by 72 Hour Hold
Today is the day I get her back.
The team, when it arrived, was made up of people I hadn’t met before, a white psychiatric social worker and a Latino assistant. Minutes later two police officers drove up.
“What’s going on?” the psychiatric worker asked me, when she came inside. Her name was Hilda Griffin, and she looked permanently weary.
“My daughter has bipolar disorder, and she’s not taking her meds. She assaulted me.”
“What’s your name? What’s your daughter’s name?”
She wrote them down in a book she was carrying.
“How old is Trina?”
“She’s eighteen. She assaulted me.”
“What exactly did she do?”
“She pushed me.”
“When?”
“Right before I called you guys.”
Ms. Griffin tilted her head, eyed me. “Were you fighting?”
“I asked her to clean up the kitchen.”
“Where is she now?”
“Upstairs in her room.”
Ms. Griffin waited until the two police officers were in the house before she went to look for Trina. My entourage trailed behind me.
Trina was back under the covers, her entire body hidden from view.
Ms. Griffin directed her questions to the lump in the bed. Her voice took on a soothing quality that had been lacking when she interrogated me. Maybe she thought I didn’t need soothing.
“Trina, I’d like to see your face, dear. Can you come out from under the covers?”
I held my breath, looking from one authority figure to the other.
“Trina, dear, let’s talk. I’d like to help you.”
Glancing at her partner, she shrugged her shoulders.
What kind of shrug was that? Was that an “our work here is done” shrug?
“You fellows can leave,” Ms. Griffin said to the police.
Shit.
I walked them back down the stairs and out the door and returned to Trina’s room.
The social worker and her partner were standing outside the door, which was closed. “I can see there is a problem,” she said.
“She hit me,” I said. “A danger to others. That’s the criterion.”
Ms. Griffin placed her card in my palm. “I thought you said she pushed you.”
“I—”
“I can’t justify taking her in. Not today. Keep in touch.”
They went away quickly. And then it was Trina and me: Trina, an irritated wasp; me, the hand that had swatted her.
“Piece of shit.”
She came out from under the covers feeling emboldened, empowered. The authorities hadn’t taken her away. She was invincible.
Trina screamed until she was hoarse, until I slammed my bedroom door in her face. Any other time, the fight would have exhausted and demoralized me. But not now. Means to an end. Keep screaming, I thought. Only a matter of time and then everything will go my way. Just like potty training.
WITHIN A WEEK I HAD BECOME TELEPHONE FRIENDS WITH Hilda Griffin. I called her every other day to check in, to update, to prove to her that I wouldn’t go away. She came on duty after three, and when she was in the field I contacted her by cell phone. After the second call, I felt I had an ally. By the third call, she recognized my voice. She told me about her children, the son who started wetting the bed after her divorce. When she didn’t hear from me after three days, because I was busy, she called me.
Trina’s rage blew out in twenty-four hours, just another thing she couldn’t hold on to. Her general mood was low-grade edginess, a fever that rose and fell. At night I could hear her calling people on the telephone, roaming the hallway, at times singing. She never slept. During the day, she sat at the breakfast room table and wrote.
“It’s a novel,” she snarled when I asked her about it. Around her feet were wads of paper, literary rejects.
She wouldn’t allow me to read her work-in-progress, but I fished several of the balled-up sheets out of the trash can and stole a look. Trina had always been a good writer, but my new reality cautioned me to expect gibberish. To my surprise, the thoughts she’d set down on paper were clear. Actually, her writing made more sense than she did. Everything’s not gone, I thought. It’s not as though her mind burned up in a fire.
She can begin again. She’ll be a famous author!
The next few days settled into a pattern that, if not predictable, was somewhat comforting to me. When I left in the morning, Trina would be writing at the table, her head bent down over her tablet, oblivious to everything around her. When I returned home, she’d still be there. Almost immediately, she’d retreat to her room, where she would play music, watch television, and talk on the telephone until morning.
At least once a day, Clyde called from Seattle—where his show was being temporarily broadcast live from some conservative round table conference—wanting to know Trina’s every move. He was like the old me, anxious to interpret every sign as progress. On the third day, he said that Trina’s relative silence was an indication that she was calming down. I informed him that depression was the flip side of mania.
“You’re so negative!” he shouted.
“This isn’t going to go away, Clyde.”
“Maybe you don’t want it to go away. Maybe you don’t want her to be well, so you won’t be alone.”
“I’m not alone, you asshole. You’re the one who’s about to be alone.”
So much for our truce.
I called Ms. Griffin twice that week to report that my daughter seemed unable to stop writing, that she looked disheveled and didn’t bathe. I exaggerated as much as seemed plausible and tried not to think about how betrayed Trina would have felt if she’d heard me. Ma Missy had always told me not to put my business in the street. But that was an old rule, from my old life, about as useful to me as a training bra. The worse off I made Trina seem, the sooner she’d get help. So I didn’t tell Ms. Griffin that the house seemed peaceful with Trina’s overzealous productivity.
I rummaged around in the cabinet. Felt the hidden bottles with careful fingertips. There. Right there. My hand grasped the slender neck of the bottle. Chivas. Jesus. I remembered Ma Missy handing it to me. Not a gift, a warning. Don’t ever open it; don’t be like her.
I placed the scotch carefully on the kitchen counter and then, just when I was about to walk up the stairs, changed my mind and put it on the desk in my office. My child was smart enough to recognize bait when she saw it, even if she couldn’t refuse it. When it was all over, I didn’t want her to feel stupid on top of everything else.
It took three days for Trina to find the bottle. But once she did, it didn’t take long for her to empty it. It was hard to imagine her drinking scotch, one of my mother’s drinks. It was so old school, so East Coast and wintery.
The days of scotch passed quietly. By the third day, when it was all gone and she’d begun to crave the flavor and depend upon the way the alcohol temporarily stilled her mind, she was roaring, a typhoon unleashed upon dry land. Upstairs in her room, she frantically dialed number after number, slamming down the phone again and again. I waited.
On the fourth morning, I woke up feeling chilled. When I checked Trina’s room, she wasn’t there. She wasn’t downstairs either. But the front door was wide open.
I heard her before I saw her. Beyond the driveway, she was walking up the street, her feet bare, a towel wrapped around her.
My instinct was to rush toward her, gently guide her back into the house. Instead, I went inside, picked up the phone, and called SMART. When Hilda Griffin appeared with the police, I heard them ask Trina the date. She stared at them and began reciting the months of the year.
“How old are you, sweetheart?” Hilda Griffin asked.
“I’m sixteen,” Trina said.
Thirty minutes later, a subdued Trina was in the back of their car, and I was following them in mine. She was gravely disabled, the social worker declared. She had met the criteria. The seventy-t
wo-hour hold was about to begin, and I knew it would be extended to two weeks. I called Herbert Swanson at the office of the public guardian, and he promised that he would send someone to interview Trina immediately. Breathe easy, I told myself. A court date will be set. Relax. Dr. Bellows will testify.
I called Clyde. “I’m going for conservatorship, and don’t you dare try to stop me.”
He sighed. When he spoke, he sounded weary. “We have to talk about this,” he said.
I knew him well enough not to push it any further, to leave Clyde with a psychological victory or at least with no clear-cut win for me. When I hung up, my mind felt peaceful.
And now the nightmare will end.
Only it didn’t quite go like that. Dr. Bellows was at a week-long seminar in Toronto. Trina was a model patient. She took her meds, actually swallowed them—the Haldol, the mood stabilizer, the antipsychotic—and calmed down almost immediately. She made three bracelets for me in arts and crafts and attended groups each day. My newly medicated daughter had great insights that she shared in a well-modulated voice. Her treating psychiatrist was a resident from Bombay, who wore bright green sneakers with his lab coat. He was impressed with Trina’s articulation, her beauty, her obvious intellect. He wouldn’t give me Dr. Bellows’s number in Toronto. No one would.
One morning, the resident said to me, “Mrs. Whitmore, I don’t know that I can justify keeping her here any longer than two weeks.”
I had tracked him down while he was making his rounds, waited for him outside the doors of the locked facility. When the nurse buzzed him out, I was there.
“She needs help. Please. I’m trying to become her conservator. Dr. Bellows said that he’d support me.”
“The locked facilities are awful. I’m sure you don’t want your daughter going to one of those places. You probably couldn’t live with yourself if you sent her there.”
“You don’t know what I’m living with now. You have to keep her here. You have to help me.”
“We’ll see, but the way it’s going, she will probably be out in two days. I have to go now, Mrs. Whitmore.” He started walking away from me.
One hour, one joint, and she’d be right back where she was before.
“This isn’t working,” I told Bethany that night. “I can feel it slipping out of my hands. They’re going to let her out of the hospital.”
“You haven’t been listening to me at all,” she said.
“I’m listening now.”
15
STEAL AWAY, STEAL, AWAY, STEAL AWAY HOME. I AIN’T GOT long to stay here. Gabriel Prosser. Denmark Vesey. Nat Turner. Harriet Tubman. Did they all begin with secret meetings and whispered plans? Did they change their minds more than once? To steal away home was more than a notion.
Halfway to the restaurant, I turned my car around and headed home. What was I doing, speeding down Wilshire to meet a woman I knew to be operating more on rage than common sense? But then I thought about those bright green sneakers, walking away from me in such a big hurry, and turned around again. Whatever Bethany had to offer, at least it wouldn’t involve being at the mercy of people who just didn’t give a damn.
This time the meeting was in the back booth of a coffee shop on Wilshire, down the street from the behemoth that housed Children’s Services. Four o’clock was an odd time to go to a restaurant, but I hadn’t eaten since my breakfast muffin, so I was hungry. Bethany was there with a tall pale man named Brad. She introduced me as Keri. When he said hello, his voice was low, a strong voice. His handshake was dry and warm, his grip filled with steady pressure. He had sandy hair and darker eyebrows, elegantly arched. He looked clean and honest, a bit boyish. His chin jutted forward a little.
We ordered food—appetizers, entrees, coffee, and desserts—as if we were coworkers having a friendly dinner, perhaps celebrating someone’s promotion. We chatted about the headlines and the weather, about movie stars and the Lakers. Brad didn’t clink a glass with a spoon or clear his throat, but I felt the moment that defined our purpose. He put his two hands on the table. They were large hands, with clean, square fingernails and no rings.
His voice was just above a whisper. “We are a group of psychologists and psychiatrists who believe that the mental health system in this country is a sad joke,” Brad said. “All the members of our group have worked in hospitals and in a variety of mental health institutions; we’ve experienced firsthand the wasted opportunities for people to recover.” He leaned in. “Recovery is possible for people when the right conditions are present. We assist the relatives, mostly the parents, of people who need an intervention but are too sick to accept help. We forgo the nine-one-one, the SMART people, the conservatorship. We transport the ill person to a safe place: our safe place. Once the patient is there, the relative leaves and we take over.”
“What do you—”
Brad held up his hand, his face suddenly stern.
“What we do is illegal. We could all go to jail. Kidnapping is involved at times. It is not for the faint of heart, and there are no guarantees.”
The longer he talked, the more alive he became. I tried to read his face. Committed man on a mission? Kook ready to spontaneously combust? Reincarnation of John Brown? How would Clyde have reacted to him? Would he consider him a tool of the Left or the Right?
Why should I trust him?
“But we have helped people begin the healing process. We have turned some lives around. I think you have met one of the people we helped. Continue?”
He and Bethany looked at me.
“Yes,” I said.
“We have a facility in a remote area. A small staff runs the place. We’re completely self-sufficient. We work with no more than sixteen patients at a time. Our patient-to-staff ratio is four to one. That’s a lot of care. We are expensive: twelve thousand dollars a month. The average stay is six months to a year.”
I think I must have gasped, because Brad stopped speaking, and he and Bethany looked at me. Maybe he was just a salesman, a hope huckster without a Bible. At $12,000, hope was high. Was this a con? I looked at Bethany.
“Anyone who comes to the facility must be prepared to make a commitment,” Brad said.
“I’m not rich.”
“Most people aren’t.”
Brad signaled the waitress, then handed her a credit card. When the woman disappeared, he turned to me. “We have two openings now. Can’t guarantee how long those slots will be available.”
“Where is this place?”
Brad shook his head. “If you decide that we’re the right group for you and your loved one, you’ll find out that kind of information on a need-to-know basis.”
“You do use medications?”
Brad nodded. “Of course. Medication compliance is what we instill in our patients. For most, it’s the key to leading a productive life. But we try to prescribe the lowest dosage possible, in order to minimize weight gain and other side effects. We incorporate an array of nontraditional methods as well, including acupuncture, homeopathy, exercise, meditation, and proper nutrition.”
“My daughter drinks. She smokes marijuana, and maybe—”
“Most people with brain diseases self-medicate. It’s to be expected. We have very strong substance abuse counselors.”
The waitress returned and handed Brad his card and receipt. He stood up.
“You have a lot of questions,” he said once the waitress had left. “I don’t want to answer them just yet. It might be better if you meet some more parents and speak with them. Would you like that?”
“When?” I was multiplying twelve thousand dollars times six months in my head, calculating the equity in my home, the balance in my savings account, the value of my stock portfolio, and the little apartment building I owned in Atlanta. How fast could I liquidate?
Brad extended his hand. “Time is short. Stay here for a while. Some other people will come to speak with you. Good meeting you.”
“How did you find out about this place?” I asked
Bethany as Brad walked away.
“A friend,” she said.
“Have you seen any of the people they’ve helped?”
“They’ve helped me already. Some of their people are the ones who watch Angelica for me.”
“I don’t have that kind of money.”
“Talk to some of the other parents.”
“But if I don’t have the money—”
“Just talk to—” Bethany stopped as a colorfully dressed woman slid into the booth beside her.
“My name is Carleen. Brad said you might want to speak with me.”
Bethany didn’t appear surprised, but I was taken aback at seeing someone so soon. I didn’t know whether I wanted to speak with Carleen. A part of me felt angry and violated that Brad had all the control and things were happening so fast. All I knew about him was his first name. Maybe he was who he said he was, and maybe he was some crackpot who was trying to suck me in.
But I smiled at Carleen as she sat down. She was tiny, with a little thin nose and almost no lips. Her hands seemed to flutter as she spoke, mostly about her twin boys. They had been difficult children, even when they were very young. At eight years old, they started taking Ritalin. For a while they were better, almost controllable, but then they hit puberty and discovered weed, liquor, and Ecstasy. They were diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age seventeen. By that time their family life had become complete chaos. By twenty-one, they’d both been in and out of both hospitals and jails. At that time, she couldn’t imagine their lives improving. She said the program had saved her sons.
“Did you try to get conservatorship?” I asked.
“Sure. I have conservatorship now. They were in a locked facility for a year. They seemed better. I let them come out. Took them to another facility. No locks. They weren’t able to maintain their sobriety. They’d leave the premises and get high. After a while, they stopped taking the meds. Everything started all over again. A friend told me about Brad’s program. I made the arrangements, and it’s been five—no, six—years, and they are still medication-compliant and drug-free.”
For a minute I couldn’t speak. It was bewildering to think that conservatorship didn’t bring complete deliverance.