chronology 5
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1995, from November 17
November 17: I called Porirua Hospital in the evening, and was put through to Tessa's ward. No, they hadn't been able to make any kind of assessment, a nurse said, because Tessa was refusing to communicate. Perhaps she would speak to me on the phone, and they could listen from around the corner. It was a forlorn hope: Tessa wouldn't speak to me, either. (After she came back home, she told me she turned her back on the psychiatrist who tried to interview her.)
Residence: While in Wellington, stayed mainly at the Wellington Women's Boarding House. In Dunedin, 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 stopped informing us of her movements, 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.)
Occupation: Unemployed.
November 18 (Noon): The telephone rang about midday. "Mr Ireland?" "Yes," I replied, wondering what on earth had happened now. The caller was direct: "This is Staff Nurse Smith, from Porirua Hospital. There was a hearing of the Family Court this morning, and the judge found that Tessa didn't meet the terms of the Act for compulsory treatment. She has been discharged." The nurse went on to say that Tessa had refused all offers of assistance, and had left for Wellington on foot. I was stunned. All I could say was: "It's a disaster." And today, when I reflect on the course of Tessa's illness, this is the only incident that makes me angry. One of the principles of justice is that you give all the parties in a case an opportunity to have their say. Yet the court hadn't even informed me — the person whose action had put Tessa in hospital — that a hearing was going to be held. And having ordered her discharge, it had taken no further interest in her. "Didn't your lawyer offer you a lift into Wellington?" I asked Tessa, during the extensive "debriefing" that followed her eventual return to Palmerston North. No, he didn't, she said. All he said, apparently, was "Goodbye". And yet, for that singular disservice to his client, the lawyer received $500 from Legal Aid. (Later, he tried to wring even more cash out of the case, pursuing Tessa with letters that suggested "follow-up legal action" over her committal. Since this action would presumably have been against me, I took the letter that arrived at my house, smeared it with butter and soy sauce, wrote "Not at this address" on the envelope, and mailed it back to him.) But money is not the only thing that motivates some members of the legal profession. As I have already said, some lawyers simply do not believe there is such a thing as mental illness — and derive great satisfaction from sending people with schizophrenia back to the streets. From their perspective, if a person can still trudge from one backpackers' hostel to another, and can still get the top off a jar of rancid peanut butter, he or she should be left to "enjoy" his "lifestyle choice".
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November 18 (Late afternoon): I gave Tessa a few hours to travel back into Wellington, and then called Wendi — the manager of the Wellington Women's Boarding House. (In the meantime, I learnt later, Tessa had started to walk toward Wellington on the motorway, which is dangerous and illegal. Eventually, she had been picked up by a couple and taken into the city.) Wendi was great. She didn't have a row a fancy certificates on her office wall, but could identify a mentally disturbed person — unlike some members of the psychiatric profession. Tessa had arrived at the boarding house about half an hour earlier, and had been refused readmission, Wendi said. For a start, the boarding house had a policy of not having more than one psychiatric case at a time, and it already had one. But apart from that, Tessa had been increasingly forgetful and disruptive. She had accused other residents of stealing from her, and had left her room in such a filthy condition that professional cleaners had had to be brought in. Among the rubbish had been scraps of paper with chemical equations written on them. "She has a degree in chemistry," I explained. "That makes this all the more tragic," Wendi replied. She said she had scolded Tessa for having herself discharged from hospital. (A judicial reviewal of a committal has to be initiated by the patient concerned.) Tessa had replied: "Oh, but the judge did that!" "You see," said Wendi, "she's just playing games."
And where was Tessa now, I asked. "Well, a few minutes ago, she was outside on the footpath, with that suitcase without a handle. If you hang on a minute, I'll go and see if she's still there." No, she wasn't there. She had disappeared. Just how she managed to carry that large, heavy, cumbersome suitcase around, no one knew. Wendi was not the first to express amazement.
November 19- : Keeping track of Tessa's movements was clearly going to be difficult. But wherever she went, there was a reasonable chance she would sooner or later seek admission to a Salvation Army hostel. So I went to see an officer at the local branch, made a donation of $50, and asked him to issue an alert. He called a couple of hostels, but drew a blank. "Have you considered exorcism?" he asked me, when I told him of Tessa's mental decline. "Well," I said, "if I were living about 500 years ago, I would probably think she was possessed by a devil, because she does seem, at times, to have been 'taken over'." I didn't want to tell him that I thought his suggestion was ludicrous. How much saner the "Islamic response" to her predicament had been! While we were making inquiries, Tessa was staying at another hostel in Wellington — and planning her next trip , which she would finance with a refund she received from Malaysian Airlines. (This was the airline that was to have flown her to England, before I refused to supply her with the documents she needed to get a British passport.) Fortunately, she didn't fly back to Australia, but instead took a plane to Dunedin, where she made the mistake of contacting the freight forwarding company that had flown her possessions to Australia. Since I was also in contact with the company, I was soon able to trace her to her new lodgings — the YMCA in the city centre. I called the YMCA and spoke to the manager, Brian. Yes, Tessa was there. She had looked like "a frightened rabbit" when she arrived, but had settled down in the past few days and was now in the process of applying for jobs. I wasn't surprised by his optimism. Appearances are deceiving, which is why some acutely psychotic psychiatric patients are discharged into the community, where (if they are young and male) they sometimes attack, and even kill, friends or family members.
December 9: Because I had succeeded in tracing her, Tessa left the YMCA and moved into a room in the basement of 60 Murano Street, Waverley, Dunedin. This was a private house owned by a Dutch woman who had been married to a schizophrenic for 20 years. Needless to say, she knew a lot about schizophrenia. She did not, however, realize that anything was wrong with Tessa when my daughter arrived on her doorstep and asked to rent the room. "She seemed so sweet," the woman told me later.