Antoinette Heugten - Saving Max

“As I mentioned, Max will require frequent, lengthy hospitalizations over the course of his lifetime due to recurrent psychotic breaks and the extreme incidents of violence we have observed and anticipate. I must tell you that with each successive break, Max’s memory and his ability to assess reality will deteriorate exponentially, which unfortunately will compound the severity of his schizophrenia. It will most likely be impossible for him to hold a job or live independently as a result of these breaks. We must also be ever-vigilant with respect to the possibility of future suicide attempts. Unfortunately, Max is fully aware that his mind is compromised. We believe that this knowledge has driven him to consider suicide as the only option.” She looks at Danielle. There seems to be real sadness in her eyes. “As such, we strongly recommend that Max be remitted to our residential facility for at least a year, probably longer. He will undergo extensive psychotherapy so we can help him accept his condition.”

Danielle struggles to absorb what Reyes-Moreno is telling her, but it’s like trying to process the news that you’ve got terminal cancer. Her mind is frozen, unavailable. She shakes her head.

“Danielle,” Reyes-Moreno says softly, stretching out her hand. “Please let us help you deal with this.”

She jerks back and stares bullets into Reyes-Moreno. “Leave me alone. I don’t believe it. I’ll never believe it.”

Reyes-Moreno’s gentle voice is relentless. “… so hard at first … terribly severe in his case … long-term residential options … some medications … Abilify, Saphris, Seroquel … new electroshock therapies …”

All she can think of is that she has to get out of there. She runs to the door without a backward glance, but can’t find the knob. She needs the knob.

“Danielle, please listen—”

“Not to this, I won’t,” she snaps. She opens the door, strides into the hallway, finds a restroom, and slams the door. She grabs the thick, curled edge of the washbasin and sinks to her knees. The cold porcelain feels white and holy on her forehead. Her mind is in a wild panic. If she believes what they say, then everything black and horrible that has crept into her mind at the bleakest moments—and passionately denied—has come true. If she believes what they say, Max will have no life at all.

For one impossible moment, she lets herself feel that. What flows is a thick rush of hot lava, a keening that roils from her soul, dark and sick. She forces herself to stand up and stare at this woman with black tar under her eyes, this blotched face made ugly by knowledge and fear, this…. mother of a crazy child. Mother of a child with no hope. She curses God for the beautiful blue light He gave her this morning. She curses Him for what He’s done to her boy. Stones, stones—all stones.

“Stop it,” she hisses. She has to think, be clear, find a solution. She splashes cold water on her face and tries to breathe, but psychiatric hospitals are vacuums. You’re not supposed to breathe fresh air or feel the sun on your face. You’re supposed to be in a place where other people aren’t. A place where you can be controlled every minute. Where you can be watched and drugged—kept away from normal people and the entire normal world. In a place that is always painted white. The color of a blank. The wiped slate. A place that reduces you, erases the sick part of you and, along with it, the part that makes you human and precious—the part that permits you to feel joy and give joy in return. A quiet, unchallenging world, hermetically sealed with a thick, black ring around it. A place that doesn’t keep the dangers of the world from you, but your dangers from the world. A place where you can look at yourself in the mirror and see the truth—one that imprisons you for life.

She grasps the cool sink and stares once more into the mirror. She will not give in to this. She can’t. Max needs her.

But the mirror tells her there’s no way back. No way back to the time when she believed that someone could put it all back together and make it right. When she believed that even if everyone in the world told her it could never be made right, she would still find a way. No way back to the perfect, soft skin of his tiny, precious body, or the joy in his eyes when she first held him in her arms; his exquisitely gleeful gum smile; his obvious perfection in innocence—limitless in his possibilities. As the mirror blurs and blackens in front of her, the woman she is and the quintessence of that child disappear. The baby is shattered, splintered in the darkness. Cover the glass with a black shawl.

There’s been a death in the family.

Danielle awakens from a deep, useless sleep—the kind that affords no rest and is punctured with grotesque forms and fractured events that have no link or purpose. When she opens her eyes, her heart beats erratically—a bird shot out of the sky. She feels an amorphous panic; wonders dully if someone is chasing her. The panic is quickly replaced with stark terror. They think Max is irretrievably mentally ill. Her first urge yesterday was to run to him and hold him in her arms. But she can’t do that—not yet. If Max sees her eyes, he’ll know what he fears is true—that she, too, thinks he’s crazy. She never, ever, wants him to feel that.

She lay awake much of the night agonizing over every word Reyes-Moreno said. Danielle still doesn’t believe what she told her, particularly the bizarre behaviors they attribute to Max—behaviors she’s never seen. No matter how she slices it, there’s no way Max could be what they say he is. But what if she’s wrong? The right side of her brain tells her that denial is always the first response a parent has to devastating news about a special-needs child. She must do her best to divorce herself from either knee-jerk disbelief or the paralysis of emotionalism. She has to get back into lawyer mode and uncover the core facts they’ve based their diagnosis upon. Once pointed in the right direction, she’s a better fact finder than anyone she knows.

She jumps up and yanks on jeans and an old, gray sweatshirt. For the first time since they came to this dreadful place, she knows exactly where her compass is leading her.

Danielle crouches outside the rear wall of the Fountainview unit and swats mosquitoes from her neck. The night air is heavy, and tall grass forms a green nest around her. The steel back door stares at her, as if it knows of her intention.

She can’t believe she’s doing this. What if she gets caught? Even that begs the more basic question: What kind of a mother crawls around a psychiatric facility on her hands and knees in the pitch dark like some kind of card-carrying pervert? Danielle looks around. It would be just her luck if one of the security guards decides that now is the perfect time to make night rounds. She checks her watch. Ten fifty-two. There is only one night nurse on duty. At eleven, she usually sneaks a smoke in front of the unit until her maintenance man boyfriend arrives and enthusiastically feels her up in a dark corner. If Danielle is lucky, they will disappear into the woods for the fifteen minutes they apparently require to consummate their hot, savage passion. She knows this because she has often crept to Max’s window late at night—just to watch him sleep. It took some of the sting out of the parsimonious visits allotted her by Maitland.

The locked door beckons, but Danielle is paralyzed. This feels like life or death. She can find out about Max or turn around; go back to her room; and never know why Maitland insists that her son is crazy. Yesterday, Danielle demanded—and Reyes-Moreno unequivocally refused to provide—the underlying data upon which they based Max’s diagnosis. She knows that filing a lawsuit will get her nowhere. The hospital legal machine will find ways to hide the precise information Danielle needs. She has seen it happen far too many times. At that point, Danielle decided that she was entirely justified in getting it on her own.