Saving Max

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Danielle awakens from a deep, useless sleep—the kind that affords no rest and is punctured with grotesque forms and fractured events that have no link or purpose. When she opens her eyes, her heart beats erratically—a bird shot out of the sky. She feels an amorphous panic; wonders dully if someone is chasing her. The panic is quickly replaced with stark terror. They think Max is irretrievably mentally ill. Her first urge yesterday was to run to him and hold him in her arms. But she can’t do that—not yet. If Max sees her eyes, he’ll know what he fears is true—that she, too, thinks he’s crazy. She never, ever, wants him to feel that.

She lay awake much of the night agonizing over every word Reyes-Moreno said. Danielle still doesn’t believe what she told her, particularly the bizarre behaviors they attribute to Max—behaviors she’s never seen. No matter how she slices it, there’s no way Max could be what they say he is. But what if she’s wrong? The right side of her brain tells her that denial is always the first response a parent has to devastating news about a special-needs child. She must do her best to divorce herself from either knee-jerk disbelief or the paralysis of emotionalism. She has to get back into lawyer mode and uncover the core facts they’ve based their diagnosis upon. Once pointed in the right direction, she’s a better fact finder than anyone she knows.

She jumps up and yanks on jeans and an old, gray sweatshirt. For the first time since they came to this dreadful place, she knows exactly where her compass is leading her.

Danielle crouches outside the rear wall of the Fountainview unit and swats mosquitoes from her neck. The night air is heavy, and tall grass forms a green nest around her. The steel back door stares at her, as if it knows of her intention.

She can’t believe she’s doing this. What if she gets caught? Even that begs the more basic question: What kind of a mother crawls around a psychiatric facility on her hands and knees in the pitch dark like some kind of card-carrying pervert? Danielle looks around. It would be just her luck if one of the security guards decides that now is the perfect time to make night rounds. She checks her watch. Ten fifty-two. There is only one night nurse on duty. At eleven, she usually sneaks a smoke in front of the unit until her maintenance man boyfriend arrives and enthusiastically feels her up in a dark corner. If Danielle is lucky, they will disappear into the woods for the fifteen minutes they apparently require to consummate their hot, savage passion. She knows this because she has often crept to Max’s window late at night—just to watch him sleep. It took some of the sting out of the parsimonious visits allotted her by Maitland.

The locked door beckons, but Danielle is paralyzed. This feels like life or death. She can find out about Max or turn around; go back to her room; and never know why Maitland insists that her son is crazy. Yesterday, Danielle demanded—and Reyes-Moreno unequivocally refused to provide—the underlying data upon which they based Max’s diagnosis. She knows that filing a lawsuit will get her nowhere. The hospital legal machine will find ways to hide the precise information Danielle needs. She has seen it happen far too many times. At that point, Danielle decided that she was entirely justified in getting it on her own.

Even so, she falters. She is desperate for information, but does her desperation justify breaking the law? But if she doesn’t find out what they’ve really based Max’s diagnosis on—the nuts and bolts of it—she’ll never know if it has any merit. That is intolerable.

Danielle slips a plastic card with the Maitland logo on it from the back pocket of her jeans. She swiped a spare earlier today from the nurses’ station. She takes a deep breath and inserts it into a shiny black box on the cold, metal door. She hears a distinct click.

She slips through the door like satin ribbon through a needle’s eye. Now that she has crossed the line, what she is doing seems perfectly natural, as if she has been breaking and entering all of her life. The soft, eerie lights, dimmed for the slumbering patients, give her goose bumps. She feels as if she has stumbled into a psychic’s murky parlor in an attempt to contact bodies long cold—a vain search for lost souls. She scans the silent hallway and darts into a small office. The first thing she does is to sidle underneath the security camera in the corner and point it skyward. She then places her flashlight on the computer desk and covers it with her red silk scarf. With a soft click, the flashlight’s wide eye lights the room in a soft rose. Office supplies crowd a corner; textbooks queue up in military formation on metal shelves.

Danielle sits in front of the monitor—her nerves singing—and watches as a large, white M gyrates on the screen. After a few moments, a message box appears. Maitland Psychiatric Hospital. A smaller box forms. Password, please. The cursor stands waiting in the empty box. Danielle enters the system without a glitch. When Marianne had raised the issue of Maitland’s security—she was unhappy with its laxness—Danielle was surprised to learn that the nurses on the Fountainview unit cavalierly scribble the daily password on a Post-it and stick it under the counter at the nurses’ station. Marianne scoffed when she related how Maitland prided themselves on thinking that their security system was ironclad. She said they’d never get away with such carelessness in a big-city hospital.

Danielle smiles grimly as she types in the code. Hospital administrators, she is certain, worry about their employees mishandling the system, not the patients. Surely it had never occurred to them that a patient’s mother would jimmy the system.

She gives the keyboard a few intent taps and tries to ignore the horrific consequences if she is apprehended. She is an officer of the court who is committing criminal acts (a few felonies like trespass and hacking) with full knowledge of the legal ramifications. If her law firm finds out, partnership will be the least of her problems. If she is convicted of a felony, the bar will take away her license. She’ll be finished. There will be no way on earth to fund Max’s care. She shakes off these terrifying thoughts. Her watch warns her that she has only ten minutes to complete her task—assuming the frantic coupling outside is still rattling the trees.

Her nails are castanets on the keys. Prompts flash on the screen in mad succession as she negotiates her way through them like a bayou dweller in the Louisiana backwater. The blue glow of the monitor washes her with a purplish cast, and the small room is now nest-egg warm. The screen before her looks like some kind of daily log. Max’s name, unit and room number are at the top, as are his patient identification number and date of admission. Below are typewritten entries which, she surmises, are transcriptions from the handwritten notes of doctors, nurses and attendants. She makes out the initials of Fastow, Reyes-Moreno and Nurse Kreng. Unfamiliar names flash before her—probably other members of Max’s “team.” Danielle reads the first entry; sits back abruptly; and rubs her eyes. Something is very wrong. She checks the name at the top of the page. Max Parkman. She reads it again. Twice.

Day 6 Pt. violent; agg. w/ staff. Threat. pt. with physical violence; had t/b restrained; continue new med protocol; paranoid delusions; psychosis; 20mg Valium Q.I.D. Focus on Mo-son relatnshp/rage/denial. JRF

Danielle waits until the shock passes. Paranoid delusions? Psychosis? How could they decide that he was psychotic only days into this nightmare? She saw absolutely no evidence of this during her daily visits with Max. And what about “Focus on mother-son relationship”? That Fastow should even suggest something harmful in her relationship with Max is devastating. Her mind races back to the day Max was admitted. How had they acted toward one another? Of course he was angry and anxious with her; of course he lashed out at Dwayne when he was forced to go into the unit. He was scared out of his wits. Surely that’s perfectly normal on admission day. She reads on.

Day 12 Incident in cafeteria. Pt. lost control in serving line. Strikes child; curses server; throws tray. Restrained; taken back to unit; destruction to rm; isolation/heavy sedation Post: Pt. now episodically psychotic; suspect schizoaffective disorder and/or Cotard delusion (due to pt.’s depression and derealization). Episodes occur only late night. Pt. has no recollection following day. Tricyclics/ SSRI’s not effective; consider electroconvulsive therapy. R-M

Danielle gasps. Cotard delusion? Electroconvulsive therapy? No one has said a word to her about any of this—not even Reyes-Moreno when she delivered the death-knell diagnosis. A wild thought flashes through her brain: Are they making these things up? She shakes her head. It’s too crazy. But why hasn’t anyone told her the details of what Max has been going through? How often had they shot him up with sedatives—other than the time they overdosed him? And thrown him into “isolation”? Reyes-Moreno only mentioned the one instance. Danielle sees Max lying on the floor in a padded room bleakly calling her name, his hands and feet bound by white canvas strips—to prevent telltale ligature marks or bruises. This sounds more like a sinister clip straight out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest than the modus operandi of the most highly respected psychiatric hospital in the nation.

And why don’t they even mention Asperger’s? Does psychosis now trump autism? Danielle can’t even begin to process the last sentence. Over her dead body will they strap Max down; put a piece of wood in his mouth; and electrify his brain. She shivers. She has to get him out of here—now.

Only a few minutes left. She quickly scrolls down to review a few more entries. Observations from play therapy. Educational and psychiatric testing attempted, but unsuccessfully completed due to soporific effect of sedatives and disordered thinking. Reiterations of Max’s suicidal ideations. She flips to the entry for today.

Team Meeting. Pt. skilled at concealing symptoms fm Mo. Admits has not mentioned psychotic thoughts. Pt.’s violent tendencies real threat to himself/others; Pt. experiencing deep disturbances; auditory/visual/tactile hallucinations. Continues to threaten suicide. Diagnosis: Schizoaffective disorder, psychosis—

The screen blips off and the room goes dark.

Danielle freezes, hands poised over the keyboard. Someone must have discovered that the card is gone and is trying to flush her out by scaring the hell out of her. She jumps up and rams her hip into the corner of the desk. “Damn!” She puts her ear to the door; opens it a crack; and peers outside. The hallway is crushed charcoal. Danielle hears and sees nothing. She closes the door softly and ducks under the desk. Even if her heart is in cardiac arrest, her brain has not entirely deserted her. She turns off the power switch to the CPU. She doesn’t want someone to come in for a mop tomorrow and see Max’s information on the screen. She snaps off the flashlight; grabs the scarf; and shoves the card back into her pocket. She ventures into the hallway—no one.

Danielle creeps down the dark corridor, using her hand on the wall as her guide. When she reaches the door, she pokes her head cautiously outside the metal door and scans the landscape. Apparently no one is out to get her. The lights all over Maitland are out. There must have been a massive power outage. It is pitch-black, except for a few buildings that give off a greenish glow. Must be the emergency generators. Danielle slips outside and tiptoes to the corner of the building. She hears voices. The nurse runs from the trees, her white skirt billowing behind her—a neon sheet hung in a high breeze. Her priapic Lothario is nowhere to be seen.

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