“I think we need to talk about that,” Maxine said, standing at the end of the bed. She was wearing a pink sweater and jeans and looked almost like a kid herself. “I don't think that's a good idea,” she said honestly. She never lied to her patients. It was important that she told them the truth as she saw it. They trusted her because of it. “You took a lot of pills last night, Jason. I mean really a lot. You weren't kidding around this time.” She looked at him, he nodded, and then looked away. He was embarrassed now in the cold light of day.
“I was kind of drunk. I didn't know what I was doing,” he said, trying to brush it off.
“I think you did,” Maxine said quietly. “You took a lot more than last time. I think you need to take some time off now and think about it, work on it, do some groups. I think it's important that we deal with this, and I'm sure it's tough now with the holidays coming up, having lost your dad this year.” She had hit the nail on the head, and his mother stared at her with a look of panic. She looked as though she was about to jump out of her skin. Her own anxiety was sky high, and she was suffering the same things as her son, without the guilt. Jason being convinced he had killed his dad tipped the scale for him. Dangerously so. “I'd like you to go someplace where I've worked with kids before. It's pretty nice. The kids there are from fourteen to eighteen. Your mom can visit you every day. But I think we need to get a handle on what's happening now. I don't feel comfortable sending you home just yet.”
“How long?” he asked, sounding noncommittal and trying to be cool, but she could see the fear in his eyes. It was a scary thought for him. But his succeeding at his next suicide attempt frightened her even more. She had a lifetime commitment not to let that happen, if she could do anything about it. And often, she could. She wanted this to be one of those times, and to avert tragedy before it happened to them again. They'd had enough.
“Let's try it for a month. Then we'll talk, and see what you think and how you feel about it. I don't think you'll love it, but I think you might like it there.” And then she added, smiling, “It's coed.” He didn't smile in response. He was too depressed to care about girls right now.
“What if I hate it and don't want to stay?” He looked her in the eye.
“Then we'll talk.” If they had to, they could ask to have him committed by the courts, since he had just proven he was a danger to himself, but that would be traumatic for him and his mother. Maxine much preferred voluntary commitment, whenever possible. Jason's mother spoke up then.
“Doctor, do you really think …I was talking to my doctor this morning, and he was saying that we should give Jason another chance … he says he was drunk and didn't know what he was doing, and he just promised me that he won't do it again.” Maxine knew better than anyone that his promise wasn't worth a damn. And Jason knew it too. His mother wanted it to be something she could rely on, but she couldn't. Without question, her son's life was at risk.
“I don't think we can count on that,” Maxine said simply. “I'd like you to trust me on this,” she added quietly. She noticed that Jason wasn't arguing with her, his mother was. “I think your mom is upset that you won't be at home for Thanksgiving, Jason. I told her she can have Thanksgiving with you there. Visits are encouraged.”
“Thanksgiving's going to suck this year anyway, without my dad. I don't care.” He closed his eyes and laid his head back on his pillow, shutting them out. Maxine gestured to his mother to follow her outside, and as soon as they left the room, the private duty nurse went back in to sit with him. He would be closely watched at Silver Pines too. And at Silver Pines, the wards were locked, which was what Maxine knew Jason needed. Right now anyway, and maybe for a while.
“I think this is the right thing to do,” Maxine explained to her, as tears rolled down Helen's cheeks. “It's my strong recommendation. It's up to you, but I don't think you can protect him properly at home. You can't stop him from doing it again.”
“Do you really think he'll try?” His mother looked terrified.
“Yes, I do,” Maxine said clearly. “I'm almost certain of it. He's still convinced he killed his father. It's going to take time to get him past that idea. And in the meantime, he needs to be in a facility where he'll be safe. You won't get a moment's sleep if he's at home,” she added, and his mother nodded.
“My own doctor thought we could give him another chance. He said boys his age often do this for attention.” She was repeating herself, as though hoping to convince Maxine, who understood the situation far better than she.
“He meant it, Helen. He knew what he was doing. He took three times the fatal dose of your medication. Do you want to risk that again, or have him jump out the window? He could run past you and do it in a flash. You can't give him what he needs right now at home.” She wasn't pulling any punches, and slowly his mother nodded, and started crying harder. She couldn't bear the thought of losing her son.
“All right,” she said softly. “When does he have to go?”
“I'll see if they have a bed for him today or tomorrow. I'd like to get him out of here as soon as possible. They can't protect him properly here either. This isn't a psychiatric hospital. He needs to be at a place like Silver Pines. It's not as bad as you think, and it's the right place for him right now, at least until he's no longer in crisis, maybe after the holidays.”
“You mean Christmas too?” Helen Wexler looked panicked.
“We'll see. We'll discuss that later, when we see how he's doing. He needs some time to get his bearings.” His mother nodded and then went back into his room, while Maxine went to call Silver Pines. Five minutes later, everything was all set. Luckily, they had room for him. And Maxine arranged to have him transferred by ambulance at five o'clock that afternoon. His mother could go with him to help settle him in, but she couldn't spend the night.
Maxine explained everything to both of them, and said she would go to visit Jason there the next day. She would have to move some patients to do it, but it was a good day for that. She knew she had nothing crucial on her calendar in the afternoon, and her only two crisis cases were scheduled for the morning. He seemed peaceful about going there, and Maxine was still talking to them when a nurse came in and said there was a Dr. West on the phone for her.
“Dr. West?” Maxine looked blank. “Is he asking me to admit a patient for him?” Physicians did that all the time, but she didn't recognize his name. And then suddenly Jason's mother looked embarrassed.
“He's my doctor. I asked him to talk to you because he thought Jason should come home. But I understand …I guess … I'm sorry … do you mind talking to him anyway? I don't want him to feel I asked him to call for nothing. We'll send Jason to Silver Pines, maybe you could just tell Dr. West it's all arranged.” Helen looked awkward, and Maxine told her not to worry about it. She spoke to other physicians all the time. She asked if he was a psychiatrist, and Helen said he was her internist. Maxine left the room to take the call at the nurses' station. She didn't want to have the conversation within earshot of Jason. It was purely a formality now anyway. She picked up the line with a smile, expecting to talk to some friendly, naïve doctor, who wasn't used to dealing with adolescent suicides on a daily basis, as she was.
“Dr. West?” Maxine said, sounding young, efficient, and pleasant. “I'm Dr. Williams, Jason's psychiatrist,” she explained.
“I know,” he said, sounding condescending with just those two words. “His mother asked me to call you.”
“So I understand. We've just finished making arrangements for him to be admitted to Silver Pines this afternoon. I think it's the right placement for him right now. He took a lethal dose of his mom's sleeping pills last night.”
“It's amazing what kids will do for attention, isn't it?” Maxine listened to him in disbelief. He was not only patronizing to her, he sounded like a total jerk.
“This is his second attempt. And I don't think three times the fatal dose is a ploy for attention. He's telling us loud and clear he wants out. We need to
address that in a very serious way.”
“I really think the boy would do better at home with his mother,” Dr. West said as though talking to a child, or a very, very young nurse.
“I'm his psychiatrist,” Maxine said firmly, “and my professional opinion is that if he goes home with his mother, he'll be dead within a week, possibly twenty-four hours.” It was as blunt as she could get, and she wouldn't have said it to Jason's mother. But she wasn't going to pull any punches with the condescending, very arrogant Dr. West.
“That seems a little hysterical to me,” he said, sounding annoyed this time.
“His mother has agreed to admit him. I don't think we have any other choice. He needs to be in a locked ward, under careful watch. There's no way to set that up in a foolproof way at home.”
“Do you lock up all your patients, Dr. Williams?” He was downright insulting, and Maxine was starting to get mad. Who the hell did he think he was?
“Only the ones in danger of killing themselves, Dr. West, and I don't think your patient is going to be in great shape if she loses her son. What would your assessment be of that?”
“I think you need to leave the assessment of my patients to me,” he said, sounding huffy.
“Precisely. Good point. And I suggest you leave mine to me. Jason Wexler is my patient, I've been seeing him since his first suicide attempt, and I'm not liking what I see at all, or what I'm hearing from you, as a matter of fact. If you'd like to look up my credentials on the Internet, Dr. West, be my guest. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go back to my patient. Thanks for the call.” He was still blustering when she hung up, and she had to hide the fact that she was livid when she walked back into Jason's room. It wasn't their problem that she and Helen's physician had hated each other on the phone. He was the kind of pompous jerk who cost lives, as far as Maxine was concerned, and a real menace, dismissing the seriousness of the crisis Jason was in. He needed to be in a locked psychiatric facility just like Silver Pines. Screw Dr. West.
“Did everything go all right?” Helen looked at her anxiously, and Maxine hoped that she couldn't see how angry she was. She covered her anger with a smile.
“It was fine.” Maxine examined Jason then, and stayed with him for another half hour, telling him what Silver Pines would be like. He pretended not to care or be scared, but Maxine knew he was. He had to be. This was a frightening time for him. First he had almost died, and now he was stuck having to face life again. As far as he was concerned, it was the worst of both worlds.
She left them, and assured Helen that she would be available all day and that night and the next day for calls. And then after signing his discharge papers, she left the hospital and walked home. She was fuming about that idiot doctor, Charles West, on her brief walk up Park Avenue. And Daphne and her friends were still asleep when she got home. It was almost noon by then.
This time, Maxine strode into her daughter's room and raised the shades. The bright morning sunlight poured into the room, and she called out loudly, telling them to rise and shine. None of them looked well as they groaned and got up. And then, as she climbed out of bed, Daphne spotted the lineup of empty beer bottles on her dresser and saw the look in her mother's eyes.
“Oh shit,” she said softly, glancing swiftly at her friends. They all looked scared.
“You might say that,” Maxine said coolly, glancing at the others, then, “Thanks for dropping by, girls. Get dressed and get your stuff. The party's over. And as for you”—she turned to Daphne again— “you're grounded for the month. And whoever brings any kind of alcohol here again won't be allowed to come back. You all violated my hospitality and my trust. I'll speak to you later,” she said to Daphne, who looked panicked. The girls began to whisper frantically as soon as Maxine left the room. They dressed hurriedly, and all they wanted to do now was leave. Daphne had tears in her eyes.
“I told you it was a dumb idea,” one of the other girls said.
“I thought you hid the bottles in the closet,” Daphne complained.
“I did.” They were all near tears. It was the first time they had done anything like it, but surely not the last. Maxine knew that better than they did.
“She must have checked.”
The girls were dressed and gone in under ten minutes, and Daphne went looking for her mother. She found her in the kitchen, talking quietly to Zelda, who looked at Daphne with stern disapproval and didn't say a word. It was up to Maxine how she chose to handle this.
“I'm sorry, Mom,” Daphne said, bursting into tears.
“So am I. I trusted you, Daff. I always have. I don't want anything to screw that up. What we have is precious.”
“I know …I didn't mean to … we just thought …I…”
“You're on a month's restriction. No phone calls for the first week. No social life for the month. You go nowhere alone. And no allowance. That's it. And don't let it happen again,” she said sternly. Daphne nodded silently and slunk back to her room. They both heard the door close softly behind her. Maxine was sure she was crying, but she wanted to leave her alone for now.
“And this is only the beginning,” Zelda said glumly, and then both women laughed. It didn't seem like the end of the world to either of them, but Maxine wanted to make a big impression on her daughter so it didn't happen again anytime soon. Thirteen was too young for them to be having beer parties on the sly in her bedroom, so she had made her point.
Daphne stayed in her room for the rest of the afternoon, after turning her cell phone in to her mother. The phone was her lifeline, and giving it up was a major sacrifice.
Maxine picked up both boys by five o'clock, and when he got home, Daphne told Jack what had happened. He was startled but impressed, and told her what she already knew, that it was a really dumb thing to do, and that their mother had been bound to find out. According to Jack, their mother knew everything and had radar of some kind and X-ray vision implanted in her head. It was part of the options package that came with moms.
The four of them had a quiet dinner in the kitchen that night, and all of them went to bed early, since the next day was a school day. Maxine was sound asleep at twelve o'clock when the nurse at Silver Pines called her. Jason Wexler had made another suicide attempt that night. He was in good condition and stable. He had taken off his pajamas and tried to hang himself with them, but the nurse assigned to him had found him and revived him. Maxine realized they had moved him out of Lenox Hill in the nick of time, and thank God his mother hadn't listened to the pompous, idiotic Dr. West. She told the nurse she'd be out to see Jason the following afternoon, and she could only imagine how his mother would take the news. Maxine was grateful he was alive.
As she lay in bed afterward, she realized that it had been a busy weekend after all. Her daughter had gotten drunk on beer for the first time, and one of her patients had attempted suicide twice. All things considered, matters could have been a lot worse. Jason Wexler could have been dead. She was relieved he wasn't, although she would have liked to give Charles West a piece of her mind. He was an utter fool. Maxine was happy that Jason's mother hadn't listened to him, and had trusted her. All that mattered was that Jason was alive. She just hoped he would stay that way. With each attempt he was at greater risk. Compared to that, Daphne's little beer party on Saturday night was child's play, which was all it was anyway. She was still thinking about it when Sam padded into her room in the dark and came to stand next to her bed.
“Can I sleep with you, Mom?” he asked solemnly. “I think there's a gorilla in my closet.”
“Sure, sweetheart.” She slid over and made room for him, as he cuddled up next to her. She was wondering if she should explain to him that there wasn't a gorilla in his closet, or just let it go.
“Mom?” he was whispering next to her, cozy beside her.
“Yeah?”
“About the gorilla …I made it up.”
“I know.” She smiled at him in the dark, kissed his cheek, and a moment later, they were both
asleep.
Chapter 3
Maxine was in her office at eight o'clock the next morning. She saw patients back to back until noon, then drove to Long Island to see Jason Wexler at Silver Pines, and was there at one-thirty. The only thing she'd eaten was half a banana while driving, and she returned calls from the speakerphone in her car. She was pretty well caught up and on schedule when she got there.
She spent an hour alone with Jason, met with the attending psychiatrist about the events of the night before, and talked to Jason's mother for half an hour. They were all grateful he was at Silver Pines, and that his third suicide attempt had been foiled. Helen was quick to give Maxine credit, and say that she'd been right. She shuddered to think what would have happened if she'd insisted on taking him home. More than likely, this time, he would have succeeded. Unlike what Helen's internist had suggested, these were not bids for attention. Jason wanted out. He was profoundly convinced he had killed his father. He had had conflicting feelings about him all his life, and given that and the argument they'd had the night before, Jason remained convinced that the combination of those facts had killed him. It would take months, or even years, to show him otherwise, and assuage his guilt. Both Helen and Maxine knew now that it was going to be a long haul for Jason. And contrary to his mother's initial hopes, he would not be home in time for Christmas. Maxine was now hoping that they would keep him there for six months to a year, although it was still too soon to say that to his mother. She was badly shaken by his near success at hanging himself the night before. And he had told his mother that morning that if he wanted to kill himself, he would. Nothing could stop him. And much to her chagrin, Maxine knew from experience, he was right. What they had to do now was heal his wounded soul and spirit, and that was going to take time.
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