boston marathon. I had done it. Nothing could change that now.

(Boston) Strong

I woke up Wednesday feeling different. I needed to take care of some things that I hadn’t wanted to think about Tuesday, and I got up energized, ready to check items off my list. I walked outside into a beautiful, mild morning. In my car, I sang along with Bon Jovi and Kelly Clarkson. It wasn’t that the sadness had gone away, but part of it had transformed. I could sense strength and humility, tenderness and gratitude.

The tragedy that occurred at the marathon finish line—or rather, that began there and continues to unfold for the victims and their families—brought forth examples of courage and compassion even as it caused great pain.

I have heard about the first responders, both trained emergency personnel and untrained members of the crowd, who quickly provided medical care to the wounded.

I found out that volunteers opened schools and churches and private citizens opened their homes to shelter the runners who were pulled off the marathon course. I had worried about those runners, stuck without the gear they had checked at the starting line, so I was glad to learn that the people of Boston embraced and supported them. But I should have known they would.

Even the little that I witnessed from my vantage point, with temporary road closures and the shutdown of a subway line, impresses me now with the efficiency of the emergency response. My wait in Wendy’s seemed long at the time, but now that I know the context, I’m amazed at how quickly the transit system resumed near-normal service.

I ran the 2013 Boston Marathon, and it is what it is. A beautiful, clear day, an ideal day for running, inexplicably erupted into violence. It was a wonderful day and a horrific day.

On the Saturday after the marathon, I tuned into a game at Fenway Park and listened to a tribute to the victims of the bombing. I started crying. I had tears dripping onto my fingers. And it felt good. It was sadness but not despair.

When I think about my experience in Boston, I feel strong, and I want to be stronger, better, braver, kinder. I want to honor the best parts of that day, the camaraderie that I felt, the fun of the Wellesley Scream, the goodness that flourished under awful conditions. My Boston Marathon medal won’t remind me of a post-race celebration. It touches memories more profound.

In a message “to our runners,” the Boston Athletic Association wrote, “We have been moved by your outpouring of support for our race officials, volunteers and our entire Boston Marathon family—a family of which you are now a lifetime member.”

May I ever strive to be “Boston Strong.”