Lori was the family member with whom I interacted most closely. She had studied psychology in college, and she had a relative who suffered from mental illness. She could immediately empathize with my situation. She told me to focus on Mia and implored me not to worry about work.
Even as the conversation was happening, I recognized how crucial it was. For most people, going through a severe mental health crisis would have meant financial hardship. Either that, or they would have had to sacrifice something to continue working, maybe support for their spouse or attention to their kids. What a privilege that my job could take lower priority, at least for a little while.
I left the office at lunchtime to return to the GTC for daytime visiting hours. Again, I checked in early and took a seat against the wall. The experience was identical to that of the night before. A few people came and were quickly called back while I waited, disappointed and helpless.
After sitting in silence for another two hours, I walked to my car in frustration. Mia knew I was in the lobby, yet she continued to shun me. Driving home, I tried to conceive of some way of convincing her to let me visit.
When the kids arrived home that afternoon, I suggested that we each make a card for their mom, telling her how much we loved her. “I’ll draw her flowers because Mommy loves flowers!” exclaimed Jamie. “And you can draw her some of your stick figures, Will.”
“No, I’ll write her a poem,” he replied. “It will be about how much I miss her. Maybe it will help her come back sooner.”
Before long, we had paper, crayons, and colored pencils strewn across the kitchen table. I included a recent five-by-seven family portrait in my letter. Mia had loved the picture, and I hoped it would bring her comfort.
That evening was a replay of my last two visits. People signed in and were called back, and the receptionist continued to feel sorry for me. Periodically, I would stand up and stretch, being much less circumspect now that I was a regular. With five minutes left, I approached the window with our homemade cards.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Dylan,” the receptionist lamented. “It’s such a shame that we can’t let you back.”
“I know, I appreciate that. Say, can you do me a big favor?” I asked, putting the papers on the counter. “We made these for Mia. Can you please make sure that she gets them?”
The receptionist reached for our artwork, smiling. “Isn’t that sweet? Yes, of course I can.”
Back home, we enjoyed another calm night, but I was busy. My parents would be leaving soon, and I only had a few more days to plan for life after their departure.
At work the next day, I received a text from Will halfway through the morning:
Dad, I’m worried
I want to come home
He had never asked to come home from school before, not if he wasn’t sick. I texted him back:
What do you mean, worried?
Mom is going to get better, Will
We hadn’t spoken about our trip to the GTC, or about Mia’s sickness, since our drive:
I know, I’m just worried
I want to come home
I wasn’t sure what to do. My gut told me not to break down and pick him up:
I can’t come and get you right now
Just get through the day and we’ll talk about it after school
Sorry, my man, but everything will be okay
That was the last I heard from him, and I hoped that keeping him in school was the right call.
Once again, I left work before lunch and drove to the GTC. I desperately wanted to see if our handcrafted messages had influenced Mia. Apparently, they hadn’t. She still refused to see me.
That afternoon, I walked to the end of our block to meet Will. He had been in my thoughts ever since our text exchange. When he stepped off the bus, I greeted him with a smile.
“Everything alright, Will?”
“I’m better now.” He shrugged, letting me take his backpack. We started walking toward the house.
“Can you talk about it?” I asked.
“I don’t know, Dad, I just started worrying and couldn’t stop. It’s like my thoughts were swirling around, and it just kept getting worse.”
I was reminded of Mia’s conversation with Alex; the “tornado of ideas” sounded eerily similar. I hoped that Will wasn’t on the brink of his own mental health crisis.
“What were you worried about? Mom and everything going on?”
“No . . . yeah . . . I guess so. I don’t know; I was just worried.” He sounded frustrated, like he didn’t want to talk about it.
I stopped walking and gave him a hug, wrapping him up like he was still a little kid. Most middle schoolers off the bus wouldn’t have let me, but Will returned the embrace. “I know it’s hard. It’s hard for everyone, especially Mom.” My voice wavered as I said the last part.
My mom and stepdad treated us to dinner that night. We went to a local Italian place, one of our favorites. The kids loved the chocolate cake, but I couldn’t stay for dessert. I had to get back to the crisis center.
It was starting to feel like all I did was drive to the GTC. And wait, of course; I spent half my day waiting.
I was five minutes late for visiting hours. The receptionist offered me a sarcastic grin when I entered. “Mr. Dylan,” she said, “for a minute, I thought maybe you’d given up.”
“Never,” I responded, returning the smile and taking my usual seat. After twenty minutes, I resigned myself to another eventless night. I took out my laptop and started working. But an hour later, the door into the facility opened.
“Pat Dylan?” a woman asked, and I looked up in disbelief.
“Yes?”
“Please follow me.” She glanced down at my laptop. “But sir, you can’t bring anything back.”
“Oh right,” I replied, quickly putting my computer in its bag. Standing up, I walked over to the receptionist. She looked as excited as I felt.
“Would you mind keeping an eye on this for me?” I handed her my pack.
“Of course,” she said, smiling. “Good luck, Mr. Dylan.”
“Thanks.” I tried not to sound nervous. Flashing her a thumbs-up, I turned and followed the woman into the hallway.
As the corridor turned, I was surprised to see so much glass. A large window made up the top half of the left-hand side of the hallway. It looked into a big room, a kind of command center. I was reminded of those military movies where all the seats face a large computer screen. Only in this room, the chairs faced a huge wall of glass that opened onto something that resembled a low-budget living room.
We walked another couple of feet and stopped. The corridor ended at a large door. My escort grabbed the handle and looked to her left, into the command center. A buzzer sounded, and she pulled the door open, stepping aside so I could go through. It led into the living room space. Cheap couches, a television, and some wooden tables and chairs were scattered throughout a large, open area.
I hesitated, looking uncertainly at my guide. She smiled, inclining her head forward. “It’s this way, Mr. Dylan.”
Slowly, I walked into the crisis center. The woman, remaining in the hallway, shut the door behind me. I heard a clicking sound and knew that I was locked in. Several people sat in the command center, looking out into the living room. I felt suddenly anxious. It was as if they were watching an experiment, like, Hey, throw him in there and let’s see what happens!
Glancing around, I saw that three people were sitting on the couches. One was alone, watching a baseball game on the television; the other two were huddled together and talking quietly. A few people were also sitting at one of the tables, conversing in low tones.
For a moment, I stood still, feeling exposed and on guard. A window opened into the command center from the living room. I walked over and peered inside. A woman, who I would later discover was a nurs
e, smiled across at me.
“Hello,” she said. She glanced at several monitors next to her on the wall, which were clearly connected to video cameras throughout the facility. “Your wife is over there, Mr. Dylan,” she said, pointing to several doors that I hadn’t noticed. They were lined up on the right-hand side of the living area.
“Okay, thanks.”
“No problem,” she replied. “She’s in the first bedroom.”
I ambled slowly past the couches and peered inside the first room. I saw a couple of low mattresses on the floor, simple white sheets covering them. Mia was lying on one, staring up at the ceiling.
“Mia?” I asked, cautiously moving toward her. “Mia, it’s me, how are you feeling?”
Mia turned her head in my direction. She didn’t appear happy to see me. I wanted to rush over and kiss her, but given her expression, that didn’t seem like a good idea. Instead, I moved to the foot of her mattress and took a seat. She didn’t say anything.
Sitting on her bed, I could examine the rest of the room. The other mattress, identical to hers, was a couple of feet away. In addition to the beds, there were a closet and a few small bureaus. I immediately noticed the back of the bedroom door. It was covered with thousands of symbols, like mathematical calculations. It looked like someone had spent days doing advanced calculus on it with a black marker.
Mia continued to ignore me. We sat in silence for a few minutes.
“Is everything okay in here?” I finally asked.
“What do you think, Pat!” she barked at me. “Do you think it’s okay in here?”
Things weren’t starting off well.
“It looks okay.” I glanced around the room. “I know that you’ve been seeing Dr. Martinez during the day.”
“I can’t believe you put me in here,” she growled.
I already felt guilty for that, but what else could I have done? At least in here, with all of the video cameras and locked doors, she couldn’t run away.
We sat quietly for another few minutes. Given her attitude, I was hesitant to initiate more conversation.
“I know what you’re doing,” she said, breaking the silence. “It’s not going to work.”
I had no idea what she was talking about; my pulse quickened. “Babe, what I am doing is trying to help you, that’s all.”
“You’re helping me by locking me up in here?” Mia was sitting up now, facing me coldly, becoming more animated. “No, you can’t fool me, Pat. I know what you’re doing!”
My heart was beating rapidly now, and my palms were starting to sweat. I thought maybe I could change the subject, redirect her again. “Did you get the letters that we wrote to you?” I asked.
“Did you get the letters that we wrote to you?” she mimicked in a cruel voice, like you might expect hearing from the Joker in a Batman film. “Did you get the letters?”
I had another out-of-body experience. I was looking down on the scene, an impartial observer. My wife, the sweetest person I had ever known, had transformed. She was someone completely different, mean and confrontational.
“What’s the matter, Pat? Upset because I know what’s going on?!” she roared.
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” I implored. “The kids and I miss you, and we wanted to tell you how much we love you.”
“Oh, c’mon, Pat. I can’t believe you made the kids do that. You told them what to write,” she sneered. “What did you have to give them to follow your orders? What did you bribe them with?”
We were the only two in the room, but I knew that the people in the command center had cameras hooked up. Maybe they were observing the interaction, or maybe it was just playing to an unwatched screen.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, as calmly as I could. “Why would I be bribing the kids?”
“Please, Pat, just stop. Stop with the games and tell me the truth!”
I gave an exasperated sigh. I couldn’t believe that we were back to the truth. We were going in circles, getting nowhere.
“If you’re not going to tell me the truth, then why don’t you just leave?”
I stood up, backing away from her bed. “The truth, Mia? The truth is that I love you. The kids love you. We want you to get better and come home. That’s the truth.”
She rose and stomped over to stand an inch away from me, looking up insolently. “Oh, that’s the truth, is it?” She turned and strode purposely over to the mattress. She grabbed something from behind it, between the bed and the wall, and wheeled around.
Taking a few steps toward me, she cocked her arm and flung it forward, throwing something violently in my direction. I flinched and braced for impact, but nothing hit me. Instead, the air exploded into what looked like confetti. A cloud of tiny pieces of paper fluttered into the air around us.
“There’s your truth, Pat!” she yelled. “That’s what I think of your truth!”
I looked at my chest and hands, suddenly realizing what she had thrown. Remnants of our homemade cards covered the floor, torn into a thousand bits. Several fragments had landed on me. Ripped pieces of our family picture were strewn everywhere.
She looked defiant and victorious, reveling in the shock apparent on my face. “That’s right, Pat, I know what you’re up to,” she scoffed. “You can’t fool me!”
“I’m not trying to fool you, Mia,” I whispered. “I’m sorry that you think I am.” I started backing out of the bedroom.
I was standing in the living room as she marched up to me again. “I want a divorce!” she shouted, and I imagined all the heads turning in our direction.
“Mia,” I said calmly, not allowing myself to feel anything in the moment. “You don’t know what you are talking about. You don’t want a divorce, and neither do I. We love each other. We always have and we always will.”
“Ha!” she cried, nearly spitting in my face. “I don’t believe that anymore. I know what you’re doing! Trying to steal the kids away from me. It won’t work! I’m taking you down!”
I turned my head away, looking over to the command center window. The nurse was watching me attentively. I nodded to her, she gave a signal, and two huge guys, dressed identically, emerged from the far side of the room. I only meant for her to open the door so I could leave; but apparently, other protocols were in place.
Mia was still yelling, threatening me. “You think you can get better attorneys than I can? No way, Pat! I’m getting the best ones, and we are taking you down!”
The two guys grabbed Mia by either arm. She hadn’t seen them coming and was startled. She started squirming, trying to escape their grasp. I could tell they were treating her as gently as they could, but it was still upsetting. She was screaming fiercely, “Let me go! LET ME GO!!”
I heard the buzzer sound, and the door opened. The same woman who had guided me in was standing in the corridor. I took one last look at the scuffle in front of me and then quickly walked out. As the door shut behind me, the two guards must have released Mia. She ran to it, her face against the window.
“COME BACK HERE, PAT!!” she shrieked. “I’M NOT DONE WITH YOU!!” She was furiously trying to open the door, fighting against the locked handle.
I followed closely behind my guide, turning as the hallway curved. Mia’s shouting faded away; she must have given up when she couldn’t see me anymore.
“Well, that was a good first visit,” I said, feeling numb and trying to hold myself together.
The escort stopped at the entrance to the lobby, turning around with a gentle smile. “I’m sorry, Mr. Dylan,” she said. “We see that kind of thing sometimes. Hopefully, tomorrow goes better.”
“Not sure it could go much worse,” I replied, slipping past her. As I collected my computer, both she and the receptionist drowned me with sympathetic looks. I escaped to the parking lot, dazed and crestfallen.
I will never forget that night, but neither will Mia ever remember it. Mental illness is bad enough; it interferes with rational thought, scrambles personalities. But before the psychotropic drugs start to help, they can exacerbate things. Poor Mia was on incredible amounts of mind-altering pharmaceuticals at the time.
Still, I was badly shaken. I didn’t really think that she would want a divorce, but then again, I had no idea what was happening.
That night the scene replayed in my head hundreds of times, and I kept waking, staring into the blackness of our bedroom. I imagined the family photo as it had been, before Mia tore it apart. I wasn’t going to let the illness destroy the life that we had built together. I kept repeating that promise to myself, like a call to arms.
I was tired the next morning, sitting at my desk and trying to concentrate, when my cell phone rang. “Hello, Mr. Dylan, this is Monica Perry,” said a woman. “I’m a counselor at Pine Crest Middle School.” My heart sank; it was Will again.
“Hello,” I responded. “Are you calling about my son?”
“Yes, sir,” she confirmed. “He is sitting here with me now.”
“I see. May I speak with him?”
“Sure, hold on a second. I’ll put him on.”
“Dad?” I could tell that he had been crying.
“Will, what’s wrong? Are you feeling the same as yesterday?”
“Yes.” I waited for him to continue but heard silence.
“Remember when you got off the bus yesterday?” I asked. “You said you felt better after you went back to class. Do you think you can do that again today?”
“No. Dad, I just want to be with you. I want to come home.”
“But Will, I’m not at home. I’m at my office,” I said softly. “I need to work, and you need to go to school.”
Safe, Wanted, and Loved: A Family Memoir of Mental Illness, Heartbreak, and Hope Page 11
