"Can I have my phone back now?" I asked, once we got home from court.
"Sure, just, don't um," he handed me my phone from his pocket, "don't try and, don't do something that will make you upset."
"Thanks." I smiled, taking my phone, I didn't want to turn it on, but, I knew I had to. I walked into my room to change out of my dress and as I walked inside, I checked my phone, opening Twitter, I was hit in the face with people retweeting and quoting an article I was tagged in.
Lin-Manuel Miranda's adopted daughter attempts suicide
Below the title was the picture of Lin and I from the hospital. Despite my better judgement, I clicked on it.
"It was 3 in the morning when we got the call." Says paramedic Marvin Freocka, "it was a women, hysteric, saying her daughter tried to kill herself." Freocka goes on to say the ambulance made it to an apartment in NYC. "We got to the apartment and that's when we saw him. Lin-Manuel Miranda (writer, creator and star of Broadways Hamilton), holding a teenage girl, who we later learned was his daughter. Once we got her in the vehicle, Miranda explained that she took an entire bottle of Benadryl. That won't kill her." Freocka went on to explain what exactly the drug would do to her.
"I wasn't Abigail's doctor, so I don't know much, I know she had her stomach pumped, and I know that she had to have a psychiatric evaluation." We asked Freocka what the psychiatrist found, but he was unable to get any information. "I mean, I'm not even supposed to be saying anything." Freocka confides.
"There is something interesting, however." Freocka begins, "3 or 4 times while she was asleep in the hospital, she had really violent nightmares. She would thrash around in her bed, freaking out. It makes you wonder, why? What happened to her? What is happening to her?" To finish our interview, we asked Freoka who was there, if anyone interesting came into Roosevelt Hospital that day. "Oh, everyone." Freoka responds, "I mean, the entire cast of Hamilton showed up at the hospital, and then some! Lin-Manuel Miranda never even left her bedside, they're attached to this girl. I wonder why."
The night after the incident Miranda tweeted a picture of him and Abigail in a hospital bed, captioning it 'I love her so much'. Of course, this spurred a tidal wave of responses asking what was going on. Sadly, none were answered, until now.
At the end of that nights performance of Hamilton: An American Musical, Miranda took the mic, and asked for prayer for his daughter. Clarinda Sharmen, an audience member, agreed to fill us in on what exactly happened that night.
"He had barely started speaking when he broke down." Sharmen says, "Chris Jackson, who plays Washington, came over and tried to help him. During his speech, he said something along the lines of this, 'There's a line in our show, I take the children to church on Sunday, the sign of the cross at the door, and I pray, that never used to happen before,' then he basically just said, 'please pray for Abigail.'"
So, in this speech, Miranda quoted It's Quiet Uptown, a song in his show in which Hamilton experiences the aftermath of the death of his child, we asked Sharmen if there was anything special about Miranda's performance of that number in particular.
"Now that you mention it, yes. From Stay Alive (reprise) he was distraught, in tears. I'm sure he cries every night, but you could really tell there was something more going on there."
I feel like we're all asking ourselves the same question. Which is why? Why did his daughter do this. Does it have something to do with the nightmares? Does it have something to do with the abuse reported in her previous Foster homes? Is she going through something of her own? Is there something going on at the Miranda household? What does this girl have to be depressed about?
I angrily threw my phone on my bed, and threw off my dress and put on an oversized shirt and sweats. After I changed I collapsed on my bed. I was numb.
"Abigail, did you check your phone?" Lin yelled into my room. I didn't respond, I was just laying in bed. "Abigail?" I heard him again, "sweetheart, I'm coming in."
"Hi." I said softly.
"Hey," he sat on the foot of my bed "you checked your phone." He concluded. "Hand it over." He held his hand out. I handed him my phone which he turned on. He sat there for a couple minutes then turned it off, and shoved it in his pocket. "Come on. We're not talking about this in here, come here." He picked me up and walked into the living room, setting me down on the couch.
"What happened?" Vanessa asked, sitting down next to me on the couch.
"Word got out about what happened." Lin said.
"Wait? Everything?" She asked.
"They published an article." He said.
"Seriously?" She asked, "even the vodka?" She asked, and I freaked out a little.
"I.. I didn't know you guys knew." I looked down at my lap, not wanting to look at either of them. I screwed up. I screwed up badly.
"Of course we knew." Vanessa said, "that's why there's a lock on the cabinet."
"You had your stomach pumped, they found it. There wasn't a ton, 3/8ths of a cup, that's all." Lin said.
"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I swear, I'll never do that ever again, I wasn't in a good place, I'm so sorry."
"Sweetheart, sweetheart, it's ok. We're not upset about it, if we were we would of brought it up before now." Vanessa wrapped her arm around me. "Now, what happened, with the article?"
"Everyone knows." I said.
"What do you mean?" She asked.
"It's all over social media. Everyone knows that I tried to kill myself." As I said that, a pang of realization shot through me. I tried to kill myself. Suicide is such a general term. How do we not realize what it means. Suicide is a headline, it's a cause of death. Right now, we're so obsessed with stopping hate crimes, but, I feel like we overlook the worst one. Killing yourself is a hate crime. You're in a position in which you hate yourself so much, you kill.
"Niñita, I'm sure not everyone knows." Lin said, sitting down.
"Everyone knows. And it's not the comments and the responses and the attention, it's the basic concept that people know. That that's part of my identity now, that girl who hated herself so much she tried to kill herself. And that word tried. I failed even at that." I held my head in my hands, and cried. "I have to go to school tomorrow. I have to see everyone and they're going to look at me differently now. Everyone will, I'm fragile now, I'm broken, I'm that girl. I'm the emo chick."
"Ok, slow down." Lin said, "firstly, there's no way you're the emo chick. Secondly, I may have a solution to school tomorrow, you're gonna have to hear me out, but, um, you may like it, you may hate it, just, I'll tell you tomorrow."
"No, tell me now!" I said.
"I have to research it a bit, make sure it's legal, and I have to ask him, but, probably, and I'll tell you tomorrow." I rolled my eyes a little, "you're friends are gonna like it too." He said under his breath, and I giggled a little. "See, you're cheering up! How about, I order Chinese food and we watch Psych. You like Psych right?" He asked.
"Yeah. Thanks." I said, smiling.
"Of course." He said, and pulled out his phone dialing.
"Vanessa?" I asked.
"Hm?"
"Did you ever realize that you and Lin are basically Shawn and Gus?" I asked.
"How?" She was a little confused.
"Lin is Shawn, he likes to skateboard, he's irrational at times, the crazier one, and then you're Gus, the rational genius. And I mean, you both play video games and have killer music taste, and are totally, like, in sync."
"Holy crap, you're right." She smiled.
Psych was nice, it always is, we also explained the Gus/Shawn Vanessa/Lin thing to Lin and he loved it. I went to bed happy, happy for my family. Happy to have a family. And also, a little bit nervous about Lin's "idea" for tomorrow.
•••
Thanks for reading
Sorry this was anticlimactic
-Abi