January First: A Child's Descent Into Madness and Her Father's Struggle to Save Her (23 page)

“The medication makes her tired. She’ll be fine. Call me if she gets worse.”

I hang up. If I stay on the phone, we will just go in circles, with Nancey continually trying to convince me to come get Janni. I need this time to get cleaning supplies. I can’t shop with Janni.

I’m inside Walmart, trying to remember everything I need to get, when my cell phone rings again. This time it’s Susan.

“Doe?”

“The school called me!” she says, panicked, and I can hear the windblast coming from her driving the car.

“Yeah, I know,” I reply. “They called me, too.”

“She’s having a stroke!”

“What?”

“They said she is drooling and can’t walk!”

I roll my eyes, surprised Susan would buy into this. “That’s not a stroke. That’s what they told me, too. They just want us to come take her off their hands.”

“They called the paramedics!” Susan screams into the phone.

My annoyance at the school vanishes, replaced by fear.

“They’re overreacting,” I say, trying to convince myself as much as Susan. “This is no big deal.”

“She can’t move her left side! They’ve called the paramedics to take her to the hospital!”

I shake my head. I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it.

“I need you to meet me at the school and take Bodhi! I’m going to the hospital with her. Where are you?”

“Walmart. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

The windblast is gone. Susan hung up.

This is an overreaction. Janni is fine. She has to be fine, I tell myself, leaving the half-full shopping cart behind in the aisle and running for the exit.

AS I COME down the hill toward the school, I see an ambulance in the driveway. Paramedics are coming out of the school, wheeling Janni on the gurney, one holding up an IV bag.

I floor the accelerator and take the curve fast enough that the right wheels leave the pavement. What keeps running through my mind is the fact that I didn’t go to her immediately. I didn’t take this seriously. I thought this was nothing.

I abandon the car in the middle of the parking lot, the engine still on, as I run toward Janni. She is being loaded into the back of the ambulance. I am close enough now to see that there is an oxygen mask on her face. Susan steps in behind her, holding Bodhi in her arms.

The principal moves to intercept me. “She’s going to be fine, Mr. Schofield,” he says, holding up his hands to reassure me.

I blow past him. Susan sees me coming. I can see anger in her eyes that I didn’t react. One paramedic, the driver, gets out and is about to close the doors when I get there.

“What is happening?!” I ask, panicked.

Susan gets up and hands me Bodhi. “She wasn’t able to breathe,” she says, looking at me with pure hatred. “She would have died had they not called paramedics.”

The paramedic holds up his hands. “She’ll be fine. She’s developed dystonia. Your wife said she’s on Haldol, and that can cause dystonia.
We got her on a Benadryl drip. She’ll be fine now, but we’re still taking her to Henry Mayo.”

JANNI IS ALREADY looking better by the time the ER doctor comes over to us.

“What happened?” I ask.

“She developed what we call a dystonic reaction.” He’s looking in Janni’s eyes. “It’s a common reaction to antipsychotics, especially Haldol.” He lifts Janni’s arms and checks their rigidity.

“Can it be fatal?” I ask. If he says yes, I deserve to die. I should have been there.

“No, not at all,” he replies. “It’s scary to watch, but it’s not fatal. It’s caused by spasms in the neck and facial area. The tongue protrudes from the mouth, which is what causes the drooling. It’s easily treated with Benadryl, which relaxes the muscles. We’ll keep her on the Benadryl drip for a couple of hours and observe her, but she should be fine.” He looks into her pupils. “She is already looking better from when she first came in.” He turns back to us. “Your wife said she was on Haldol?”

“Yes,” I answer dumbly.

“What’s her diagnosis?” he asks.

“Psychosis not otherwise specified.”

He nods. “And her regular psychiatrist didn’t prescribe Cogentin?”

“No.”

He frowns. “I’m surprised, because Cogentin or at least regular Benadryl is pretty standard practice for anyone given Haldol because of its tendency to do exactly this.”

“SHE WENT INTO dystonia!” I yell at Dr. Howe over the phone. I feel guilty as hell, but the fact that Howe didn’t prescribe Cogentin gives me someone else to get angry at.

“I’m surprised,” Dr. Howe replies calmly.

“The ER doc said she needs something called Cogentin! Why didn’t you prescribe that? Did you not know about that?” I again don’t trust Dr. Howe. This is over her head. She can’t handle Janni. We have stuck it out with her for more than a year even though she clearly never had a clue. I should have found a new psychiatrist long ago. I didn’t because I didn’t want to have to try and explain all over again what we were going through. I was too tired.

“I know about Cogentin,” Howe answers. “Normally it’s given along with Haldol to prevent dystonic symptoms.”

“Then why didn’t you prescribe it?” I shout into my phone.

“Because I’ve given her powerful medications before in doses she shouldn’t be able to handle and they haven’t worked,” she answers softly.

The anger in me dies like it was shot.

“Janni has the highest resistence to medication of anyone I have ever treated,” Dr. Howe continues. “With any other patient I would have been worried about dystonia, but I didn’t think it would be a problem for Janni. I was wrong.”

I close my eyes, thinking back to the “>99.9%” on Janni’s IQ scores. I always knew Janni was unique. This is not how I wanted her to be unique.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Friday, January 16, 2009

M
y cell phone rings. I look down at the Caller ID, expecting it to be Susan, updating me on Bodhi. She’s at the pediatrician with Bodhi for his one-year vaccinations.

But it is the school district main line again.

This is the first call from the school since Janni went into dystonia earlier in the week. The Haldol was lowered on Tuesday. Mrs. Parris had told us that Monday, prior to going into dystonia, Janni was the best she’d ever seen her. Tuesday, Janni did pretty well at school. Wednesday, she did okay. Thursday was like she was never on the Haldol at all.

“Mr. Schofield, this is Mrs. Fitzgerald. We need you to come get Janni.”

“If she is showing signs of dystonia, give her Benadryl,” I reply. “You have the letter from Dr. Howe authorizing you to dispense it.”

“It’s not that. Janni’s exhibiting behavior that is very alarming to us.”

I don’t ask what the behavior is. I’m sure it’s what we see every day.

“We called your wife, but she is refusing to come get her.”

I know why Susan’s refusing to come get her, and it has nothing to do with Bodhi needing his vaccinations. It’s the same reason I don’t want to go. Nobody will help Janni. Even at the hospital on Monday, we couldn’t get someone to talk to us about what options we had. The social worker there said there were, once again, no beds available at UCLA; we wanted her to go as an inpatient for observation on the Haldol. Even the doctor who treated her thought she should be an inpatient, but we were told there was nothing they could do to help.

“She’s at the doctor with our son.”

“I understand that,” Mrs. Fitzgerald replies, “but one of you needs to come get Janni right now.”

“Is she hurt?”

“No, but her behavior is out of control.”

I grin sickly into the phone.
Welcome to our world
.

“It’ll be out of control at home, too.”

“Mr. Schofield, somebody needs to come get her immediately.”

No
, I think.
You are not getting off the hook that easy
. “Doesn’t the law require you to take responsibility for her during school hours?”

“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.”