Jean glanced at her, a slight smile forming. "The NBA, the NFL."

We all began to giggle.

"Don King Productions is following me."

We went on and on, laughing hysterically as we listed more and more ridiculous names. And then we stopped and the kitchen was quiet again, and Angelica was the only one howling.

"I have to do something. I just can't sit here," I said.

"I know it doesn't make you feel any better, but it's all part of the illness," Margaret said. "They drug, they drink, they run and bang their heads against a wall. You just have to step back, not go under with them."

"I am under," I said.

I was ready to renew the search, to sally out again into the strange town on my mission, but Margaret persuaded me to stay put. It was nearly eleven o'clock, she pointed out. All the stores were closed. If she was at someone's house, it would be futile to go looking for her. She might be on her way back here. There was a chance that Trina had seen the address on the front door, noticed the street. If she came back, wouldn't I want to be there?

"Want something to help you sleep?" Brad asked me around 2 a.m.-or, in mental illness time, six hours past meds. Angelica was finally quiet. I was sitting on Margaret's kitchen chair. The only light was from a low-wattage bulb above the stove. Brad held out a pill in one hand, a glass of water in the other. He looked tired under that light. I figured I looked worse.

"No," I said.

"You need some sleep, Keri."

Whatever he gave me cushioned the world in a hurry. So this was how it worked, I thought. It was like taking a big, big shot of double-acting liquor. Everything was soft and grainy, slightly out of focus. I would have cried, but I was too calm. Brad helped me out of the chair, put his arm around my waist, led me to the bedroom, and placed me on the bed. I barely heard the door close.

IN THE MORNING, JEAN BROUGHT ME ORANGE JUICE, COFfee, and a plate of eggs and sausages. A slight wooziness had settled into my brain. A Haldol hangover, something to be worked off during the day. Jean sat on the bed, watching me. I didn't eat the food. After a while, she took the tray back to the kitchen. It was still too early to call the police. I heard someone at the door, and when I looked up Brad was standing there.

"I went back out after you fell asleep, and this morning too. Want you to know how sorry I am about all this. Truly sorry," he said.

What did he expect me to say, That's okay, don't worry about it?

Brad sighed.

"The thing is"-and here his voice swelled a bit, just enough so his emotions had room to maneuver and settle down-"we have saved so many lives. At least seventy-five since we started. Seventy-five young people who are alive and productive because of the work I do-the work we do."

"I just want my kid back. That's all I want."

"We want her back too. You once asked me how I got involved with this work. My mother had schizophrenia, and she wouldn't accept any treatment. I grew up with a woman who wore way too much makeup, didn't bathe, and had conversations with people who weren't there. Kids at school laughed. The neighbors whispered. For the longest time, I thought I'd done something wrong.

"My mother used to beat my brother and me with anything she could hold in her hands. She'd always say that the Lord told her there was evil in us; she had to beat it out. My brother wound up in the emergency room with a broken arm. My dad lied and said he fell, because he didn't want us to be taken away.

"I can't tell you how many times my father called the police or took her to the hospital, only to be turned away and sent home. The few times she was actually admitted, she wasn't there long enough to do any good. She'd come home and stop taking the medication. Then we'd be right back where we started. We weren't rich. My dad couldn't afford a fancy residential treatment program. It was such a waste of a life-and my father's too. When she died, we were just relieved that the ordeal was over."

He paused. He was trembling. "We have contacts in this city, Keri. Our people are looking for Trina as we speak."

"My mother used to say that Satan sent us to her. I wanted to do good in this world." I thought he was going to cry, and I didn't want to witness that. Maybe he would have, but Margaret appeared, holding my purse. Inside it my cell phone was ringing.

GodGodpleaseGod.

"Keri. I got a call from Trina," Clyde said. "She's at Somerset Hospital in Sacramento, on the psych ward, acute side. She's on a seventy-two-hour hold."

28.

THE PSYCHIATRIC WARD OF SOMERSET HOSPITAL WASN'T THE freedom I'd dreamed of, but at least I was no longer wading in the water. I could lay down my burden for a little while. A sign-in sheet awaited me with a cold polite African (Ghanaian? Nigerian?) manning the desk. There was the buzzer to press, a nurse to wait for, a sterile hall to walk down, wandering mumbling patients to ignore. There was fear, my steadfast companion, circumstantially amplified this time: Didtheyhurtherdidtheyhurther? And in spite of my apprehension, dueling it, the same old hope began leaping up, entirely unbidden, impossible to quell: Maybethistimemaybethistimemaybethistime.

Clyde was waiting at the end of the hall. His face was unshaven, his clothes rumpled. He was speaking with a brown-skinned woman in a white coat. She extended her hand when I approached.

"I'm Dr. Natal," she said. "I can tell that you are the mother."

"Is she all right? Did they hurt her?"

Dr. Natal put her hand on my wrist. "No one hurt her."

I heard a high-pitched mournful kind of sound, the kind tired old-school sisters used to make at church, after they'd finished shouting and the nurses were fanning their faces. The way I realized it was my noise was because of the look Clyde gave me, the way he appeared not so much worried as frightened when I began to cry.

"I'd like to see my daughter."

One request, two voices in sync. Clyde was holding my hand.

"She is sleeping right now. Besides, visiting hours don't begin until two," Dr. Natal said to both of us.

Her voice was East Asian and had a lilting quality that turned statements into questions.

I looked at my watch; Clyde looked at his. It was twelve-thirty.

"She called you," I said, looking at Clyde.

Clyde nodded. "Around midnight from the pay phone."

Dr. Natal took us into a small cubicle with a desk, several chairs, and no windows, opened a manila folder, and scanned the contents for a few seconds before closing her file.

"Mr. and Mrs. Whitmore, your daughter was brought in last night. She was paranoid and delusional. Has she had mental problems in the past?"

"My daughter was diagnosed with bipolar disorder about two years ago," I said. "She's had five hospitalizations since then. Six. The last was a few weeks ago at Beth Israel's Weitz Center in Los Angeles. She was medication-compliant for five months, and then a few months ago, she stopped. For the last two weeks she's been taking her meds, but I'm pretty sure she's been smoking marijuana and drinking for the last twenty-four hours."

Dr. Natal smiled. "That will do it every time. Is there the possibility that she took other drugs? Never mind," she said when she saw me faltering. "They have probably already run a toxicology screen."

"How did she happen to get here? Was it voluntarily?"

Dr. Natal opened the folder again. "No. It was involuntary. Two men brought her in. She'd hitched a ride with them and told them she was going to kill herself. Has she been suicidal before?"

"She's threatened. To my knowledge, she's never made any attempts," I said, glancing at Clyde. He was sitting on the chair, straight and stiff as a brick wall.

"One of the nurses told me the men were on their way here anyway, so they brought her in."

Clyde coughed.

"They just happened to be coming to the hospital?" I asked.

Dr. Natal shook her head. "We run a day treatment program here, one for people with mental illnesses and one for addictions. There is a dual-diagnosis section for those who have both. The last meeting starts at ten o'clock at night. It seems that the men who brought in your daughter attend the dual-diagnosis program, so they knew what they were looking at."

"What was she doing in this area?" Clyde asked. "You never told me."

"I-"

"Perhaps you need to talk," Dr. Natal said. "There is a cafe downstairs where you can have a cup of coffee."

"How did she get here? Were you visiting somebody?"

I looked at him, trying to gauge whether a public place would corral or accelerate his anger. "We need to go outside, Clyde." I looked at Dr. Natal. "I want to talk with you about getting the hold extended. I intend to go for conservatorship."

"What do you mean, get it extended?" Clyde asked.

"You both need to talk," Dr. Natal said. "When you return at two o'clock, ask the nurse to page me."

We went outside to the parking lot and sat in Clyde's car. I told him everything. His cell phone kept ringing, but he didn't answer it. When I was finished, he looked at me for a long time. He seemed in a daze. "I can't believe you did that," he said finally. "You actually broke the law and kidnapped Trina. What do you really know about this group?"

"Before I agreed, I talked to several people whose children had been in the program. They all said it helped."

"Yeah, I guess nobody said that their kid ran away and hitched a ride with strangers while this so-called program was supposed to be on the job."

"Clyde-"

"There were other options, Keri."

"You name them. I have exhausted all of them. She is sick. She stopped taking her medication. All hell broke loose. She was completely out of control. So I tried something radical."

"You could have-"

"I could have what? I did everything I could do. And I was scared and tired. Maybe if you'd helped me more we could have made another decision."

"Don't say I didn't help. She called me, not you."

"Do you want to know why she called you? Because you're the daddy with the checkbook. You ignore the problem, so I'm the one who has to pick up the pieces. You put me in that role a long time ago."

He pushed himself away from me closer to his door. "I don't want to talk about that."

"I had to do everything: call the mortician, pick out the casket, buy the flowers, write the obituary."

"I had to work."

"You wanted to work. That was your escape. You never even mourned him."

"I told you, I don't want to talk about that." His voice was raised. His entire body was shaking.

"You left me all alone to cry over my dead son, and you left me alone to deal with Trina. So I'm dealing with Trina. I'm going to get the hold extended, and I'm going to attempt to get conservatorship."

"What is that?"

"It means I can force her to get treatment. I can have her placed in a locked facility."

"Hell, no."

"A locked facility where she will be stabilized on medication."

Clyde shook his head. "One of those warehouses for crazies. I will never allow Trina to go there."

"Then what do you suggest? Do you want her to come live with you and Aurelia?"

His body jerked involuntarily. He looked at me, then slowly lowered his eyes.

"Oh, Jesus."

"She moved out."

We sat in silence for a few minutes.

"Whenever Trina's with me, she seems okay," Clyde said.

"Clyde-"

"Not completely okay, but not bad enough to be locked up."

"Don't think of it that way. Think of it as being kept safe."

"How do you know that? Have you seen any of those places?"

"I wouldn't put her anywhere that doesn't seem safe."

His face said he still needed convincing.

"Look, we can both choose the place, Clyde. "

"I don't know."

Neither one of us was hungry. We sat in the car until it was two o'clock, time to go back inside the hospital. Eighteen years ago, we had both walked down a hospital corridor to take a look at the child we'd created, wishes and dreams in every step we took. Maybe she'd grow up and be an astronaut or Miss America. Everything had been in front of us then. A beautiful, perfect baby: What could go wrong? In this hallway our steps were quieter. We shuffled, weak and weary, our parenthood weighing on us like chains.

But something joyful rushed from us simultaneously, just like the first time, when we saw her. There she is, we thought. Ours.

Trina was sitting alone on a sofa in the visitors' lounge. There were three sofas and two round tables and chairs in the large room. Several patients were watching a big-screen television set that was tuned to a classic movie: John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara. Trina wasn't watching. She was staring at nothing in particular. Her body seemed swallowed up by the gray hospital robe she was wearing. I could tell she hadn't bathed. If I got close enough, I knew, she would smell.

"She looks so little," I said.