Janni looks at the Legos, deciding if she wants to play, then comes over. I feel a surge of hope. First she missed Bodhi and now she’s actually engaging in play.
“What are you eating here?” Susan asks her.
“Toast and butter,” Janni answers.
“Anything else?” Susan asks, clearly concerned.
“No.”
Susan looks at me, irritated. “I told them she wouldn’t eat.”
All I care about is getting through this visit and it being a good one. Every good visit means maybe we’re getting out of whatever brought this on in the first place. I don’t want Susan to rock the boat.
“She’s not gonna starve,” I say.
“The rats don’t like Bodhi,” Janni suddenly announces without looking up from the Legos. “My seven rats. They’re scared of the big baby.”
“They don’t have to be scared of Bodhi,” I say. “Bodhi won’t hurt them. Can you tell them that Bodhi won’t hurt them?”
“I do.”
“And what do they say?” I ask.
Janni is trying to fit a block on the house I am building. “They won’t listen to me.”
“Janni, they will listen if you tell them to listen.”
She struggles to get a block on and throws it, then knocks over the box of Legos.
“Janni! Why did you do that? Come here and help me clean them up.”
“No.”
“So, Janni,” Susan asks, “how are the other girls here?”
“Fine.”
“Do you like any of them?”
“No.”
“Are they nice to you?”
“Yes, but I don’t like them.”
“Why not?”
“Janni, look!” I call, holding up my half-finished Lego house, trying to get her attention back.
“Do they have imaginations like you?” Susan persists.
“No,” Janni answers.
I give an exasperated sigh and glare at Susan. I know she doesn’t mean to, but I fear that all she is doing is reminding Janni of her differences from everybody else.
Janni moves over to Susan. She looks like she is going in for a hug, so I am not prepared when Janni raises her fist and hits Susan on the arm.
“Janni, no,” Susan says, but Janni keeps hitting.
Susan tries to take hold of Janni’s arms. “She needs Thorazine,” she says to me.
I step out to the nurses’ station. “Where’s Barb? Janni just hit Susan out of nowhere,” I say. “I don’t think the meds she’s on are enough.”
Barb comes around from the nurses’ station and enters the visiting room.
I follow, expecting that she wants to see for herself.
“Janni, did you just hit your mother?”
“Yes,” Janni answers without emotion.
Barb sighs. “Janni, you know the rules. There is no hitting. If you hit, you lose your visiting privileges.” She takes Janni by the hand and Janni screams.
Barb pulls harder, and another nurse joins her as Janni drops to the floor. “Janni, come on.”
To my immense shock they drag Janni out of the room. Every parental instinct urges me to leap forward and tell Barb to get her fat hands off my daughter.
“We don’t want her to leave,” I cry out. “I just wanted you to know the meds aren’t working.”
“Janni knows the rules,” Barb says through gritted teeth as she continues to drag the screaming and hitting Janni through the hallway. “Janni, we have to go to the ‘time-out’ room.”
“She can’t control it,” Susan cries. “That’s why she’s here.”
“Janni knows that behavior is not acceptable, don’t you, Janni?” Barb says.
Janni is still kicking and screaming, like she’s fighting for her life. And I, her father, am letting it happen.
“You need to leave now,” Barb tells us.
“We’ll wait,” Susan answers.
“She’s not coming back out. Visitation is over for her.”
“We drove a hundred miles to see her and we only get an hour!” Susan pleads.
Barb is unmoved. “She needs to learn there are consequences to her actions.”
“She needs more medication. She needs Thorazine!” Susan cries. But Bodhi starts to cry and Susan has to turn to him.
I see Barb reach for her keycard to open the time-out room.
“I love you, Janni,” I say weakly, but Janni doesn’t see me as the nurse tosses her down on the rubber mat. As Janni gets up to take another swing, Barb quickly slams the door, and it locks, leaving Janni screaming inside.
WE ARE SHOCKED when Barb calls to tell us they’re planning to discharge Janni on Thursday, only five days after she went in.
Immediately, the overwhelming and crippling sense of fear returns. She’s not ready. The violence still explodes out of nowhere. She’s still a threat to Bodhi. I’ve been waiting for a clear sign from Janni that she is better. I want to look into her eyes and feel like the violence is gone for good. But it isn’t. Whatever brought on the violence in the first place is still there. Even if Bodhi was the trigger, he is here to stay. We have done everything, to the point that Janni barely knows he exists. Jesus Christ, we barely let him make a sound if we can help it. We have gone as far as we can go in limiting his impact on Janni.
But in my heart of hearts I know it isn’t Bodhi. He may have been the final tipping point, but Janni has been changing before my eyes for years. I just didn’t want to admit it to myself.
And now Loma Linda is releasing her because they consider her stable enough to go home? They want us to pick her up earlier in the day, but we refuse, demanding to see the doctor. The doctor only sees parents on Thursdays during visiting hours.
“But she’s still violent!” Susan cries as we wait in Barb’s office for the doctor. “Nothing has changed. You haven’t even changed her medications.”
“Will it be perfect?” Barb says to us. “No, of course not. January is not an easy child.”
“But she is still a threat to Bodhi! How am I supposed to keep him safe?”
“You are going to have to just bite the bullet and be tougher with her,” Barb insists.
“I’d like to see you handle her with an infant in your arms!” Susan shoots back.
“Look,” Barb replies in a way that is meant to be soothing but comes off as condescending, “I raised children and had a very strong-willed child, too. Nobody ever said parenting was easy.”
“We never expected it to be ‘easy,’ ” Susan fires back, frustrated. “But we shouldn’t have to worry about her hurting Bodhi! We can’t live like this!”
Barb nods. “I think I hear the doctor outside. Let me bring him in to talk to you.”
She leaves, closing the door behind her.
Barb comes back in with the doctor, who looks like he just got back from shooting eighteen holes of golf. He’s tanned, wearing the kind of hideous plaid golfer pants that my grandfather used to wear when he was alive. He sits on the edge of Barb’s desk.
“I heard you wanted to see me?” he asks.
“Yes.” Susan launches into it. “You’ve made no med changes. In fact, you’ve done nothing at all and you’re releasing Janni.”
“I didn’t feel she needed any med changes,” he says and smiles. “In fact, I’m convinced that in six months she won’t be on any medication at all.”
I feel an immense sense of relief. He seems so sure of himself.
“What about schizophrenia?” Susan demands of him.
“I don’t see any evidence of schizophrenia. She engages with the nursing staff.”
“What about her violence?” She strikes back at him. “It’s still there. Does she have to kill Bodhi before you people will do anything?”
“Susan,” I say gently. I’m getting tired of her yelling at everyone. Or maybe I am just getting tired of the fight.
She turns on me. “You keep thinking they care, but they don’t. If she kills Bodhi, they’ll just say
‘How tragic’ and move on!”
“That’s not true,” Barb replies. “We care very much.”
“Let me ask you a question,” the doctor says to Susan. “She was at Alhambra for three weeks, right?”
Susan nods. “And they didn’t do a damn thing, either.”
The doctor nods understandingly, like he’s the doctor out of that famous Norman Rockwell painting. “And how long was she out before you brought her to UCLA?”
“Four days,” Susan answers.
The doctor sits back with a knowing look on his face. “So she was only out four days before you took her back to the hospital. What does that tell you?”
“It tells me she still isn’t any better, that maybe she has schizophrenia, but nobody will listen to her because of her age. I keep telling her to tell doctors the truth. She says she is telling you, but that you don’t believe her!”
“Why are you so convinced she has schizophrenia?” he asks.
“Because the only thing that stops her violence is Thorazine,” Susan answers.
“Thorazine is a sedative. It would stop anybody’s violence.”
“That’s not true. Janni has been on antipsychotics before and they did nothing. She ran around like she was on nothing at all,” Susan retorts.
I don’t know why I’m not speaking up and am letting Susan do all the arguing. Maybe I’m tired of the uncertainty. I’m tired of living in fear. I’m tired of nobody being able to fix this.
“I can’t speak to that,” the doctor responds, “but don’t you think four days is a pretty short time to be out in the world before bringing her back to the hospital?”
“We couldn’t handle her! She was out of control.”
The doctor softens his tone. “You know what my diagnosis of Janni is? Severe anxiety.” He sighs, like he’s trying to make us understand a difficult concept that we aren’t getting. “As adults, we forget what it’s like to be a kid. The world is a pretty scary place.”
“We’re scared of Janni harming her brother!” Susan says, exasperated.
“You said she was in Alhambra for three weeks and she liked it. She didn’t want to leave. Then she gets out, has a bad day, as kids do, as we all do, and you bring her straight back to the hospital,” the doctor says. “You know what that is teaching her?”
Susan stares at him, angrily waiting for his answer.
“It’s teaching her that when life gets too hard, run away. That’s why I think we don’t see the level of violence you describe here, although I don’t doubt it happens at home. She even likes it here. She’s told Barb and all the staff she likes it here.”
“Because she is with other kids who are like her,” Susan retorts.
The doctor shakes his head. “No, she likes it here because she doesn’t have to deal with problems in her world, like her feelings for Bodhi. I don’t doubt you care about her. You are both obviously very committed parents. But every time you bring her back to the hospital, all you’re doing is giving her a way of not dealing with life. That is how people become institutionalized. I used to see it when the state hospitals were around, and it was the same thing. It’s not like what you see in the movies. Most patients didn’t want to leave. They didn’t want to leave because life was easier on the inside.”
“She can’t control it,” Susan insists. “She says she can’t control it.”
The doctor shrugs. “Seems like she can control it when she wants to. The question is do the two of you ever actually ask her to control it or do you just accept that there is something wrong and there is nothing you can do about it?”
“We’ve been working with her since the day she was born!” Susan is nearly out of breath from yelling. “She was always different. She never slept as a baby. We had to take her out all day, every day, to get her enough stimulation so she would sleep a little. Even when she was sick, it didn’t slow her down at all. We still had to take her out.”
“Will you let the man speak?” I finally interject. “Getting angry isn’t going to solve anything.”
“They’re not doing anything!” Susan retorts. “They don’t listen to her.”
“How many times are we going to keep bringing her back to the hospital and get the same answer?” I demand. “Has it occurred to you that maybe we keep getting the same answer because maybe they are right?”
“Fine,” Susan says. “You believe these idiots if you want to.”
I wince. I know she is as frustrated as I am, but I hate it when she attacks the doctors so openly.
“So what do you propose we do?” I ask the doctor.
“Stand up to her,” he says simply.
“She doesn’t take no for an answer,” Susan says with hostility.
“She will eventually,” the doctor replies. “It is going to be tough, I won’t lie to you, but you have to stand up and hold your ground. Right now all she sees in you two is fear, and that creates fear in her. That is why she is lashing out. Stop being afraid and she will stop lashing out.”
“He’s right,” I say.
Susan glares at me. “What do you mean, ‘He’s right’?”
“We live in constant fear of her.”
“We live in fear because she tries to hurt Bodhi!”
“But she never actually has.”
“Because we stop her.” Susan is condescending.
“But we are the parents!” I say, pounding my chest. “We shouldn’t be living in fear of our own child!”
The doctor gently interjects. “I’m telling you, you need to get tougher on her. It’s going to be damn hard in the beginning, because you’re going to have to be tough with every infraction. Don’t give an inch. Let her know that her behavior is unacceptable.”
“We’ve tried that!” Susan shouts.
“No, we haven’t,” I answer her. “As soon as the violence started, we ran straight to a shrink. We never stood up to her.”
“You’re the one who is always giving in to her, just to keep the peace!”
“I was wrong.”
“Why are you so cocky all of a sudden?”
I don’t really know. Maybe it is because doctors keep telling me nothing is wrong with Janni, so Susan is the only other target I have. “I’m sick of being the one who does everything to keep this family going!”
“You don’t do everything! Who takes Janni so you can work?”
“And what do you do? Call me at work constantly, saying how you can’t handle it!”
Susan gives me a disgusted look, like I’m a worm. “You’re just perfect, aren’t you?”
The doctor reaches out and puts one hand on Susan’s shoulder and one on mine. “See what she is doing to both of you? She’s destroying your family. And letting her do it is not going to help any of you, most especially her. If you don’t stand up to her now, this will only get worse.”
He’s right. We’ve been living in fear and I’m tired of it. Janni is already headed down the path to being a juvenile delinquent. Everything she could be, all her potential, will be lost, and I will not let that happen. If I have to be the parent I never wanted to be, the ballbusting father who gives no quarter, I will do it. I will not let Janni throw her life away.
ONCE JANNI IS handed over to us, there is no more time for fighting. The focus is back to Janni. The simmering anger between Susan and me must be pushed down.
After completing the discharge from Loma Linda, we go to the nearby Red Lobster to celebrate Janni’s homecoming. Not that it feels anything like a celebration; rather it feels like trying to eat in the trenches of World War I, never knowing when the shelling is going to start again.
Susan sits across from me. Bodhi, in his car seat, sits in a sling at the edge of the table. Janni chooses to sit next to me like she usually does, although “sitting” is a stretch. She is bouncing around, standing up on the booth seat to look for her food. Every time I tell her to get down, she does, only to pick up an object like the saltshaker, preparing to throw it.
“J
anni, if you throw that, we are leaving right now,” I say, already trying to make the transition to “tough parent,” which doesn’t come easy to me. What I really want is to have a nice, peaceful dinner. Usually, in restaurants, I have to work constantly to engage her in something while we wait for the food, but not tonight. Tonight she’s going to have to wait.
Janni looks at me, trying to decide if I am serious. I give her a look that I am and she puts the saltshaker down. “But I’m hungry!”
“That’s no excuse for throwing something,” I reply.
“But I’m hungry,” Janni says again, as if this explains it. “The food is taking soooo long!”
The fact that the waitress only took our order five minutes ago and that a certain amount of time is needed to prepare it means nothing to Janni.
“Then have a biscuit.” I offer her one.
“No.”
“Then you aren’t that hungry.”
“I was a picky eater,” Susan says.
I glare at her. She’s not helping. If this is going to work, we need to be a united front. Janni can’t think one parent will give in when the other won’t. These are actually the first words Susan has spoken to me since we left Loma Linda.
The waitress brings cheese sticks and Janni grabs one.
“They’re going to be hot,” I tell Janni.
Janni ignores me, takes a bite, and then immediately opens her mouth and lets the half-chewed cheese stick fall from her mouth onto the floor under the booth.
“Hot!” Janni complains.
I sigh irritably. “I told you they’d be hot. You need to give them a few minutes to cool.”
Instead of waiting, Janni picks up another cheese stick, bites into it, and spits the pieces back out.
“Janni, I said to wait!”
“But I’m hungry!” she whines.
“What good is trying to eat them if they’re too hot? Just give them a minute to cool.”
Janni picks up yet another cheese stick, puts it in her mouth, complains it’s too hot, and spits it out.
“Janni,” I say, exasperated by her inability to wait for anything. “You’re wasting them!”
Janni abruptly slips underneath the booth and down onto the floor.
“Janni, what are you doing?” I demand.
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