Free The Quiet Room by Lori Schiller, Amanda Bennett

the reality of the situation. Matters had spiraled out of our hands. If she didn't sign herself in, chances were good they would commit her involuntarily.
    “If you sign yourself in,” I told her, “you will stay in control of the situation. You will be able to sign yourself back out when you want. If you don't, they can force you to stay.”
    Still, I kept giving her a hopeful picture, one that I myself was aching to believe. The Payne Whitney Clinic of New York Hospital, where she was to be sent, was a well-known acute-care facility. That was where people were sent with short-term psychiatric problems. It never occurred to me that people left such short-term care facilities and went on to long-term hospitals. I simply thought she would go in, get some rest, and leave.
    “It will only be for a few days, Lori,” I told her.
    Lori trusted me. Lori had always trusted me. So after about an hour, tired and tearful, she capitulated. The paperwork had already been prepared. She signed it. She looked very small and very helpless as they wheeled her away to be transferred to the psychiatric unit.
    In the car on the way home, I knew that Mark was hurting. He hadn't been able to understand what was happening to his sister and was frightened and shocked by the night's events. But I couldn't find anything in myself to comfort him. I was too caught up in the battle raging within my own mind. Lori's problems were only temporary, I kept saying to myself. It was just an acute problem that was going to be over quickly. She would snap out of it in the hospital and be home soon.
    But then the dark thoughts I had been trying to hide began pummeling at my hopeful barricade: It's all your fault, I thought. Lori is very sick, and you caused it. You weren't affectionate enough. You didn't pay enough attention to her. You pushed her too hard. You were too demanding. It's you who have caused her problems. You. You. You. My mind reeled over Lori's entire childhood, looking for answers.
    What had I done? What had I done?
    New York Hospital is a white, cold-looking building overlooking Manhattan's East River. Because it is perched right atop the FDR Drive where cars zoom down the east side of the city, I must have driven by it hundreds of times in my life, and never given it a second look. This time, when Nancy and I drove together to the Payne Whitney Clinic at New York Hospital, I looked closely. I knew that behind one of those dark, anonymous windows was Lori.
    The hospital had made some attempt at cheer: There was a small rotunda containing a pleasant garden with scarlet maples and a scraggly tulip or two in front of the main entrance. But from the moment we entered the hospital, it was clear that this was no ordinary place where ordinary people came to get well. This was a locked-door psychiatric facility. The people inside couldn't just walk on out. And we couldn't just walk on in. After taking the elevator up to Lori's floor, we buzzed and waited to be scrutinized through a window in the door and admitted.
    I didn't know what to expect. After her first suicide attempt, at least she had seemed fairly normal. Apologetic, yes, and afraid that we would be angry. But we had talked things over coherently, and she had explained herself. What would she be like this time?
    As it turned out, it was worse than anything I could have imagined. We were admitted to a corridor filled with blank-faced people, muttering strange things to themselves, or knitting jittery patterns in the air with restless fingers, or pacing or rocking incessantly in their chairs. And there, in a visiting room, where thousands of devastated parents must have looked with horror on thousands of distraught children, I saw my daughter. But it was not my daughter. The Lori I knew was gone. And in her place was a stranger, a person who seemed to be living only partly in this world, and partly in some faraway world of her own making. There were no more apologies, no more pleas to let her