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Tessa in Dunedin, 1996
This photograph was taken on January 29, while Tessa was still an inpatient at Dunedin Public Hospital. It was a Monday, and the first of six days I spent in the city to see Tessa, talk to her lawyer and psychiatrist, and attend a sitting of the Family Court at which the judge authorized her transfer to Palmerston North Hospital. At the end of the week, during which we spent most of our time sightseeing in and around Dunedin, I took her back to Palmerston North. And because there was no room at Palmerston North Hospital, she returned to the family home, though she remained under a compulsory treatment order for a total of six months.
This, then, is what Tessa looked like after several years of psychosis, and about six months of traipsing through a bewildering succession of backpackers' hostels. But in that smile — the first I had seen on her face since about 1992 — is the first tentative sign of her amazing recovery.
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Scene: Botanical Gardens.
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