“No, Mr. Schofield, not if her behavior is disruptive to the functioning of the school.”
It figures that even the law is not on our side. But if I come get her, what do I do with her? Bring her home? Then what? It suddenly hits me that I can’t go on living like this. It’s killing all of us, Janni included. We have struggled for more than a year on our own. This has to end.
“What happens if I don’t?”
“Then we’ll have to call the sheriff’s office and report her abandoned.”
This shocks me. I wonder if she is bluffing. Is this some kind of sick threat to get me to come take Janni off their hands? “You’d really do that?”
“Yes, if I have to, but I’d much rather you come and get her.”
I pull the phone away from my ear and rub my face. To my great shock, part of me wants Mrs. Fitzgerald to call the police. I run through what would happen. Janni would be turned over to the care of the state. She would become their problem, whether they liked it or not. Maybe then she would finally get the help she needs. But she would be without us. She is my daughter. While I don’t think she can feel fear anymore, I can’t let go of the slim possibility that if I let her be taken by the state, one day she might snap out of this and her mommy, daddy, and little brother won’t be there.
“Mr. Schofield, are you still there?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“Are you coming?”
“I’m coming.”
I GET OUT of my car and see Mrs. Fitzgerald exiting the school to meet me. “I was worried you weren’t coming.”
“I said I was coming,” I say, with no pretense of politeness.
“I wasn’t sure from our phone conversation,” she says as we enter the building.
I always come. I am her father.
“What happened?”
She opens the door to the main office. “She started running around the school, trying to throw herself through doors and windows.”
Through doors and windows? I think skeptically. This woman is really trying to sell this thing. She probably just ran out of the classroom in such a rage that she couldn’t control her motor skills enough to get the door open, like what happens when she’s in time-out at home.
Mrs. Fitzgerald is still speaking. “… like they weren’t even there. We were terrified she was going to hurt herself.”
“Where is she now?” I ask as we enter the main office. But before she can answer, I see Janni through the window of Mrs. Fitzgerald’s office, or what used to be her office.
“It took us a while, but we finally managed to herd her into my office. We removed everything she can throw, so she can’t hurt herself. She’s safe for now, but we need to talk about what we’re going to do.”
I peer in and see Janni standing next to the desk, gesturing to a woman I’ve never seen before, who is sitting in Mrs. Fitzgerald’s chair, drawing a picture on a piece of paper. Another woman I don’t know is leaning up against the rear door of the office. I look around the room. The office, usually filled with books and old toys, is now barren, just like the quiet room back at Alhambra.
Instinctively, I reach for the door handle, but it won’t move.
Mrs. Fitzgerald comes over, keys in her hand. “The door is locked for her own protection.”
This is no exaggeration. This is really happening. They are scared enough either for Janni or themselves to actually lock her in an office.
She unlocks the door and I rush in. “Janni, are you okay?”
The woman sitting next to Janni, drawing, looks up and smiles. “Hi, I’m Karen, one of the district psychologists.”
“I’ve instructed two people to be with Janni at all times,” Mrs. Fitzgerald tells me.
“We’re drawing a picture of 400,” Janni tells me, rubbing her hands together excitedly. I stare at her, trying to understand the happy girl I’m seeing inside this bare, guarded office.
“We’re doing fine.” Karen smiles up at me, showing none of the fear Mrs. Fitzgerald does. “She’s telling me what 400 the Cat and Magical 61 look like, and I’m drawing them for her.”
“Magical 61 is here,” Janni says happily. “She came to meet me.”
Jesus Christ, Janni. You are locked in an office. Don’t you realize that? She is acting like this is completely normal.
“Do you want to see Magical 61?” Janni asks me. “She’s a girl like me, except she’s eight.”
A girl like me. There is no one like you. That’s the problem.
“She’s right there.” She points behind me, but I don’t bother turning around.
“We should talk,” Mrs. Fitzgerald whispers in my ear.
“I don’t want to leave Janni.”
“It’s okay,” Karen says, “Janni’s teaching me about all her friends.”
This surprises me. She didn’t say “imaginary friends.” Only “friends.” I have never met anybody other than me who treats them as real.
“We can talk in the principal’s office,” Mrs. Fitzgerald tells me.
“Janni, I’ll be in the next room if you need me, okay?”
“Okay.” She turns her attention back to Karen’s drawing.
I walk into the principal’s office, dulled. Mrs. Fitzgerald follows me, as does Wendy, the Oak Hills School psychologist, closing the door behind us.
I stand, unsure what to do.
“You can sit down,” Mrs. Fitzgerald tells me and sits down in the principal’s chair.
“Well, she seems okay now,” I say.
“We have every school psychologist in the district here,” Mrs. Fitzgerald says.
“Well, maybe they can go back to class with her, help her through the rest of the day. That’s what she needs. At home she’s fine as long as I give her the one-on-one attention,” I babble.
“She can’t go back to class, Mr. Schofield.”
Her tone shocks me like ice water down my back.
“I can’t let her back in school like this.”
I stare, blankly. They don’t just want me to take her home. They want me to keep her there.
“When can she come back?” I ask.
“Whenever she is no longer a threat to herself or others.”
I look down at my legs. I can’t believe this is happening. I feel like I got switched into someone else’s body by mistake.
“She can’t come to school like this, when she’s this unstable,” Mrs. Fitzgerald continues.
“It took the entire staff to chase her down. Teachers had to leave their classrooms to help. We had to lock down the classrooms. We can’t go on like this.”
“Neither can we.” I want to cry, but no tears will come.
“She’s suspended from Oak Hills until she stabilizes or we can get her transferred to the SED classroom,” Mrs. Fitzgerald says.
I put my head in my hands. “How long will that take?”
“We need to have another IEP,” she replies.
This is my fault. I was so terrified of her being labeled and marginalized that I refused to allow a transfer. And now this has happened.
I look up. “What you just saw? That’s what we live with every day. Just last month she tried to jump out of her bedroom window. It was only because my friend was there that she didn’t succeed.”
Mrs. Fitzgerald says nothing. I realize I’m begging her. For what, I don’t know. Help. Please, somebody help us.
“If I take her, nothing will change,” I say quietly. “We will go home and it will just be the same.”
“So you are not going to take her?” Mrs. Fitzgerald asks, seemingly shocked. “You realize we’ll have to call the police?”
I look down, unable to bear what I’m considering. “What will happen to her if I let the police take her?”
I can feel Mrs. Fitzgerald and Wendy looking at each other. They weren’t expecting this.
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Fitzgerald answers. “I assume they’ll turn her over to the care of the county. I don’t know what happens after that.
”
I can’t bring myself to look them in the eye. Maybe out of shame. In my wildest dreams, I never thought it would come to this. I thought I would always be there for her.
I even came here today intending to take her back home, but now that the moment is here, I can’t do it. I can’t just take her home and go on trying to live. We are not functional.
“Mr. Schofield, what do you want to do?”
Every instinct in my body tells me to get up and take Janni home. But if I do, nothing will change. I’ve tried to save Janni all her life and I can’t. I’m not enough. She needs more.
“Call the cops,” I say quietly.
I AM NUMB.
Through the open door of the principal’s office, I hear an LA County sheriff’s deputy talking to Mrs. Fitzgerald.
“She’s six years old!” he says. “I didn’t know she was only six! I can’t put a six-year-old in the back of my car. It’s designed for criminals! There isn’t even padding back there!”
“The father doesn’t want to take her home. He doesn’t think he can safely take her in the car.”
The deputy comes into the room. “Mr. Schofield, I’m Deputy Dorman. I understand you don’t want to transport your daughter for safety reasons, but I can call an ambulance to take her.”
I slowly lift my eyes from the 9mm Beretta strapped at his side up to his face. “If you call an ambulance, they’ll just take her to the nearest hospital, which is Henry Mayo. Henry Mayo doesn’t have a psych unit. I know. We were just there on Monday.” My voice is flat, robotic.
He looks from Mrs. Fitzgerald to me, then back again, clearly exasperated. He doesn’t know what to do. I understand. Neither do I anymore.
He sighs. “Okay. I’m gonna be honest with you. I have no idea what to do in this kind of situation. I’ve never dealt with anything like this.”
I start to fear that he, too, will leave us to struggle on alone, just as everyone else has.
Dorman gets out his cell phone. “I tell you what. I’m going to make some calls. We’ll figure something out.” He puts the phone to his ear. “I’m not going to leave until this situation is resolved, okay?”
I fight the desire to get up and embrace him. He isn’t leaving. He isn’t passing the buck. Nine months ago, two LA County sheriff’s deputies were all ready to arrest me for allegedly molesting Janni. Now this deputy is my only hope.
Janni comes bounding into the room, followed by Karen.
“She wanted to come see you,” Karen tells me.
“That’s fine.” I reach out to Janni, trying to pretend like this isn’t happening, like I am not actually looking for someone to take her. “Hey, sweetie.”
Karen sits down next to me. “How are you doing?”
“Not well.”
“I can imagine.”
Janni laughs at an empty spot on the carpet of the office. “Magical 61 is so funny. She’s dancing in the office. Magical 61, you can’t dance here!”
Deputy Dorman breaks off from the phone for a moment. “Hey, Janni. Who is Magical 61?”
Janni turns to him, as if seeing him for the first time. “She’s my friend.”
“Where is she?”
Janni turns and points at an empty corner of the office. “She’s right there.”
“Is Magical 61 real?”
Janni’s smile evaporates. “No.”
“So she’s not real.”
“No.”
Karen leans over to me. “Did you teach her to say that?” she whispers.
“Say what?” I’m barely able to comprehend anything anymore.
“Answer that way when somebody asks her if her friends are real?”
Despite myself, I laugh. “There is no controlling what Janni says.”
“I just wondered if you had coached her to do that.”
“No,” I chuckle. “Why?”
Karen lowers her voice even further. “Because it sounds like a canned answer, like she is saying what she thinks she is supposed to say. What’s her diagnosis?”
“Well, it was bipolar with psychotic features, but now it is psychosis NOS.”
She leans in even closer. “That surprises me.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve worked with adults like her before, and Janni’s behavior looks like classic schizophrenia to me.”
I stare at her. It feels like the clouds just parted and God spoke. Even Dr. Howe refused to apply the word directly to Janni, as if by not using the word we could all pretend it didn’t exist.
“Thanks, Bert,” Deputy Dorman says into his phone. “I really appreciate this.” He hangs up and comes over to us. “There’s this county service, the Psychiatric Emergency Team. I’ve never worked with them before, but they come when we have noncriminal psychiatric cases. They have a main number, but if you call, all you get is a message. I had to call pretty much everybody I’ve ever worked with.” He smiles. “But I got a cell number for one of the team members.”
LOS ANGELES COUNTY is the most populated county in the United States, with more than nine million people, spread out over an area larger than the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. There are eight two-person psychiatric emergency teams, or “PET Teams,” for the entire county, or one team for every 1.2 million people. I didn’t even know they existed.
Thirty minutes later, a small Hispanic woman named Maria arrives, alongside a huge, hulking white guy named Paul, both wearing county badges on chains around their necks.
Maria goes into Mrs. Fitzgerald’s office to talk to Janni while Paul waits with me.
Paul’s right eye is swollen, filled with blood. The right side of his face is purple with the largest bruise I’ve ever seen.
“What happened to your eye?” I ask.
Paul looks down at me. “I walked into a door,” he answers, never batting an eye.
I realize the purpose of the PET team is to take people to psychiatric care, even when they don’t want to go.
“Looks like that door put up a fight.”
His face remains impassive. “Sometimes they do.”
Maria comes out.
“So what’s the situation?” I ask her, worried. Judging by the look on Paul’s face, they’re used to raving lunatics. I’m not sure they’ll take Janni’s situation seriously.
“We’re gonna take her,” she replies.
I breathe a sigh of relief.
“Where we going?” Paul asks.
Maria looks up at me. “Normally we would take her to the closest acceptable facility.”
“That’s Alhambra,” I say.
“Probably.”
“No. I don’t want her to go there. It’s UCLA or nothing.” I am dead set about this. Two hours ago I was ready to give her up to the county. But now maybe, just maybe, the sun is breaking through. “Every time we call UCLA, they always say there are no beds available.”
Maria smiles. “UCLA has beds.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know.”
Janni comes into the office, escorted by Karen. She’s still actively playing with Magical 61.
“Hey, Janni,” Paul booms down to her.
“Hi,” Janni answers. “Do you want to meet my friend, Magical 61?” If Janni notices Paul’s face, she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t seem afraid at all.
“Do you want to take a ride with us?” Paul asks.
Janni stops, suddenly showing concern. “Can Magical 61 come, too?”
“If she doesn’t mind squeezing in the back with you and me,” Maria answers.
“She doesn’t.”
“Okay, then.”
Outside, I see their car. It looks like an unmarked police car, with a barrier between the front seat and the back.
“Janni, I’ll be right behind you,” I call as Janni gets in, followed by Maria.
• • •
THE ER HAS moved since we were here last April. The new Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center has opened. From the outside,
it looks like a Hyatt hotel, not a hospital. I spot Maria and Paul’s car.
I leave my car in the valet line, not bothering to take a ticket. If somebody wants to steal it, they can. I’m beyond caring.
I rush into the ER waiting room, expecting they’ll already be back inside the ER.
“This way,” I hear Paul call out from the waiting room.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Waiting.”
This makes no sense. I look over at the triage station. An old woman in a wheelchair is complaining she’s been waiting for hours. The triage nurse is trying to placate her, along with an ER rep.
“January?” the triage nurse calls.
Janni screams. “I’m not January!” She starts hitting the triage nurse.
“Janni …” I try to intervene, but Janni is hitting her continuously.
Paul grabs her in his arms and picks her up. “We need to get her back,” he says.
The nurse is so shocked she can barely nod. “Okay.”
Paul carries Janni, who’s hitting and kicking him. He doesn’t react. I bring up the rear. The nurse leads us through the ER. I keep expecting her to turn into a room, but we keep walking, deeper and deeper into the ER, all the way to the very end, to the last room, which we enter.
Inside are two smaller rooms. As I pass the first, I see a man lying on the bed with a handcuff on his wrist, attached to the bed.
“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.
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