I Know This Much Is True (24 page)

I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE

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you remember this part of it, but Jimmy Lane was on a day pass from Westwood—on a hike with a supervised group—and he just wandered away from the rest of them. Just grabbed that poor kid. The guy had no history of violent behavior—nothing at all in his record to indicate that he might be anything but passive. He just snapped that day up there. That case set the department back years. Reinforced all the old stereotypes about the mentally ill—that they’re all psychotic killers, lurking in the shadows. That no one’s safe around them. It was a public relations nightmare. Remember all those letters to the editor? And the newspaper and TV editorials? I saw one bumper sticker: ‘Electric Fry Jimmy Lane.’ Good God, everyone in the state wanted blood. And when the insanity defense prevented a lynching, everyone wanted to lynch the system instead. And the system got pretty touchy about it.

Pretty media-weary. See what I’m saying?”

“He’s here, isn’t he? Lane? Didn’t he get sentenced to this place?”

She ignored the question. “NGRI—not guilty by reason of insanity—became a real political hot potato because of that case,”

she said. “So, to save face, the governor made some heads roll. He fired the commissioner. They retooled the entire department. And then,
voilà,
the PSRB was born.”

“What’s that? The PSRB? You mentioned them before.”

“The Psychiatric Security Review Board,” she said. “Very conservative and
very
media-conscious. They’re powerful, too. They wield what amounts to sentencing power.”

Since the Review Board came into power, Sheffer said, lawyers had begun backing away from the insanity plea, even when it was legitimate. Psychiatric patients with charges against them were being advised to go through the criminal justice system instead: bite the bullet, go to a state prison, do one-half or one-third of their sentence, and then get out because of overcrowding, or on good behavior. “If the PSRB gets ahold of someone on the insanity plea,”

Sheffer said, “they can keep him at Hatch indefinitely. Which they’ve tended to do. That’s been the pattern so far.”

“So what are you saying?” I asked her. “That they should arrest I Know[116-168] 7/24/02 12:30 PM Page 154

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Thomas and send him to prison for what he did? That’s ridiculous.”

“I’m not saying that. Not at all. If he did prison time, the psychological treatment would be minimal—a Band-Aid approach, and that’s only if he was lucky. And he
needs
treatment, Dominick. No doubt about it, your brother is a very sick man. But if it’s not a criminal matter, then the Review Board are the ones who are going to decide when he gets out of here. And like I said, they tend to be conservative. And jittery about the media. It reads better, you know?

Freddy Kruger’s locked up and all’s well. Come out, come out, wherever you are. Have you seen today’s paper yet?”

Had I? I couldn’t remember.

Her phone rang again. While she spoke to the person on the other end, she unfolded a copy of the
Daily Record,
thumbed to an inside page, and pointed:

COMMIT 3 RIVERS SELF-AMPUTEE TO

FORENSIC HOSPITAL.

My stomach muscles clenched. Jesus Christ, I thought. Here we go again. At least he wasn’t front-page news anymore. He was front-page second-section news. Maybe Thomas’s fifteen minutes were almost up.

The article implied that if my brother hadn’t gone into shock when he amputated his hand, he might have started hacking away at other people. It made him sound like the kind of psychopath who
did
belong at Hatch. It made a
case
for it. The reporter quoted some talking head from Hartford about public safety—about how patients’ rights “coexisted” with the rights of the community to a safe environment, but that the latter was priority number one.

It was bullshit: Thomas as a public menace. I knew it and so did any doctor who’d ever worked with him. But I was beginning to get what the deal was. With Sheffer’s help, the situation was beginning to clarify itself like one of those Polaroids that develops in the palm of your hand: my brother’s being locked up at Hatch was about public relations. Order restored. They’d slammed the door on him, and now this Psychiatric Review Board was going to throw away the key.

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Okay, I sat there thinking. Now I’ve got it. Now, at least, I have a hand to play.

“I’m sorry, Dominick,” Sheffer said, after she’d hung up the phone. “I know I’m throwing a lot at you here—a lot more than the state of Connecticut wants me to, actually.”

“Who cares what the state of Connecticut wants?” I said.

“Well, for starters,
I
have to,” she said. “Unless you’re interested in supporting me and my daughter. Look, let me back up a little—tell you a little bit about the legality of what’s already happened and what you can expect now. Okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”

Thomas had been admitted to Hatch on something called a Physician’s Emergency Certificate, which the surgeon at Shanley Memorial had put into motion.

“That’s the fifteen-day paper, right?”

“Right,” she said. The hospital now had fifteen days to observe the patient—to determine over a two-week period if he was dangerous to himself or others. “The fifteen-day paper’s airtight, Dominick,” she said. “There’s no way in hell you’re getting your brother out of here today. It’s out of your hands. Thomas is going to be here for fifteen court-ordered days, minimum.”

“This sucks,” I said. “This just
sucks.
” I got up, walked back over to the window. The patients in the rec area had gone inside. “There’s no way to fight this fifteen-day thing?”

“There is, actually, but it’s a long shot. A waste of time, probably.

Your brother or you could request a ‘probable cause’ hearing. Then the hospital would have to
prove
that Thomas is dangerous to himself. But think about it: all a judge has to do is look down at his stump. There’s the proof of probable cause, right? You want my advice?”

I was still looking out the window. “Go ahead,” I said.

“Just ride out the fifteen days. Let us take care of him, observe him, see how well he starts coming around now that he’s gotten back on his meds. This is probably going to be the safest place for him.”

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“Oh, yeah, right,” I said. “In with a bunch of psychotics with violent histories.”

“That’s not fair, Dominick, and it’s not accurate, either. There are all kinds of psychiatric patients here—not all of them violent by a long shot. Sooner or later you’re going to have to face the fact that the person who’s most dangerous to Thomas is Thomas. But he’s on close watch. For the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours, there’s going to be an aide within ten feet of him, twenty-four hours a day.

If he’s suicidal, someone’s going to be there.”

“He’s
not
suicidal,” I said.

“Well, all right, suppose he were.”

“So then what?” I said. “What happens after the fifteen days?”

She said Unit Two’s evaluation team would file a report with the probate judge. She’d have input into it. And Dr. Patel, and Dr.

Chase, and the head nurse of the unit. The recommendation would be that he should be discharged, or transferred to another facility, or kept here under the jurisdiction of the Review Board.

“Okay, let’s say the judge hands him over to this Review Board.

What do
they
do?”

“They commit him.”

“Where?”

“Here, I said. At Hatch.”

“For how long?”

Her eyes fell away from mine. “For a year.”

“A
year
!”

Her hands flew up in defense. “Don’t kill the messenger,
paisano
.

He’d be here for a year, and then his case would come up for annual review.”

I sat there, slumped in the chair, my arms bracketed around my chest. “A year,” I said again. “How the hell am I supposed to look him in the eye when I see him today and say, ‘Okay, Thomas, here’s the deal. They got you for the next 15 days and maybe for the 365 days after that’? How am I supposed to tell him that?”

“Dominick?” Sheffer said. “That’s another thing.”

“What is?”

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“Visiting. You can’t see him yet.”

Visits were restricted, she said, because of the maximum-security status. Thomas and she would work up a list of potential visitors—up to five people. A security check would have to be run on everybody on the list. We’d have to wait until we were notified. It would take about two weeks to get clearance.

“
Two weeks?
In two weeks, he’ll be out of here!”

She reminded me that that was not a given. Suggested I lower my voice a little.

“So you’re saying that for two weeks, he just twists in the wind down here. He can’t even see his own brother? Jesus, that’s great. He probably
will
be suicidal by then.”

She shrugged an apology. “There’s nothing I can do about it,”

she said. “Except fill in the gaps as much as possible. Act as your liaison.” She smiled. “Which I’ll be very happy to do. You can call me whenever you want to. Whenever you
need
to. You guys can communicate through me until your clearance comes through.”

I nodded, resigned. I felt suddenly, profoundly, sleepy.

She spent the rest of the time describing Thomas’s surroundings, his daily routine: what the rooms were like, how they ran things at mealtimes, how patients had access to computers and arts and crafts and college extension programs. I couldn’t really listen. In the past thirty-six hours, I’d spent all my anger and outrage. I was running on empty.

On our way out, we bumped into this Dr. Patel. Middle-aged woman: salt-and-pepper hair rolled into a bun, orange sari underneath her lab coat. “A pleasure,” she said, extending her hand. Dr.

Patel said she was in the “information-gathering stage” of her treatment of my brother. She’d call me after she’d read through all his records and she and Thomas had had two or three sessions. Perhaps I would be willing to share some personal insights that might augment his medical history?

Sheffer escorted me back toward the main entrance; it felt like I was sleepwalking. “I’ll go in and see him right after you leave,” she promised. “I’ll tell him you were down here trying to visit him.

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Anything else you want me to tell him for you?”

“What?”

“You know something? You look like you need to get some serious sleep. I asked you if there was anything you wanted me to tell your brother for you.”

“No, I guess not.”

“You want me to tell him you love him?”

I looked at her. Looked away. “He knows I love him,” I said.

Sheffer shook her head and sighed. “What is it with you guys and the ‘L’ word, anyway?” she said.

She was overstepping her ground again, but I was too tired to resist. “All right, fine,” I said. “Tell him.”

We shook hands. She told me to call her anytime. Asked me where I was headed.

“Where am I headed
now
?” I shrugged. “Home, I guess. I guess I’ll just go home and disconnect the phone and crash. You’re right. I haven’t slept for shit.”

“Oh,” she said. She looked around, waved to the guard at the door, and spoke a little lower. “I thought maybe you were going to check things out at the doctor’s.”

“What for? You told me Ehlers isn’t even his doctor anymore.

That it’s out of my hands.”

“I didn’t mean Dr. Ehlers,” she said. “I meant a medical doctor. Get those bruises of yours looked at. Have a few pictures taken while you’re still swollen.”

I looked at her, my face a question.

“In case, you know, you needed some documentation. A little lever-age for later on. A bargaining tool with the state of Connecticut.

. . . Of course, you didn’t get that idea from a company gal like me. I’d
never
suggest something like that.”

Halfway toward the entrance, I turned around to look. She was still standing there. A jowl-faced guard and a metal detector stood between us. “See you later, Mr. Birdsey,” she called. Gave me a thumbs-up. “
Shalom! Arrivederci!
”

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10

f

1962

Thomas and I have been to three different states: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire.
Four
, counting Connecticut.

The only place we’ve ever been to in New Hampshire is Massabesic Lake. Ray took us fishing there last year. We stayed overnight in a wooden cabin, and all night long, mosquitoes kept bugging us. We didn’t catch any fish, either. Not one. The one thing I remember about that trip was this dead squirrel that someone had trapped inside a firebox. They’d put a bunch of rocks on top to keep him trapped in there. He was all huddled up in a corner, but you could tell he’d gone mental trying to get out. There was crusty black blood around his mouth and he stunk and bugs had eaten out his eyes. Ray lifted him out with a stick and flung him. He didn’t land all the way in the woods; he landed right on the edge. Thomas wanted to bury him and have a funeral, but Ray told him to stop the sissy stuff. All the time we were there, you could see that dead squirrel right out in plain sight.

Whenever anyone mentions New Hampshire, that squirrel is always what I think of. I bet I’ve thought about that squirrel a million times.

159

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In less than half an hour, we’ll be in a new state, New York, because we’re on our sixth-grade field trip to the Statue of Liberty and Radio City Music Hall. We’re riding in a coach bus with cushioned seats and a bathroom in the back. We’re still in Connecticut: Bridgeport. Eddie Otero says Bridgeport’s close to the New York border. Otero has cousins who live in the Bronx, and this is the same way they go when they go to his cousins’. We’ve been riding almost two hours. I’m sitting in the way-way-back seat with Otero and Channy Harrington. Thomas is midway up the aisle. He got stuck sitting with Eugene Savitsky, this weird kid in our class who’s fat and always talks about the planets and geology and weather. Mrs.