January First: A Child's Descent Into Madness and Her Father's Struggle to Save Her (11 page)

“We just need to control the violence. That’s all we need. She’s been in for a week and there haven’t been any medication changes.”

“Because we aren’t sure what she might need. She clearly has some issues with controlling her anger. I don’t deny that.”

“What about Lexapro?”

“What about it?”

“I …” I hesitate, wondering how to proceed. “I used to have problems controlling my anger. I would blow up over little insignificant stuff, similar to how she screams and hits when her brother starts crying. I could feel it coming, but I could never stop it.”

“Did she ever see any of this?” Wingfield asks.

“Sometimes. Very rarely, but I finally went to a psychiatrist who put me on Lexapro. It does take the edge off for me. I’ve talked to Dr. Howe about trying it, but she refuses because of the increased risk of suicide.”

Wingfield is silent for a moment. “She’s right. Antidepressants can increase the risk of suicidal ideation,” he finally says.

I’ve been diagnosed as having chronic depression, but the manifestation of my depression was anger. Maybe it is the same for Janni. Maybe my miracle drug is her miracle drug, too. I’m not really worried about suicide. She’s only five, after all.

“But,” he continues, “if it works for you, then maybe it will work for her. Let’s try it and see if it helps her anger issues.”

I feel an immense sense of relief. This may just be the answer. If Janni is just like me and if Lexapro saved me, then it can save her as well.

•  •  •

THE NEXT DAY, the sixth day since Janni went in, we arrive but I don’t see Janni waiting for us in the hallway like she usually is, waiting for the food we bring since she hardly eats anything from Alhambra’s cafeteria.

“Janni?” I call out.

One of the female “technicians,” as I have learned they are called, a woman covered in tattoos, approaches us. She looks like she just got out of prison, but she is nice. “She’s sleeping in the quiet room.” She points to our left.

I know what the “quiet room” is. It’s not a patient room. In the old days, they used to call it the “rubber room.”

I turn and see Janni through the open door of the room, lying on the bare mattress, her back to us.

“She’s sleeping?” Susan asks, surprised. Janni doesn’t take naps.

“She was waiting for you all day,” the technician tells us, “then about an hour ago she said she wanted to sleep.”

“Janni?” I call softly as I enter. The room is spartan, bare of everything except the bed and the sheetless mattress.

She is sleeping deeply. I hate to wake her, but I only have an hour and I am not going to leave without her knowing we were here. I don’t want her to think we didn’t come.

“Janni, we got Pizza Kitchen for you.”

She doesn’t stir.

“Janni?” I sit down next to her and touch her back.

No response.

“Janni?” I stand up and come around the other side and see the puddle of drool at the bottom of her sagging mouth, soaking the right side of her face, plastering her hair.

“Janni?” I shake her more urgently.

Nothing. I lift her head, which lolls back and forth in my arms, a deadweight. Her eyes don’t move.

“Janni?!” I practically shout. Something is seriously wrong. She is unresponsive. “You stay with her,” I say to Susan. “I’m gonna get the nurse.”

I run out of the room to the nurses’ station. I wait at the counter. I see several staff milling about, but no one seems to notice me.

“Hello?” I call out. It takes everything I have not to hop the counter and wrap my hands around the first throat I reach. I can’t do that. I have already learned that these people couldn’t care less that this is my daughter. All they care about is their damn rules.

“Hey,” I yell now. “We need some help here.”

The head nurse comes over.

“Yes?”

“Janni won’t wake up.”

“She was very tired,” she answers in a blasé tone.

“She won’t wake up!” I repeat, attempting to drive through this woman’s thick skull the fact that this is a medical emergency. “She’s lying in a puddle of her own drool! I want a nurse to check her vitals!”

“She’s fine. Somebody checks on her every few minutes.”

“She was alone when we came in! How do you know she is fine? She’s not hooked up to an EKG!”

“She’s just tired. It happens.”

I’m powerless. Janni may be dying and nobody cares.

“I’m taking her home tonight,” I snarl at the nurse. I’ve had enough of this.

“Well, that’s your choice,” the nurse says like she doesn’t care either way. “But we would need to get permission from the doctor first, and he’s already left for the day.”

I back away, my fists clenched, desperately wanting to put a hole
through the drywall but knowing that would only get me kicked out. Janni is my child, but I have no control over her fate. I’m not a father anymore. I’m a “visitor.”

I go back into the quiet room. Susan is gone, probably talking to one of the other girls. I sit down and cradle Janni’s head in my lap. I talk to her, repeating “Daddy’s here,” and telling her I brought her favorite, mac ’n’ cheese from California Pizza Kitchen, hoping she will wake up. I touch her chest. I can still feel her heart beating.

Where the hell is Susan? I set Janni’s head down and come out of the room, looking for her. I find her sitting in the dining area, talking to a girl. This is the youngest girl I have seen here after Janni. She looks about ten or eleven, but her appearance shocks me. She is wearing a fishnet shirt over a black half top. She looks like a hooker.

Susan turns to me. “This is Carly, Janni’s new roommate. Carly, this is my husband, Michael. Tell him what you just told me.”

I don’t want to listen to some kid. I want a doctor.

“I told you to stay with Janni,” I say, barely able to contain my anger. It’s not Susan I am angry at, but she is the only one I can get angry with right now.

“I know, but you need to hear this. Carly, tell him.”

Carly starts speaking. “Janni was jumping on her bed. I told her to stop because I was afraid she would fall and hurt herself, but she wouldn’t listen so I got the staff. She wouldn’t listen to them, either. She started climbing the curtains, saying she could fly.”

“She was literally climbing the walls,” Susan says, giving me a pointed look.

“Then she was climbing on the furniture and jumping off,” Carly continues.

Susan shakes her head at me. “It’s the Lexapro. I know it. It’s winding her up just like the Ritalin did.”

I feel an incredible sense of despair. I was convinced the Lexapro
would work. I arrogantly assumed that because it worked for me it would work her. Instead, it’s left her like this.

“The staff couldn’t get her to stop, so they gave her an injection.”

An injection?

“What injection?” I demand.

“I don’t know, but it still didn’t work, so they gave her a second one.”

Susan gives me the same pointed look. “When I called in earlier and asked how she was doing, they told me she was fine.”

“No, it was pretty scary,” Carly interjects. “She’s a cool girl, though. I really like her.”

The head nurse suddenly appears. “Carly, go to the community room,” she commands sternly. Carly immediately runs off. The nurse leans in close to us and lowers her voice. “I have to ask you to refrain from talking to other patients.”

“They’re the only ones telling us what’s going on with our daughter,” Susan shoots back.

“If you have a question, you can come to me.”

“Janni got an injection?” I ask.

The nurse’s hostility and dislike of us is barely contained.

“I will check the logbook.” The “logbook” is a gigantic three-ring binder that contains the treatment information for each patient. “In the meantime, if you continue to disregard our rules regarding respecting patient privacy, you will have to leave.”

I can’t believe this. “You mean we couldn’t see our daughter?”

“Not if you can’t respect our rules.”

There is no doubt. We are being threatened. And I can tell from her demeanor that it is not an empty threat. Whatever they think is wrong with Janni, they clearly don’t see us as part of the solution.

“Now, if you will give me a minute, I will check the logbook.” The nurse walks off to the nurses’ station.

We follow and wait.

After what feels like an eternity, the nurse returns with the logbook, so big she can barely carry it. She sets it down on the counter and begins flipping through it until she finds Janni’s file.

“It says she was not following directions so she received an IM of Benadryl.”

“For what?” I ask.

“It says here she was not following directions.”

“What was she doing?” I ask.

“She was climbing the walls!” Susan shouts before the nurse can answer.

The nurse placidly reads the report. “I don’t see anything here about climbing the walls.”

“Because nobody logs anything around here,” Susan fires back. “I called several times today and every time I was told Janni was doing fine.”

“What time did this happen?” I ask, trying to remain calm so we don’t get tossed. I am more afraid of getting barred from seeing Janni now than anything else.

The nurse reads some more. “It says she received the first IM around noon and then another at two.”

“What does ‘IM’ mean?” I ask.

“Intramuscular. An injection into the muscles.”

Rage erupts into my veins. In my mind, I visualize them holding the screaming and struggling Janni down and injecting her.

“Where?”

“Where, what?” The nurse is confused.

“Where was she injected?” I say, my voice slow, deliberate, a by-product of trying to control my rage. They are sticking my little girl with needles.

“We usually give it in the bottom.”

I grab on to the edge of the table to keep my hands from lashing
out at this nurse. They held her down
and
pulled down her pants and shot her in the butt?

“Why?” I manage to ask. “Why not just give her a pill?”

“Usually it is because the patient won’t take oral medication.”

This doesn’t sound like Janni. She’s been popping pills for three months now.

“How long will she be like this? Is she okay?”

“She is fine. We check on her.”

“We want her off the Lexapro,” Susan says. “That is what is causing this.”

“You will have to take that up with the doctor,” the nurse replies.

“Wingfield takes days to return our calls,” I respond.

“He is very busy,” the nurse replies coldly.

“We want her off the Lexapro right now,” Susan demands.

An idea pops into my head. “Before she could get the Lexapro, I had to sign a piece of paper giving permission. If I gave permission, I can revoke it.”

The nurse looks at me, clearly annoyed.
Yeah
, I think,
you aren’t used to parents who know their rights
.

“So you want to pull authorization for the Lexapro?” she finally says.

“Yes. Effective immediately. Give me the sheet and I will sign it right now.”

“Just a minute.” The nurse retreats back into the nurses’ station. I’m still angry, but for the first time today I feel some measure of being in control again. I left Janni here, expecting that my energy would be directed at fighting whatever is going on with her. Instead, I am spending more time fighting with the Alhambra staff.

The nurse returns with the medication authorization sheet and I check the box next to “
I DO NOT give permission for this medication to be administered to my child.”

“Just so you know,” the nurse says to us while I sign my name,
“this would be considered refusing treatment. If you do this, the doctor may release her on the grounds that you refused to comply with his recommendations.”

I stare at her, hating her guts. Once again, we are being threatened.

I go back into the quiet room. Janni is still passed out. I sit down next to her and cradle her head in my arms, telling her “Daddy is here.” They say that the subconscious remembers everything. I hope this is true and she hears me.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
March 21, 2008

J
anni is being discharged today. She has been here at Alhambra for almost two weeks and we have come to visit her every day, driving forty miles each way, spending a total of four hours in traffic to see Janni for one hour, assuming she is actually conscious when we get there and not knocked out by injections of Benadryl, which have become an almost daily occurrence.

Every day I walk in with the same hope: that I will see a noticeable change in Janni. But that is not really what I am looking for. Her violence in here has never approached her violence at home. It decreased the moment she came in, either because she no longer had to deal with Bodhi or because she had finally found kids she felt comfortable with, even if those “kids” were mostly teenagers.

Over the past two weeks, Susan has spoken to every girl in this place, questioning them about their younger days, trying to find out
if any were like Janni, and in particular if they had Janni’s “imagination.” We keep referring to it as her “imagination” even though it has become obvious that her imaginary friends rule her world and she talks about them like they are real. They seem to have a life of their own. But none of the girls, not even that boy Susan met on the first day who said, “She has what I have,” are or have ever been like Janni in that way. None of them live most of their lives in a complete fantasy world.

So one of the things I look for every time I come is for Janni to be more aware of what is happening to her. I look at Janni’s eyes now every time I see her. I never paid much attention to eyes. Hell, I dated Susan for years without being able to remember the color of her eyes (hazel). But since the violence began, I’ve had a lot of experience holding Janni down to keep her from hitting or kicking Bodhi, so I’ve had the opportunity to look Janni in the eyes a lot. When I do, I don’t see them looking back at me. They look blind, like the entire world has disappeared. I have a photo of Janni that I use as the desktop image on our computer. It was taken sometime in the spring before she turned two. She is at a park with the setting sun behind her, illuminating her blond hair into wisps of gold. She is looking at the camera and smiling. Not an exaggerated smile like kids do when you tell them you are going to take their picture, but an acknowledging half smile. Susan took the picture before Janni had time to react, so this photograph is an image of Janni, frozen in time. Every time I boot up the computer, Janni’s eyes appear, looking right at me. There is warmth in them along with a simple look of happiness.