Jonathan Kellerman - Breakdown

Not before I had a look at her screen.

Watching a movie. Something with shields and lances and lots of blood.

I kept going.

She said, “What’s the status?”

I said, “Quo.”

“Huh? Oh, ha ha. So when are you coming back?”

“When will she be discharged?”

Back to the iPad; she touched a screen. “Three p.m. tomorrow.”

“I’ll be here before then.”

“What if there’s an event?”

“An event?”

“A problem.”

Why not just say that? “Your nurse has my number. Do you have any post-discharge plans?”

“Isn’t that your job?”

I walked past her.

“That’s it?” she called out.

“What more could there be?” I said.

“If you know of other patients who’d fit well with our program, you should tell them.”

I sat in the Seville, phoned the U.’s medical center, and asked for Dr. Nehru. The operator said, “We have three. Which one?”

“Psychiatry.”

“Hold, please.” Gypsy guitar music came on. “That’s Dr. Mohan Nehru. Would you like the number?”

I got Psychiatry Department voicemail, returned to the main exchange, and asked a new operator to page Nehru.

“If you’re a patient, there’s a message line—”

“I’m a colleague. Dr. Alex Delaware. It’s about a mutual patient.”

“Hold, please... yes, you’re on our list... Alexander... oh, you’re crosstown but... okay, looks like you’ve still got privileges here, one moment.”

Two nuevo flamenco instrumentals later: “He’s listed as here today but he’s not answering his page.”

“What specific service is he on?”

“We don’t have that level of information.”

The drive to Westwood was on my way home. I turned onto campus at the main southern entrance and made a left at the medical office complex. The health center spans both sides of the street. Bustling, today, like the mini-city it was.

Ravenswood Psychiatric Hospital was one of the newest, prettiest buildings in the complex, a six-story art-piece in limestone and copper endowed by and named after an industrialist whose child died from complications of anorexia. I parked using my faculty permit, clipped on my Western Peds badge, took the elevator to the fifth floor, and pushed the red button on the locked door of Adult Inpatient Psychiatric Services.

The med center has nearly a thousand beds, eighty of which are allotted to Ravenswood. Of those, twenty are pediatric, ten are for Alzheimer’s patients who agree to be researched in return for hope, and thirty-five are devoted to the U.’s rehab program for adolescent eating disorders, a service that brings in huge money.

That leaves fifteen beds for general psychiatric care, divided into an eight-bed voluntary ward for patients not much different from the rehabbers next door, and seven beds for 5150 commitments.

No surprise that Zelda had arrived when the place was full. LACBAR didn’t amount to much but if it hadn’t existed, she’d probably have been sent crosstown to a county-run human zoo with its own issues.

So maybe things had worked out for the best.

If I could do my best to find her somewhere to live tomorrow.

Get her settled and more coherent and willing to tell me where her son was.

Five years ago, she’d been a troubled but devoted mother. Shortly after that she’d lost her career and gone who-knew-where. One positive: Lou Sherman had stuck with her, maybe even after she’d lost her insurance. Not transferring her until he knew he was seriously ill.

But he hadn’t called me...

No one had shown up at the locked door so I pressed again. Several moments passed before a young nurse studied me through Lexan panels and buzzed herself out.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for Dr. Nehru.”

She scanned my badge. “Mike’s in the cafeteria, Doctor.”

“Thanks. Were you on last night?”

“I wasn’t. Why?”

“I just saw a patient who arrived here as a 5150 and got sent to a place over in mid-city. Dr. Nehru authorized it and I’m trying to get hold of the chart, see if he can offer any clinical advice.”

“There’s a hospital in mid-city?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “It’s a community mental health center with a limited inpatient facility.”

“Oh. Well, Mike’s eating lunch.”

The cafeteria was crowded with hordes of white-coated and scrub-suited people hoping for nutrition. Plenty of Indian males, at least two dozen.

Step one: Concentrate on doctors.

Step two: Focus on younger men, given Mohan “Mike” Nehru’s status as a resident.

That left five possibilities. I got myself a cup of coffee and began walking by each of them, trying not to be obtrusive as I read their badges.

M. M. Nehru, M.D., was my second target, a smooth-faced, clean-shaven man around thirty, sitting by himself, eating a huge burrito and sipping from a can of Coke as he played with his phone.

I settled across from him. He took a while to realize I was there. Just like Doyle-Maslow with her movie. Cyber-play does that, everyone on digital delay.

Finally, he looked up and I told him why I was there. He scanned my badge. “Sure, I remember her. The one we referred out. How’s she doing?”

“She’s mostly sleeping. Do you have time to chat?”

“Sure.” He pushed his burrito away.

“Don’t let me interrupt your meal.”

“I’m finished and it’s pretty much crap, anyway. So you’re with that administrator — Kirsten, whoever? The one with the big-time NIMH funds?”

“Not exactly.” I explained my original connection to Zelda Chase via Lou Sherman, how I’d ended up at LACBAR.

He said, “So she worked on you, too. I knew Dr. Sherman, had him in med school, good teacher. When I saw his name in the chart I said, ‘Too bad he’s not around anymore.’ He died, right?”

“Two years ago.”

“Yeah. I think I heard that.”

“Any way for me to see his notes?”

“We can go upstairs and get a copy but don’t expect too much. Basically, he transferred her with no treatment notes except for the meds regimen he had her on.”

“What’s that?”

“He started her on Haldol, upped the dosage a couple of times, then switched after a year to Ativan, so that’s what I went with. I gave her a serious dose before sending her off, figuring she’d probably habituated and would need it to stay calm during transport.”

He looked at me. “That work out okay?”

“No problems on the trip and she’s sleeping peacefully.”

“Okay, good, so what’s your plan?”

“Don’t have one,” I said. “She’ll be discharged tomorrow and so far she’s done nothing to justify another 5150.”

“So she gets kicked to the curb. Same old story.”

“Why was she committed in the first place?”

“Good question,” said Mike Nehru. “It’s not like she was waving a gun at anyone. What the cops said is she created a disturbance in someone’s backyard and when they came to get her she freaked out and the cops felt threatened, quote unquote — pretty wimpy, no? Like one of those spoiled-ass college students, everything’s a trigger. They said they wouldn’t press criminal charges if we cooled her off so I figured I was doing her a favor and we did have a bed, which isn’t always the case.”

He drank soda. “What’s the place like where she is now?”

I described LACBAR.

Mike Nehru said, “What a bullshit artist. She made it sound as if they were well established.”

“She’s self-serving but the room isn’t bad for what it is and there’s a full-time nurse assigned to her who knows what he’s doing.”

“So it worked out,” said Nehru. “But if she asks me again I’ll tell her where to shove it.”