1995, from October 28
Residence: While in Wellington, Tessa stayed mainly at the Wellington Women's Boarding House. In Dunedin, she stayed mainly at the YMCA and at a private home. But by the time she was admitted to Dunedin Public Hospital, on Christmas Day, she was spending nearly every night in a different place — usually a backpackers' hostel. She moved as often as Yasser Arafat when the Israelis were trying to assassinate him. By this stage, she had stopped informing us of her movements — though she still called us incessantly — and had to be traced through the Motels Association and the police. (The Bank of New Zealand and Telecom refused to cooperate, citing the Privacy Act.) One of the places she stayed at in Dunedin was a doss-house called the House of Bethany, where she was asked the routine "induction" question: "Do you have a psychiatric history?" (A question that displeased her intensely!) But we didn't learn of her sojourn at this hostelry until after her return to Palmerston North. We were watching the television news one evening when an item came on about an elderly man in Dunedin who was suffering from amnesia, and who had ended up in, yes, the House of Bethany. "Oh, I've stayed there!" a little voice piped up from the living room sofa. And since then, the House of Bethany has become a standing joke in the family. Whenever Tessa turns up her nose at some of her mother's food, I say: "You would have been glad of that at the House of Bethany!" — which shows that even schizophrenia has its humorous moments.
Occupation: Unemployed.

October 28: Tessa flew from Sydney to Wellington. We met her at Wellington Airport, where she demanded money. "Give me money!" she said, embarrassingly loudly. And when the money was not immediately forthcoming, she tried to grab her mother's handbag. I was shocked, and seized by a sense of helplessness. How would we handle the situation if it spiraled out of control? Nervously, I glanced around for airport security. I couldn't see anyone who looked official. I glanced at the people nearby. Nobody seemed to be taking any notice. Perhaps they dismissed Tessa's outburst as the "airport behavior" of someone who had a short fuse. "Give me money!" Tessa demanded again. "Look, you're creating a scene." We were willing to give her some money, but hoped to wring some concession from her in return for it. Her mother said something about her possibly returning to Palmerston North. No, she was definitely not accompanying us to Palmerston North, she said, before repeating her demand for money. Clearly, we were not going to get anywhere, so finally, reluctantly, we gave her $100. And that was that. She wheeled her luggage — a battered suitcase now missing its handle — out of the airport and toward a line of waiting taxis. In less than two minutes, she had gone. (Note that, although she had only $100 to her name, she took the most expensive form of transport. We, who had plenty of money, took the shuttle bus to the railway station.)
November 1: Tessa wrote to us from the Wellington Women's Boarding House, saying she owed Mrs A a total of $642.20 — and asking us to pay this "as soon as possible". There were other requests: that we call the Emery freight office in Sydney, which she owed $268, that we call "the cargo section of Sydney Airport" and arrange for the return of her other suitcase to New Zealand, and that we send her "any old clothes you don't want".

November 13: We picked Tessa up at the Women's Boarding House and took her by car to the home of a doctor, ostensibly for afternoon tea but in reality to provide the doctor with the evidence she needed to support an application for a psychiatric assessment under the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992. Tessa was amazingly, maddeningly composed in the car, and talked about plans to buy "interview clothes" — so that she could start applying for jobs. She had returned "sooner than expected" from a "working holiday" in Australia, she said to the doctor. ("Hey! You're not supposed to be like this!" I found myself muttering to myself.) Inside the house, the composure remained intact while the tea was poured. The conversation continued along utterly uncontroversial lines, mainly about her "holiday" in Australia. In an attempt to draw her out, I gently asked her whether she didn't think the expedition had been a little "rash". "Don't be critical," the doctor snapped, and my heart sank even further. One of the most distressing things about a case of schizophrenia is that your relationship with the person concerned is not the only one that deteriorates. All peripheral relationships tend to become adversarial too, as the various parties disagree over not only the nature of the case but also over the procedure to follow in dealing with it. But as things turned out that afternoon, I needn't have worried. As soon as the doctor left the room, Tessa's composure cracked. In an instant, she was on her feet, in a rage. She knew the truth. She was not our daughter. "What?" we exclaimed. Now we were really mystified. Her mother reached out to her, to try to placate her — and was stopped with a sweeping, downward, karate "block". Tessa then stormed down the hall toward the front door, which the doctor had locked. "Open the door — or I'll break it down!" she shouted, wrestling with the handle. With difficulty, we got her back into the kitchen. "You can't just go," we told her. "You have to call a taxi." A telephone directory was produced. "I can't see any taxi companies," Tessa said, looking at a page in the directory that was full of their ads. Within about 15 minutes of a call being made, a taxi was outside the house. We gave Tessa $20 for the fare, and she took off. Then, to our astonishment, she came back. She had lost the $20. Or had she? No, she hadn't lost it after all. Phew! The $20 reappeared from somewhere, and Tessa, looking like a thundercloud, was off again. Later that afternoon, the doctor's husband, also a doctor, returned from work, and we talked until late into the evening about what we were going to do. I called the Wellington mental health crisis team, and was discouraged by the pessimism of the man I spoke to. We could apply for a psychiatric assessment of Tessa, he said, but should not expect to be successful. Things were bad, but still not bad enough for the procedure to result in a compulsory treatment order. Eventually, we decided to give up and return to Palmerston North the next morning.
November 14: After returning to Palmerston North, I called the local mental health crisis team and spoke to an elderly woman. I told her about what had transpired in Wellington, and issued a blunt warning: "If Tessa does come back to Palmerston North, I'm not going to let her into the house. I'm going to call you, and I'm going to call the police. And you and the police can work out what to do." Her reply: "Wellington is entitled to its opinion, but I think that if you have reached that stage you should go ahead and apply for an assessment." She added that if I would like to visit the clinic, she could give me the necessary papers. She was marvellous. I was there within half an hour, and spent the next hour or so telling her the whole story. And while I was telling it, a strange thing happened — I broke down. There I was, feeling I was completely in control of myself, and perfectly capable of coping with whatever life threw at me. And the next moment, I was seized by a surge of emotion. I choked up, and for about 30 seconds was unable to continue. "This must be terrible for you," the woman exclaimed understandingly. "Can I make you a cup of tea?" It was the nicest thing anyone said to me during the whole sorry saga.

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November 15: I returned to Wellington, and went immediately to the home of the domineering doctor — she who had told me not to be critical of Tessa. Then we both went to Wellington Hospital, where she (the doctor) was to be admitted for treatment of asthma, and filled out the medical certificate that would accompany my application for a psychiatric assessment. We worked at a formica-topped table in a hospital cafeteria, and we did a thoroughly lousy job. Twice I tried to guide her, as she wrote. Tessa never claimed that the traffic "slow(ed) down intentionally to stop her getting on (the) plane to Sydney", I pointed out. "That claim was made in connection with her daily journey to work, while she was still at Sissfill." My objection was brushed aside: "That's not important." Next I wanted to insert some words to say that Tessa thought that we, her parents, were part of the conspiracy/vendetta against her. Again, I was overruled: "No, that would count against you." There were other errors in the certificate: Tessa didn't try to attack her mother. There is a big difference between blocking someone's advance — which is what Tessa did — and attempting to assault them. And Tessa didn't "(take) off walking on (the) road". She did leave in the taxi. I wasn't happy, as I firmly believe that in any legal process you have to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth — even if such honesty does initially "count against you". But what could I do? After we had completed the mandatory medical opinion, which was so clumsily written (click here) it made me wince, I took it to the reception desk in the psychiatric department and handed it in. Once again, doing this involved telling the whole story of Tessa's decline to a psychiatric nurse. And once again, when I said that all we wanted was to see our daughter restored to her old self, I broke down. "It's okay," the woman said reassuringly. "It's okay."
November 16: In the morning, Tessa was taken by the police from Wellington Women's Boarding House to Wellington Hospital. I arrived after lunch, knowing that she would be there by then. As soon as I walked through the door of the psychiatric department, incongruously carrying a plastic bag full of secondhand books, I heard someone shouting in an interview room to the left. It was Tessa's voice, angry and indignant. I glanced toward the room, and was shocked to see two white-gloved male orderlies standing in front of the door. It was like a scene from the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Abruptly, the door opened, and Tessa appeared in the doorway. For two seconds, our eyes met — and everything seemed to freeze. Then she was hustled back inside. During the next 15 minutes, while I waited behind a screen, I heard her make several attempts to leave the room. "Who are you to say I can't leave? You're not doctors." she would say to the orderlies. And they would reply: "No, our job is to keep you in the room, so please go back inside." After about 20 minutes, I was told she wanted to see me. "I want the whole thing called off," she demanded. "It can't be called off," I replied. "Even if I wanted to call it off, I couldn't." She persisted: "My lawyer says it can be called off." "Well," I said, "you are taking advice from your advisers, and I am taking advice from my advisers — and the advice I have received is that it can't be called off." The telephone rang. It was the lawyer. He was confused: "But she says she has already had an assessment." I knew what he was referring to: a session she had had with a psychologist a few days earlier, for which she had paid $80. I tried to explain the situation to him, but doubted he understood — or even wanted to understand. Many lawyers don't believe there is such a thing as mental illness. Meanwhile, Tessa expressed outrage over the way in which she had been brought to the hospital. Did I know about that? Yes, I said, I did, and I was sorry the police had had to be involved. Later that afternoon, she was seen by a psychiatrist, who made a preliminary assessment and determined, in the words of the Act, that "there are reasonable grounds for believing that the proposed patient is mentally disordered and that it is desirable that the proposed patient be required to undergo further assessment and treatment". I was told the police would arrive within half an hour to escort her to Porirua Hospital. Because she would abscond if she got a chance to do so, she was going to be put in a secure wing. The transfer might be unpleasant. I might not want to witness it. I said I didn't, and left the hospital and returned to Palmerston North.

November 16 and later: During and after that day, I found that I had mixed feelings about it. The confrontation with Tessa in the interview room had been more than terrible: it had tested my conviction she was mentally ill, rather than emotionally disturbed. And her determination had tested mine. As a parent, I had also been badly shaken. One wants to protect one's child, not put him or her through that kind of ordeal. But even as I had argued with her, I had admired the way in which she had fought back. Her forcefulness, her sheer tenacity, had been impressive. In a strange way, I had felt proud of her. I had not, however, been greatly impressed by the staff. During my wait behind the flimsy screen, shortly after my arrival, I was not left alone: a pensive psychiatric nurse sat close to me for the entire 15 minutes or so that I was there. Since nurses are busy people, and hospitals are chronically understaffed, I had to assume that I was also under observation. What did they expect to find out — that I, not Tessa, was the one with the "problem" (in line with the theory of R D Laing, et al., that the "mental patient" is actually the "scapegoat" of a dysfunctional family, and possibly its "sanest" member)? To a certain extent, such theories don't concern me. If some people cling, for essentially ideological reasons, to the notion that psychosis is a "healthy" reaction to a sick world, I am not unduly bothered. I am bothered, however, when I see such ideas delaying or thwarting the treatment of an unwell family member. To make conversation, I said to the nurse: "I wrote quite a lot in my application for a psychiatric assessment; but if I had had to write only two words, I would have written "paranoid schizophrenia". "Oh," she said, sounding a little surprised. "Do you really think it's that?" "Yes," I replied. "I do think it's that." Later, of course, I had to see the psychiatrist. It was a classic interview situation, with him on one side of an important desk and me on the other. I started, once again, to tell the story of Tessa's decline. But after I had been speaking for about 10 minutes, he interrupted me. "You have a narrative style," he commented matter-of-factly. I was a little nonplussed by this, but persevered. Then, after another five minutes or so, the comment came again: "You have a narrative style." In reply, I said something slightly humorous about being a journalist, and "being in the business of telling stories", and again carried on. It wasn't until he interrupted me for a third time — this time to tell me he had a lot of people to see, and would I mind coming to the point as quickly as possible — that I realized he wasn't interested in hearing about Tessa's mental deterioration. He simply wanted me to come up with one or two pieces of convincing "evidence", which he could append to his report. So I skipped a lot of the remaining "narrative", described Tessa's recent aberrant behavior and bizarre delusions, and returned to the "lobby" to await developments. I must have been waiting for about an hour when I again saw the psychiatrist. He marched up to me, and as he did so his right forearm flicked up in one of those automated movements immortalized by Peter Sellers in the 1964 film satire Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. "Well, goodbye," he said briskly, offering me a rigid hand. "Oh, I'm not going just yet," I replied. "No," he said. "But I am!" And with that, he turned and marched out of the hospital. "Good God," I thought to myself. "I really am in the madhouse." Continued

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