Don had recently gotten out of the ECMC psychiatric hospital, diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He was between wives, living alone. Donald was always a neat and tidy man, but his apartment was becoming cluttered and the floors remained unswept. The kitchen counters were full of half-eaten and spoiled food. His ex-first wife, my mother, and I went grocery shopping. We were quite aware that Don was incapable of shopping or cooking, and that he was slowly decompensating. We filled his freezer and refrigerator with colorful packages of the food he loved. He was still not eating; every time I saw him he'd grown skinnier.
One day I called. Donald didn't answer. I continued to call the rest of the day. I wanted to go to see him, but my husband was off with the car. I called my mom: "Dad doesn't answer his phone," I said. "Let's go over there." "Give it until tomorrow," she replied. "He's probably sleeping." I acquiesced but had a very uneasy feeling.
The next morning I immediately rang a number of times. Still no answer. I called 9-11. The police were irate, annoyed, and told me to quit asking them to do things for me, such as break into the apartment. I had repeated the entire scenario to them three times. "Just tell us you want someone to go over there to check on the welfare of your dad." So I repeated these words and was nevertheless treated with contempt and irritability. "You need to go there now!" I scolded. Finally, the voice said, "Okay then! But only if you meet us at the apartment building!" My husband was ready to go. My mother said she'd be there.
We arrived at the house just seconds before three cop cars pulled up. I wondered to myself: "What if he's not even in the apartment? I'll be an idiot and the police will arrest me." But I held my ground. My mother showed up a few minutes later. "Are you sure he's in there?" I demanded. "I know he's in there." My mother's tone was confident. My father was in there.
The door to the apartment was locked. The police couldn't open the door or the window. They obtained the landbord's phone number from another tenant. The cops called the landlord numerous times, but he refused to come and open the door since he said he was at a hockey game.
A large female cop was trying to push in a picture window on the side of the building. I kept saying to her, "Give me a foot hold, give me a foot hold," but she ignored me. I was sure that if I was elevated I could have pushed the window in. She probably didn't want me to go in before her, I thought.
I walked towards the apartment and saw that there were a few unread newspapers on the floor in the doorway. "Isn't there somewhere he could've gone? Doesn't he have any friends?" the cop said to me sarcastically. I said no. His hostile expression didn't change, so I walked away.
While the cops were trying to find a way in, a tenant walked over and said, "That guy is a very strange person. He keeps to himself. The night before last, he started playing opera music. It's been blasting from his apartment every night since then."
The firemen finally showed up with axes and tore through the door. I was suddenly weak and didn't want to go in.
Ambulance attendants came out carrying him on a cot. He was still and had an oxygen mask on his face. He looked unusually healthy. His skin tone was good. But I didn't want to see anymore. Groups of people walked across the parking lot and asked what was going on. I expected little more than voyeurism, but the people seemed genuinely concerned. "This is your fifteen minutes of fame," my husband said.
The paramedics said he probably had a seizure. They found him lying on the floor next to the bed. My mother had gone into the apartment and brought out a few opened bottles of pills. She gave them to one of the EMTs. I remembered that one of them was Valium. I don't know how many he'd taken or what else he took. After arriving at ECMC, the paramedics had somehow lost the Valium. My mother never should have given them to anybody.
Sitting in the visiting area of ECMC psychiatric with him a week later, I asked him why he did it. He replied, "I knew that I'd either wake up dead, or I'd wake up in the hospital getting three squares a day." So I guess, with my intervention, he got the three meals a day.
I once heard it said that if you save someone's life, you are responsible for that life. This just somehow rang true , though I couldn't comprehend why it might be so. However, Don has married for the third time. At what point does he become his wife's responsibility, or someone else's, not mine? The two have a relatively clean apartment and receive Meals on Wheels. He's now in his 80s. One day he'll die from natural causes.
