January First: A Child's Descent Into Madness and Her Father's Struggle to Save Her

by Michael Schofield

  “This will be her room,” the nurse says as we enter the second room, next door. Paul puts Janni down and she bolts.

  “Hold on, Janni.” He gently brings her back. “Let’s sit on the bed.”

  The room is bare except for the bed. No EKG machine. No automatic blood pressure machine. I realize we are in one of the rooms reserved for psychiatric patients. Everything is gone so the patients can’t harm themselves or the staff.

  “If you need anything, the nurse’s call button is right there on the wall.” The nurse looks at Paul. “Should I close the door?”

  “Probably a good idea,” he replies.

  The nurse closes the door and it is just the four of us.

  Maria comes up to me. “We need to go.”

  What?

  “But she’s not up to the unit yet,” I protest. I’d expected them to stay with Janni and me through the whole process and explain why she needed to be an inpatient.

  “That could take hours and we need to go.”

  Maria’s phone’s been ringing constantly. I know others are out there in the city who need them, but I need them, too.

  “Don’t you need to talk to the doctor?” I stammer.

  “The nurse has my report.”

  I’m terrified. We’ve been here before and Janni didn’t get admitted. I need them to make sure it happens this time.

  “Please,” I beg. “Don’t go.”

  Maria puts her hand on my shoulder. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”

  Paul takes his hand off Janni’s shoulder. “Okay, Janni, you be good for your dad, okay?”

  “Okay,” she answers, strangely calm, but I’m still panicking as they turn to leave.

  “Take care, okay?” Maria says to me.

  And they’re gone.

  THERE ARE NO windows in here. I have no sense of time. I want to talk to Susan, but my phone isn’t getting reception. I feel alone. Janni is physically here, but mentally miles away.

  In the next room, the man handcuffed to his bed is now awake and screaming obscenities.

  “Fuck you all … you fucking bitches! I know what you’re fucking doing! You’re playing with my cock! You fucking whores!”

  I flinch at every word. I look at Janni dancing around, lost in her own world, playing with Magical 61. For the first time, I’m grateful for that world because it’s protecting her from this one.

  It’s been six hours. Janni may be oblivious to the steady stream of obscenities coming from the next room, but I’m terrified. I feel like we have finally descended into the deepest reaches of hell. This was a mistake. I want to take her home. I want her safe in her bed, holding her stuffed bear, Hero.

  Right outside these rooms is the security station. I walk out of Janni’s room and up to one of the guards.

  “We’ve been waiting hours for a psych consult.”

  “Sometimes it takes that long,” he answers languidly. He must go through this every day. But I have to get out of here. There is no humanity in here and I feel mine slipping away.

  “We’re leaving. I am taking my daughter and leaving. I’m not going to stay and let her be exposed to all this.”

  “You can’t leave,” the guard tells me, standing up, at least a foot taller than I am.

  I look up at him, shocked. “Of course we can leave. You can’t keep us here! We came here voluntarily!”

  “Maybe you did,” he answers, “but she has a hold.”

  A hold? This has never happened to us before. “For how long?”

  “Until the doctor sees her, then maybe she can go.”

  “So we just have to wait?”

  The security guard sits back down. “Yep.”

  I finally realize what has happened. Maria and Paul 5150’d her, placed her on an involuntary hold. That was how they got her into UCLA. The standard hold is three days.

  Janni snaps back to reality for a moment as I reenter her room.

  “Are we leaving?”

  I look at her. What have I done? Why didn’t I just take her home? “Not yet.”

  “I’m hungry,” Janni whines.

  I turn back to the security guard. “I want to see the damn doctor!” I’m losing control. I want to go home.

  “The doctor is coming,” the guard answers placidly.

  I turn back to Janni. “Janni, stay here. I’ll be right back.” I don’t want to leave her alone in this place, but I have no choice.

  I charge through the nurses’ station, scanning for the ER doctor who did the medical check on Janni when we first arrived.

  I find him, leaning up against the station, chatting to another doctor.

  “Where is the psychiatrist?” I yell at his back.

  He turns to me. “I just called. They’re pretty busy.”

  “My daughter is in that room next to a guy handcuffed to his bed, swearing obscenities.”

  “I understand—”

  “No, you don’t understand!” I cut him off. “Nobody fucking understands! This is my six-year-old daughter I brought here for help, and she’s not getting any! It isn’t your child, so what do you care?! None of you give a flying fuck!” I am screaming, my breath heaving, on the verge of breaking down. I want to break down. I want them to drag me away. But I can’t. Janni needs me.

  The ER goes deathly quiet. I feel every eye that is awake on me. The ER doctor remains stone-faced.

  “I do understand,” he says quietly. “I can see how much you love your daughter and want to help her, but what you’re doing right now isn’t helping. She needs you to stay calm.”

  “Being calm hasn’t gotten her any help!” I shout back.

  “All you’re doing right now is scaring other patients.”

  I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. I fight tears in the corner of my eyes. I’m cracking.

  “I’m sorry.” I sniffle. “I’m just scared.”

  He nods. “I will page the psychiatrist again.”

  I nod, wiping my eyes. “She’s hungry. I need to get her food. Where’s the cafeteria?”

  He takes me gently by the arm and points down the hall.

  “Through those doors and to the right.” He looks at me. “You gotta hang in there. Be strong for her. It’s gonna be okay.”

  I nod. I don’t believe him, just like I didn’t believe Maria, but I still want him to keep telling me it’s going to be okay.

  I DON’T KNOW what Janni will eat. They have grilled cheese and she eats that, but not all the time. I buy several things, hoping something will appeal to her. Grilled cheese, onion rings, corn, rice. I bring everything back and show them off. She picks at the onion rings.

  A young man sticks his head in the door and looks down at his chart. “Is this January?”

  “Not January!” Janni screams, her eyes down, focused on the onion rings.

  “Sorry,” he apologizes. “I’m the psychiatric fellow,” he says to me, although he looks more like he’s going out to a nightclub. I give him Janni’s history. I cover everything since she was born. I don’t know if it matters anymore.

  He nods, taking notes. “Okay, Janni. Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Do you want to see my pet rat?” Janni holds out her empty palm.

  “I’ll go outside,” I tell him. I don’t want to run the risk he might think I am influencing her. He needs to see what we see every day. I pray he does.

  Five minutes later he comes out, still writing in his notes.

  “So what do you think?”

  “Well …,” he begins. My heart sinks. He doesn’t see it. Janni’s not being violent at this very moment. She just seems “imaginative.” I resign myself to the fact we came for nothing. At least she’ll get to sleep in her own bed tonight. That is all I want to do now. Just sleep.

  “She’s definitely saying some odd things. She is pretty obsessed with this world of hers. She told me all about the animals and girls who live there. ‘Calalini,’ I think she called it.”

  “Are you going to admit her?�
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  “Let me go talk to my supervisor and see what he has to say and I’ll come back.”

  “How long?”

  “Soon.”

  “Soon” is ninety minutes later. He returns with a piece of paper.

  “What’s this?” I ask.

  “This is the authorization to treat.”

  “So you are admitting her?”

  “Yeah, we’re going to admit her. She said some things that were a little concerning.”

  It is all I can do to stand up. I can barely believe it.

  It’s over. I’ve done it. I’ve gotten her into UCLA. Everything is going to be okay now. They will figure out how to help her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  February 2009

  WARNING: REMOVE ALL METAL FROM YOUR PERSON.

  I look down at my wedding ring. It’s gold, a metal totally impervious to the effects of magnets. I remember buying it nine years ago. It wasn’t expensive. Susan and I went together to pick out our rings at the Sears jewelry counter. It wasn’t romantic, but it was fun because we did it together. We used to do everything together. Susan was my partner, my best friend. Now it feels like we never knew each other before Janni. We’re soldiers on a battlefield now, a new relationship forged from being in a common crisis, a war against the still officially unnamed enemy inside Janni.

  I take off my ring and put it inside the locker anyway. Soldiers going into a battle they fear they may not return from also remove their personal effects, keeping only their dog tags. Every day I feel like I am going deeper and deeper into a place I will never come back from.

  My dog tag is not around my neck, but sitting in a wheelchair as I enter the MRI room. Janni is my dog tag, my identification.

  “I don’t want to do it,” she tells me.

  I sigh. It’s after 11 P.M. and I’ve been at UCLA since visiting hours began at 7 P.M., waiting for Radiology to take her in for an MRI. If anyone can get her through this, it’s me, and I have to get her through this because tonight could reveal this enemy I’ve been fighting for more than a year. If I can see it, then I can conquer it.

  “It doesn’t hurt, Janni. It’s just loud. The noise makes it scary.”

  “I don’t want to do it.”

  “We have earplugs.” The radiology technician pulls them out of his ears. “Like this.”

  They’re the little foam ones you roll up and stick inside your ear. I know them well. I tried them a year ago, along with headphones, hoping the combination would completely block out the sound of Bodhi’s crying.

  “She won’t wear those,” I say.

  “That’s all we have,” the technician says to me.

  “I don’t want to do it,” Janni says.

  I squat down next to her. “Janni, we need to see what’s going on inside your brain.” My voice is calm, but I’m begging. I need this, Janni. I need to see the “enemy.”

  “No.”

  “We can have the doctor order a sedative,” Gillian offers. Gillian is a nurse from the child psych unit who must be with Janni anytime she is off the unit.

  But then it won’t happen tonight. Her doctor’s gone home, and we’re just a few feet from the machine that can turn a light on in the darkness we’ve been living in for so long. I turn back to Janni. I have to convince her to get into the machine.

  “Janni, what if I go to the car and get your headphones?”

  “We have headphones,” the radiology tech says.

  “What?”

  “We have headphones.” He goes to a drawer and retrieves a set of headphones.

  The question of why he didn’t tell me this before annoys me.

  “See, Janni, they have headphones.”

  “Can I get music?” Janni asks, spotting a long cord running out of the headphones.

  “Can you pipe in music through this cord?” I ask the tech.

  “No music. Sorry. The cord is so we can talk to the patient inside the machine.”

  Dammit, I think. The headphones will only dull the sound of the MRI, not eliminate it. She needs something to distract her mind from the noise in the tunnel.

  “Janni, I’ll sing to you. I’ll sing so loud you won’t be able to hear the machine.” I look down at Janni, desperate.

  Janni is silent for a moment, then looks up at me. “What will you sing?”

  “Anything you want. What about ‘Yellow Submarine’?”

  Susan bought me The Beatles’ 1 album for an anniversary gift a few years ago. I never thought I’d be able to listen to it in the car, but one day I tried and Janni started singing along.

  Try to see it my way,

  Only time will tell if I am right or I am wrong …

  Those moments gave me hope.

  I can see Janni thinking.

  “We can work it out,” I say, smiling.

  She smiles and rubs her hands together, getting the reference.

  The tech helps her onto the MRI table, but as soon as he starts to strap her down, she sits back up again.

  “Sweetie,” the tech tells her. “I’m sorry I have to do this, but if you move, we won’t get good pictures.”

  “Janni, it’s okay,” I take her hand. “Just lie down.”

  I watch as the tech immobilizes her head with tape.

  Janni cries. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen real tears come from her eyes.

  “It’s gonna be okay, Janni,” I say. “Daddy’s here.” I take her hand in mine.

  The tech inserts a mirror in front of her face. “This is so you can see your daddy.” He turns to me. “We ready?”

  I nod.

  He disappears into the control room. A few seconds later, I hear him over the PA: “Okay, here we go.”

  The table slides back into the tunnel, and Janni begins whimpering like a lost dog.

  “It’s okay, Janni. Daddy’s right here. Can you see me?” I wave to her face in the mirror.

  “Yes,” she says in a childlike tone I’m not used to hearing. The table retreats into the tunnel, designed more for an adult. Her hand, still holding mine, disappears inside the tunnel, but I keep holding on as my arm is swallowed up. My shoulder hits the outside of the tunnel, but I won’t let go. I hunker down, putting my head inside the tunnel with Janni, following her in.

  My feet leave the floor as the table pulls me in, then stops. My entire upper body is inside the tunnel. I prop myself up over Janni’s legs, lifting my head high so Janni sees me in the mirror.

  She is still whimpering.

  “It’s like a den in here,” I say, my voice echoing inside the tunnel. “It’s like we’re prairie dogs. Remember the prairie dogs we used to see when I took you to the zoo? This is like what prairie dogs live in.” I yip like a prairie dog.

  “Okay, starting up,” the tech calls over the PA. The machine starts to wind up like a jet engine. Despite the noise, I still hear Janni’s crying. I could probably hear her over a class-five hurricane after being so wired to her crying from when she was a baby, six years ago.

  “Janni, it’s okay. Look at me, Janni. Look in the mirror.”

  I see her eyes move in the mirror and locate me. Her head is immobilized so the techs can get clear images of her brain.

  “Can you see me?” I wave in the cramped space.

  “I can see you.”

  “Keep your eyes on me, Janni. Keep watching me. Don’t pay attention to anything but me. I will explain everything. That noise is the sound of a giant magnet spinning around you. This magnet makes the ions in your body align with the …” I stop, seeing her mouth open in a full cry.

  What the fuck am I doing? I’m still trying to teach her, even now. I suppose it is the last remnant of my belief that all of this is just the result of her genius. But she doesn’t need a teacher. She needs her dad.

  “Janni! Janni! Look in the mirror! Keep your eyes on Daddy!” I see her look at me in the mirror. Our eyes meet. I start to sing:

  “In the town where I was born,

&nb
sp; Lived a man, who sailed to sea.

  And he told us of his life

  In the Land of Submarines.”

  The machine gets louder. “Okay, starting imaging.” The tech’s voice comes over the PA. “Hold still now.”

  The machine starts clicking loudly.

  Janni cries out.

  “Janni!” I shout over the loud clicking of the machine. “Keep your eyes on me!”

  She looks back in the mirror at me.

  “So we sailed into the sun,

  till we found the sea of green.

  And we lived beneath the waves,

  In our yellow submarine …”

  Every time the machine gets louder, so does my singing, until I’m shouting at the top of my lungs.

  “And our friends are all aboard,

  many more of them live next door …”

  The clicks alternate with loud booms. Every time I see Janni look away, I call her back to the mirror. She does and I resume singing, screaming the lyrics now.

  “As we live a life of ease;

  Every one of us has all we need”

  “All we need!” I shout, waving my free arm and jerking my head inside the machine. I feel like we’re rewinding in time, back to the ball pit at IKEA when she was a baby, when I got in with her and jumped around, not caring what anybody thought because it made her laugh.

  “Sky of Blue! Sky of Blue! And Sea of Green! Sea of Green!” I’m like a drunk at a karaoke bar. “In our yellow, in our yellow … submarine, submarine! Ah-hah!”

  Janni smiles at me through the mirror.

  “We all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine.

  We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine.”

  I run through every song I know the lyrics to, never taking my eyes off her. She is looking away more often now. I can see her mouth opening in a cry made silent by the roar of the machine.

  This is taking too long. She’s trying to twist her head. I need to do something quickly or she will go into a panic.