Eyes Wide Open

Chapter Six





“We always took care of our son.” He peeled an orange and put it on a small plate in front of him. “No matter what anyone can say, we tried to do our best. We always kept him safe.”

“I know that, Charlie,” I said, squeezing his arm.

Tears shone in his dark eyes. He shook his head. “I just don’t know how he could do that to us . . .”

Gabriella got up and wrapped her arm around him from behind. She picked up for him. “Ten days ago . . . You know for a long time, Jay, our son had been acting really crazy . . .”

Of course I knew. Sitting around in a silent state all day in the house, no job, no school. Usually off his medications.

“Well, he’d gotten worse. He was off his meds. We no longer knew how to handle him. He would just sit there—on that couch—for twenty-four hours straight. Not a single word—just staring. Into space.

“Just a few weeks back we heard noises in the middle of the night, and we came down. He was just sitting there, talking”—Gabby pointed to what looked like a wood-burning heater in the corner—“to the furnace, Jay. My son was talking to the furnace! He told me, ‘I hear voices in there, Mommy . . .’ I said to him, ‘Evan, you have to let us help you . . .’ We didn’t know what to do.”

“He was always so angry at us,” Charlie said. “He wouldn’t take his pills. He would just hurl them at us. Then he’d just smile coyly. I couldn’t fight him anymore. It was like he was torturing us, trying to make us suffer along with him.”

“Two weeks ago”—Gabby took a breath to steady herself—“we found something . . .”

I took a sip of my coffee. “What?”

“This is so hard for me to tell you, Jay. It really is . . . I went through his things. Because I was scared. I was scared at some of the things he was saying to us. He called me a stupid, uneducated whore . . . a wetback scum. He called your brother a miserable kike who could never get a job. His own father . . . I wanted to see where he was learning this from. What was influencing his crazy mind? And we found something. An application . . .”

“For a job?”

Gabby laughed. “For a job? If only for a job! It was an application to buy a gun! A twenty-gauge shotgun. From a gun store in the next town. And for what? To kill someone, Jay. Maybe kill us. You see these stories on the news, about what people like our son can do. We said, this kid can’t have a gun . . . He’s mentally unstable. He’s been diagnosed by the state. He has a record with the police. These people cannot sell him a gun . . .”

I screwed up my eyes in disbelief. “How?”

“He lied, Jay. He lied about everything on his application. That he wasn’t sick; that he had no record. Maybe they would have caught it, or maybe not—but we went there. To stop them. We told the man at the shop, ‘Are you out of your mind? You can’t sell my son a weapon! Do you know what he might do with it?’ We threw the application back in his face. We were scared . . .”

I said, “I don’t blame you for being scared.” I thought of my troubled nephew with a gun, with the image of Columbine or Virginia Tech vivid in my mind, with all the anger and sociopathic behavior he had shown. “You did the right thing, Gabby.”

“I know we did the right thing. But then we found something else . . .” She looked at me, eyes downcast. “I can hardly even say it, Jay . . .”

“We found a kind of diary Evan was keeping,” Charlie interjected. “These ramblings, crazy things . . .”

“I have to cross myself to even tell you these things,” Gabriella said. “Things like, ‘Better to suck the dick of the devil than to live here with these two dead people one more day . . .’ That’s us, Jay. Our son was talking about us—your brother and me!” She dabbed at her eyes, shame and grief etched deeply there. “But we didn’t know what to do . . . We knew he’s acting truly crazy now. Off the charts. We can no longer control him. It’s clear he hates us . . . That he wants to kill us. And then himself. And who knows, maybe take other people with him . . .”

“So what did you do?”

“We showed it to him.” Gabriella looked at me as if seeking dispensation. “Everything. You know what he did? He takes me by the hair, and twists me, like he wants to kill me right there, and throws me against the wall. Look!” She opened the top of her robe and showed me purplish marks covering her shoulder and onto her neck. “He’s too big for us to fight now. Look at your brother. He’s weak, old. He is no longer able to protect me. We didn’t know what to do . . .”

“So what did you do?” I asked.

“What did we do? We called the police,” Gabriella said.

Truth was, I had always pushed them to do exactly that. To put their son in custody when he assaulted them. But they never would. They never once pressed charges. How could we? they would say. On our own son. And then the excuses would start. He’s just a boy. He’s ashamed of what he’s done. He promises to stay on his medication. I guess I understood. Who wanted to make that kind of choice? But by not getting Evan help, by always protecting him and shielding him from treatment, I saw the events build that could lead nowhere but to catastrophe.

“When the police came”—Gabby rubbed her forehead, shaking her head—“Evan went out of control. He looked at me. ‘You do this to me, Mommy? You called the cops—on your own son!’ I saw something in his eyes I had never seen before. Like an animal. I told him, ‘You’re sick, my son. You need some help.’ He grabbed me by the hair again and tried to beat the shit out of me. Your brother, he tried to help. But Evan threw him against the wall. He almost broke a rib. The cops saw it all. They finally got Evan in a choke hold. They came and took him away. To the hospital, in San Luis Obispo. To the mental ward. That’s when I called you, Jay.”

“They placed him under a suicide watch,” Charlie said. “They took away his belt. And laces. Put him under twenty-four-hour observation. I’ve been there before. I know the drill. Apparently he told the doctor who first examined him that he wanted to kill himself. That the gun he was trying to buy was intended not for us, but for him.”

He shook his head. “We failed him, Jay. They said they were going to take care of him. Help him.” A mixture of grief and anger hung in his eyes. “We thought maybe we finally did the right thing. That maybe this was the best way. The social worker there told us they were going to keep him safe. That they’d watch him, for as long as they possibly could. Three weeks, they said. Then they’d find somewhere for him. I said, ‘Whatever you do, you can’t put this kid back on the street. You see how angry he is? He’ll blow people away . . .’ ”

“You know the name of the doctor?” I asked, something starting to tighten in me. They had trusted the authorities to take care of Evan, and they had let them down.

“Derosa. Mitchell Derosa. But we never even spoke to him. No one would speak to us. Only the social worker there. His name was Brian something. We have it written down. And a nurse. They said for us not to worry, they were going to have several doctors observe him, and they would get him into some kind of facility.”

Gabriella chortled cynically. “You know what we were thinking? We’re thinking, Maybe this is a good thing after all. That’s when I called you, Jay. You probably thought it was just for more money, but it was to tell you, maybe Evan is in a good place at last. We felt relieved.”

I nodded.

“But then they call and tell us they’re going to release him! This social worker. Brian. After around four days. He says Evan is stable now and they had found a place for him. Four days? They said three weeks! I’m telling you this kid was psycho, Jay. I said, ‘Are you sure, so soon . . . ?’ But they said, ‘Your son is an adult, Ms. Erlich,’ and that they couldn’t hold him indefinitely against his will, now that he had calmed down and was no longer a threat to himself. What kind of a crazy thing is this? I said, ‘You can’t do that. Maybe he’s an adult, but I am his mental guardian. You see the shape he was in.’ But they say Evan agreed, and they’re gonna put him in a good place.”

“What kind of place?” I asked.

“They didn’t tell us shit!” Charlie snorted. “They wouldn’t even talk to us. That’s what happens when you’re poor and on disability in this town.”

“But now they’re scared,” Gabby said in a haughty tone. “Now they all see what happened. It was on the TV. On the news. They know they screwed up. They’re all running to cover their own asses now.”

Something brushed against my leg. I looked down. A gray and white cat was nuzzling against me.

“That’s Juliet,” Gabby said. “Poor baby—she misses Evan too.” She reached down and lifted the cat up, took her to the back door, and put her gently outside. “Get back outside. You can’t be bothering us now.”

The cat slinked back to the yard and jumped onto the fence.

“So where did Evan finally end up?” I asked.

“You want to know where they put him?” Gabby replied, her tone hardening. “You want to know where they threw my son, like some sack of garbage? In this unsupervised home in Morro Bay. Completely unrestricted. With a bunch of f*cking old people. Alzheimer’s patients. Walking around like the living dead. Evan called me. He said, ‘Why did they put me in here? Why did they put me with all these old people, Mommy?’

“The woman who’s in charge there said he went to take a walk. She just let him go. Waved him out the door. They don’t give a shit. They get their money. Evan was just a voucher to her. A check from the state. That’s all! They had him on so much medication. Seroquel. Two hundred milligrams. Two hundred milligrams is enough to drop an elephant, Jay. You know this stuff. You know what it does. It makes you act like a zombie. It takes away your will. She didn’t care, as long as she got paid. My son went to take a walk and never came back. This woman, Anna, she called us late that night. Two days ago. Evan was missing. Where is he, she asks. She said she thought maybe he came home to us. But you know where he was, my son . . . ? You know where Evan was? He had climbed the f*cking rock there, that’s where he was. He was probably already dead.”

Anger flared up inside me. This just didn’t wash. Every patient had a medical history. Treatment charts. Diagnoses and evaluations. They don’t just dump people at will. In a place where they won’t be watched.

“She just let him leave?”

“Yes. Walk out. I told you, she don’t give a shit, Jay. That’s the way it is here. But, believe me—she was scared when she called us. She knew she screwed up. And the next morning, my son, he turns up dead. He was up there on the rock, Jay. The whole stinking night. In the cold. Alone. Without anyone to watch over him.” She started to sob again. “My boy was on the rock. I want to sue that bitch.”

“You want to know what really hurts?” Charlie took her face and brought it against his shoulder. “We were watching the news that morning. Friday, I think. Or Saturday . . . I don’t keep track of time so well anymore. They said some kid had jumped off Morro Bay Rock. A John Doe. No ID on him. We go, ‘Thank God that’s not Evan. Thank God he is in a safe place.’ And it’s our own son, Jay! They were talking about Evan. We’re listening to a report about our own son . . .”

He started to sob, loud choking tremors. Gabriella held his head in her arms. “We just failed you, Evan . . . We let you die.”

It was horrible. I didn’t know what to do or feel, other than my hands balling into tight fists. Rich or poor, it didn’t matter. There was a complete breakdown. Not only of treatment, but also of responsibility. And Evan was the victim of it. I knew in my world, this could never happen. Not without some kind of response, accountability.

“Where is he now?” I asked.

“At the coroner’s,” Charlie said. “They’re doing their autopsy and tests. We can’t even see him.”

Gabriella wiped her eyes. “He called me, you know. The day before. I asked, ‘Are you all right, Evan? You know I love you, don’t you, my son?’ And you know what he told me? He said, ‘I’m gonna make the best of it, Mommy.’ Make the best . . . Does that sound like some kid who wanted to kill himself the next day? They say it’s a suicide, but it doesn’t sound like that to me. You know what I think? I don’t think my son would kill himself. It sounds like murder, Jay. By the state. They took my son and screwed his head up on drugs, then dropped him in a place that wasn’t right for him. They murdered him.”

As a doctor, I was always quick to assume that the system handled things correctly. Sure, mistakes were made, but generally it did things right. But as an uncle, I couldn’t disagree.

It was like murder.

We sat around in silence for a while. Charlie and Gabriella just hugged each other, helpless and crying. Then Gabriella got up. She cleared the table, put the coffee mugs in the sink, and ran the water over them. Then she turned and faced me, her palms back against the counter. “At the end, it was very, very bad, Jay. You have no idea. Our son never left the house. He would just sit there, on that couch all day, never even talk, just smile at me. You know that little smile he had, like he had the whole world figured out. Like he knew the truth and no one else did.”

“I know it.” I wasn’t sure whether to smile or shake my head in sorrow. I smiled.

“He said to me, just last week, before he did this . . . He said, ‘I think maybe I’d like to be a cop. Or an FBI agent.’ He said he was talking to the police and they wanted him.” She cleared her throat derisively. “A cop? My son barely left the house. He didn’t talk to anyone, Jay. No friends. No girls. Not even us. Only to the f*cking furnace! He was dreaming. Like he always did, Jay—dreaming.” She looked at me. “He might never have gotten better—I understand that. But he didn’t deserve to die.”

She came back to the table and sat down next to me. “We took care of our boy for twenty-one years. Then we give him to the state—for four lousy days . . . And he’s dead! Maybe we don’t deserve medals, Jay. But we damn well deserve to know why, don’t we? We deserve to know why my son had to die!”

I looked back at her, my gut tightening.

Years of the differences between us peeled away.

I said, “Yes you do. You damn well do deserve that, Gabby.”