Free Finding Bliss by Dina Silver

agreeing not to touch the bag she was cradling. Grace and I spent over an hour trying to reason with her.
    “Should we call the paramedics?” Grace asked me.
    “I’m afraid she’ll completely self-destruct if strangers come in here and try to take her away. We need to find another way to get her to the hospital,” I said, and then it came to me.
    “Mom, I have an idea,” I said, following her as she walked in circles around the house, pausing only to light a cigarette and peek behind the curtains. “We need to get you to the hospital and have you tested so that we can find out what the agents are drugging you with.”
    She agreed.
    As soon as the three of us walked into Evanston Hospital, my mother started telling anyone who would listen, “They’re trying to drug me.”
    It was enough to make the nurse at patient check-in look up from her computer screen. “These two are drugging you?” the nurse asked, pointing at Grace and me.
    “No, the federal agents. They came into my house and replaced my pills with drugs. They even stole clothes from me and rearranged my pantry.”
    The nurse shifted her gaze to me. I pointed my right index finger toward my head and began turning it in circles.
    “Okay, ma’am, let’s get you into a room.”
    The three of us were taken to a room and waited forty-five minutes for a doctor to come in and observe her. It took him only fifteen minutes to determine that she was having a nervous breakdown and needed to be admitted to the psych ward for observation. He brought Grace and me into the hallway to talk to us.
    “We’d like to admit her and get her off the drugs she’s carrying around, and on some antipsychotic medication as soon as possible,” he said.
    “Okay,” I mumbled as Grace wrapped an arm around my shoulder.
    “The only thing is that we can’t keep her against her will, so we’re going to need to get her to admit that she’s either a harm to herself or to others.”
    I could see her through the narrow window in the door, waving her hands around while talking to one of the nurses. She looked delicate and scared, and my heart broke for her.
    “Do you want me to talk to her?” I asked. “I think she’d be more comfortable with me.”
    “No, no, our staff will sit down with her. Once she admits she’s in danger of hurting herself or someone else, then they can sign the papers on her behalf.”
    I nodded and followed him back into the room.
    When I looked into her eyes, I realized she was not going to go down without a fight. The psych team’s questions were very pointed and direct, but she danced around all of them like a prima ballerina.
    “Have you had suicidal thoughts?” they’d ask.
    “Well, wouldn’t you if you were being drugged against your will?” she answered.
    “Are you depressed?”
    “Wouldn’t you be depressed if you were being followed and people were breaking into your home?” she’d say.
    “Have you thought about killing yourself?”
    “I’m a good Christian woman. I would never do something like that.”
    Four hours later, they’d won. She was beaten down and exhausted and begging for a cigarette. She eventually caved and admitted she’d had thoughts of suicide, and once she realized they had goaded her into saying it, she was pissed . I burst into tears as they took her away to the psych ward, kicking and screaming obscenities at me and everyone around her. To say it was the lowest point of my life would be a grandiose understatement.
    Grace took me home and made some coffee while I sat on the couch in silence and watched raindrops race down the window.
    “Do you want me to have my mom come over?” she asked.
    I shook my head no.
    When it came to our families, Grace and I had one thing in common: a nonexistent relationship with our biological fathers. But that’s where the similarities ended. Grace’s mother and her husband, who’d adopted Grace as a baby, were madly in love and functioned admirably as a nuclear family