Free Saving Max by Antoinette van Heugten

“What’s wrong with Max?” she demands.
    “Danielle,” says Reyes-Moreno. “You remember Dr. Fastow. He is—”
    “I know who he is,” she interrupts. “Where’s Max?”
    Reyes-Moreno takes her arm and steers her into an empty office. Ichabod trails behind. “I’m afraid that Max seems to be dissociating,” she says. “His behavior today—while not suicidal—has been highly erratic and disturbing.”
    Danielle tries to keep the panic out of her voice. “What do you mean, ‘dissociating’?”
    “He is losing touch with reality.” Her olive eyes are rueful.“It could be the result of extreme anxiety, but we feel it needs to be addressed immediately. In addition to Max’s continued perseveration upon suicidal ideations, he has had another…episode.”
    “What does that mean?”
    Reyes-Moreno’s eyes slide past Fastow before they fix on Danielle. “Max attacked Jonas. As you know, it isn’t the first time.”
    Danielle’s heart races. She flashes back to that horrible day when Max assaulted Jonas—the blood on his head and Marianne’s stricken face. “Why didn’t you tell me this? Did he…hurt him?”
    “Unfortunately, we had to keep Jonas under observation all day yesterday.” She touches Danielle’s arm lightly. “He’ll be fine. The fact remains, however, that Max punched Jonas in the nose, and the boy bled profusely. It also seems that Jonas has a cracked rib.”
    Danielle is shocked. “Where is Max now?”
    “We put him in the quiet room—”
    “How dare you?” Danielle has seen that room. It’s solitary—that’s what it is. A big white box with canvas padding all around and a slit of a window to shove food through. She stalks toward the door. Reyes-Moreno grasps her arm.
    “Danielle—he isn’t in there,” she says. “We’ve had a bit of a…situation arise. Please, let’s sit.” Reyes-Moreno closes the door and continues. “As you know, we put Dr. Fastow on Max’s team at the outset of his assessment. He has done a stellar job with Max’s medications and is confident that he has found the right—”
    “Cocktail,” snaps Danielle. “What does that have to do with—”
    “There simply isn’t any other way to explain it, except to admit that an error has been made,” says Fastow. “We are uncertain precisely how it happened, or who is responsible, but it appears that Max received a far higher dose of his current medications—”
    “Oh, God,” she says. “Is he all right?”
    Fastow regards her calmly. “Of course.”
    Reyes-Moreno takes Danielle’s trembling hands into her firm ones. “Max is resting comfortably in his room. He’ll weather the overdose and be back to normal very soon.”
    Danielle yanks her arm free. “ Normal? You think overdosing him is normal? I want to see him.”
    “There’s nothing to see right now, Danielle.” Reyes-Moreno’s voice is salve on a burn. “He’s asleep. I assure you that we’ll call you the moment he wakes up.”
    Danielle stands rooted to the floor. It is all suddenly unbearable—her relinquishment of Max to this place; his terrifying displays of violence; the unspoken presumption that her insistence that she remain here with her own child is injurious to his treatment; and the even stronger undercurrent that somehow her son’s very presence here must be her fault. The implication is that she, as his mother, should have seen the “signs” of the severity of Max’s problems long before he wound up at Maitland. Her fear galvanizes into anger. “I’ve had about all of this I can stand. Why don’t you tell me how such a thing could happen? You people are supposed to be running the foremost psychiatric hospital in the country—according to the pundits of your profession—and the minute I’m gone, you overdose my child!” She jerks her head toward Fastow. “And now we have his medicating physician, the famous psychopharmacologist, who has screwed up in colossal fashion—”
    “Ms. Parkman, I must