Hospitalization, Round Two

So we took Max home. We were dazed from so many hours in the ER, confused as to what we were supposed to do next. We called Dr. L, who was shocked, and basically told us that it wasn't possible. He wanted to talk to them and get back to us. I hung up with him and told David what he'd said. Dave laughed. What else was there to do? We were worse off than ever. We had held out hope that this thing that we didn't want to do would be helpful, and we'd tried to do it, asked for help and been turned away.
Twenty minutes later, the phone rang. Dr. L. had spoken to them and confirmed our story. He offered us no next move. He suggested, as many had before, that if things got out of hand, I should call 211 and ask for the clinician on-call. They would help us, he said.
Obviously, a short trip to the emergency room hadn't fixed anything. Things were the same, except now we felt we had no emergency plan. Our plan had failed. A week later, the day after Thanksgiving, things became intolerably dangerous. I had bite marks on my arm, there were multiple new dents in the walls of the family room. Nothing had been held back this time. It seemed like the Earth was opening up and swallowing us.
I called 211, not sure what I was asking for, but doing what Dr L had told me to do. I think the clinician's name was Susan. I had never met her, so I tried to give a quick explanation. She said, “Alright, let me call around and see if I can find him a hospital bed”. She started to hang up the phone. “Wait!” I shouted. “That's what you're going to do? I don't understand.” She sounded surprised, “What did you think I could do?”. I didn't know the answer to the question. I didn't know what I thought. For so long, all the professionals had said we were doing something wrong. I always thought maybe they were right. Maybe they knew what to do, and would just do it if I was a good enough mom, if I let go of my pride and asked them for the help we needed. But it wasn't that way. They had nothing. They knew it, and I knew it. So I said OK. Find us a hospital bed. What choice did I have?
She found us a bed in White Plains, at the wildly multiply-named NY-Presbyterian Cornell Columbia White Plains Campus. Or something like that. I think “Weill” is also in the name. It was an old-school mental hospital. I want to call it an asylum, even. We packed everything up again, my parents and brother came and picked Henry up to bring him to their house in Newtown, and we headed to White Plains.
Despite the fact that they were expecting us, we waited for hours. Just the three of us, in a weird living room-type room, with some random magazines. Occasionally, an ambulance would come with a patient for their drunk-tank. The person was always only half-covered by a sheet, and the EMTs bringing the patient acted like UPS guys with an unwieldly package. The patients we saw arrive were frequent flyers; the admissions people seemed to know them well.
We waited three hours for insurance to approve the admission, and we were finally brought to a gray unit known as “Nichol's Cottage”. At one point it had been an actual cottage, but now they were waiting for a new, renovated pediatric psych unit. The halls were gray, the TV was on, and some listless kids stared at ESPN, which the nurses seemed to like. We got an orientation from a nurse named Sarah, who explained the rules, and gave us some phone numbers. The visiting hours were incredibly limited, unheard of for kids with better medical illnesses, like diabetes, or a broken leg. No, our kid had to do without us. Because, obviously, we were part of the problem.
Max seemed oddly relaxed when we left. He said goodbye, but didn't seem to really want anything from us. No hugs or kisses. He seemed unworried about the whole situation. I was trying to keep vomit down, wondering what the hell was happening. It was a long ride to Newtown, made longer by my parents call on the cell phone, telling us that Henry was missing us. Dave and I talked through the whole decision over and over again. At least we were all safe. We were all safe. We were all safe.