Human Study 5 (2021)
The doorbell rang, and I rushed to let Dr. Algu in before she might knock or ring again. I was trying to keep things hush-hush, but that was silly of me. These things never go down easy.
BY MICHELLE CHO
IMAGE BY GREIG SANDERS
The doorbell rang, and I rushed to let Dr. Algu in before she might knock or ring again. I was trying to keep things hush-hush, but that was silly of me. These things never go down easy. My heart thumped in my chest as I tried to convince myself that what I was doing was for the best, was for her, my sister Marie.
“Thanks for coming Dr. Algu.” My words were calm and welcoming, but my tired eyes likely told a different story. “Here, why don’t you put these on?” I bent down to position a pair of pink house slippers for Dr. Algu, and she slipped them on before entering my home from the enclosed porch. She’d been here before on less tense days, so she was somewhat familiar with our Chinese slipper etiquette.
“Marie’s upstairs.” I pointed straight above me, so that we all knew our positions and our coordinates, in order to strategize. Our base camp would be the dining room table on the main floor. Marie held her position in the middle room on the second floor. It was a tiny guest room, furnished with a simple brown futon along one wall and her belongings in a few plastic bags along the opposite wall.
I had been thinking about this moment for days, losing sleep, trying to figure out the best course of action. Now, here I was, huddling with Dr. Algu, plotting behind Marie’s back about her care, even though I knew what she wanted most was to be left alone.
Marie had become a ghost. She skulked around my home, which had become her home in the weeks leading up to this day. It was hard to know if she had stopped taking her antipsychotic medication or when she had stopped. She’d move between the middle room to the bathroom next door. She’d run the tap, leaving the water gushing for minutes on end. Suddenly, doors would slam. In and out, she’d slither between these two finite spaces, her world becoming smaller and smaller. She pretty much kept to herself, but every now and then, I’d hear bursts of noise coming from her room. I couldn’t determine if they were cries for help or if she was fending off the voices in her head, her uninvited visitors paying her a sudden call.
“I don’t remember when I last saw her eat anything. And I can’t tell you when she last slept. It’s been days, weeks, maybe even months!” I’d seen her in crisis before—in and out of psych wards over the last quarter century, but this time everything felt different. I was worried for Marie, and I didn’t know what else to do. I hated her mental illnesses perhaps as much as she did. The mind-fucks, delusions that robbed her of her light—that robbed me of my big sister. Her dreams of being a successful visual artist, never realized; trips through Europe, to Tuscany, her suitcase packed, never traveled; love and romance, à la the many Harlequin books she’d read as a teen, never experienced. All silenced, smothered by those blasted voices in her head.
“And you mentioned she’s not taking her medication?”
“It’s hard to know for sure, but I don’t think so, no.”
I could sense that Dr. Algu was nervous, out of her element. She’d seen Marie get agitated before, but she’d never seen Marie in this state. I warned her in the email before she agreed to come that Marie could get aggressive, and it could get ugly. Still, Dr. Algu put on a brave face.
“Let me talk to her first, let her know you’re here.” I headed up the stairs quietly. Dr. Algu trailed behind me. I paused at the landing, took a deep breath, leaned in, trying to listen for some sign of life behind the closed door of the middle room. It was quiet but I heard some rustling, so I took that as my cue to launch in, talking loudly through the door.
“Marie, Dr. Algu is here to see you.” I tried to sound peppy and positive. Marie took a minute to process what I said, and we shared a moment of silence. Then I repeated, “I said Dr. Algu is here to see you,” sternly this time, yet tentatively.
No response. I banged on the door.
“Did you hear me?”
“Leave me alone!” Marie barked.
“We’re just worried about you.”
Dr. Algu gestured that she wanted to take a stab at the conversation, so I gave her a “by all means” nod. She approached the door gently. “Hi Marie, it’s Dr. Algu. I’m here to see how you’re doing.”
“I didn’t ask you to come. I don’t need you. I want you to leave.” Marie’s tone grew less patient.
“Marie, Michelle tells me that you haven’t been eating. Is that true?” Dr. Algu is inches away from the closed door of the middle room. I step back to give her space to get as close as she can to her patient.
“I HAVE been eating! What does she know? She doesn’t see everything?” Marie’s voice is hoarse, like that of the possessed girl from The Exorcist.
Dr. Algu turns around, looking to me for confirmation. I shrug. Marie has a point. I’m away at work most of the day so I don’t see what she eats and doesn’t eat. I can only go from my loose mental inventory of what I’ve seen consumed from the kitchen, and it looks like she hasn’t had anything in days.
“Look Marie, we’re just concerned about you. Can you please open the door so we can talk?” Dr. Algu asks gently.
“Get outta here! Leave my house!”
The fact that Marie is calling my house, her house, oddly gets my back up. I interject, to defend Dr. Algu, while trying not to escalate the situation.
“Marie, first of all, this isn’t your house. Secondly, we’re just trying to help,” I say as calmly as I can.
“Go FUCK YOURSELF!!!” Her voice is getting coarser and louder.
Like a military commander in the field, I hand signal to Dr. Algu that we should give it a rest and retreat to our base camp downstairs. An awkwardness hangs in the air. We both know what comes next but I’m hesitant to ask. Dr. Algu sits at my dining table rummaging through her rugged school-style backpack for the paperwork to have my sister Marie “formed.” Too many TV shows had me believing doctors who made house calls carried the typical black leather doctor’s bag. I didn’t expect to see her pull out a bunch of papers from a weathered maroon backpack. And she, a palliative care doctor, probably never expected to have to fill out a Form 1, a psychiatric assessment, for her dying cancer patient.
“What do you think?” I ask Dr. Algu even though I’m not looking forward to hearing what she has to say. But she’s already switched on her laptop and is combing through her notes on how to fill out the forms. Her papers are spread out across my dining table, and I can tell she’s shaken and trying to multitask—listening to me while managing her own stress and trying to look like she knows what she’s doing.
“I’m concerned that Marie may get mistreated,” I say. “I don’t want them to use force on her, to compel her to get treatment, cancer or psychiatric. It’s important the cops know this and are adequately trained in dealing with people experiencing a mental health crisis.”
Without saying anything, Dr. Algu tries to reassure me with her big brown eyes, before picking up her cell phone to call a colleague, who is going to help walk her through filling out the Form 1.
This is really happening; even though I know it is really happening, I play dumb and ask anyway. “Do you think we have a case to have her committed?”
Dr. Algu nods while still on the phone with her colleague. With her phone cupped against her ear, I watch as she neatly fills out the forms, checking off boxes that say her patient is showing a lack of competence to care for herself and that as her physician, Dr. Algu has reasonable cause to believe that Marie is likely to suffer substantial mental or physical deterioration if she doesn’t get some help. Her handwriting reminds me of bubble-letter fonts and doesn’t match what I expect a doctor’s handwriting should look like—unreadable chicken scratch. As soon as she gets off the phone, she goes over what she’s written with me in layman's terms: that Marie is incapable of making decisions for herself at this time, that she is harming herself by not eating.
Fists clenched; I wait. We wait. Within an hour, about a dozen uniformed cops and EMS staff thunder into my home, like they’re about to engage in a full-scale takedown. In true Marie spirit, she doesn’t make it easy for them—the scrapper in her surfaces, despite her failing frail body. She goes toe-to-toe with a six-foot-two cop, spitting and swearing at him as he tries to coax her out of her room. Even though she’s dying of cancer, she’s still got so much fire in her, but she’s easily outnumbered and there’s no way she’s going to win this fight. After failed negotiations, several burly police officers drag her out of my house in handcuffs into the December cold, the sound of the snow crunching beneath their heavy black boots as they walk away.
My heart breaks as I ride along in the ambulance. Marie is cuffed to the stretcher, berating the ambulance attendant. I wonder if I have done the right thing.
Michelle Cho is a Toronto-based writer, currently in Humber’s Creative Writing Graduate Certificate Program. She recently rediscovered the joys of creative writing and now finds inspiration from TV show characters, like Nick Miller and Jane Villanueva.
Image: Human Study 5
Edited for publication by Ruba Hassan, as part of the Professional Writing and Communications Program.
HLR Spotlight is a collaboration between the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Innovative Learning at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario. This project is funded by Humber’s Office of Research & Innovation.