5150

The first few minutes after Carina left the room all Maya felt was anger. She couldn’t believe that Carina would do this to her. All she was capable of in this moment was scream, she wanted to rip all the smothering, strangling lines and leads out of and from her body.

Every sensation on her skin one too much. She wanted to crawl out of her skin. She felt like something was sitting on her chest. She needed to get out of here. She tried to get up, but an intense blinding pain shot through her skull and left her stunned for a second. It was then that she heard Teddy’s voice, though she had tried to calm her down the entire time.

“Maya, listen to me. You don’t want to make this worse for yourself. If you try to get out of this bed, we will use force to restrain you and transfer you to the psych ward. I understand that this isn’t easy. If you’re too agitated right now, I can offer you a sedative.”

“Not easy? Are you… are you kidding me?”, she shouted, “I… my wife just 5150ed me because she doesn’t want to deal with me. This is ridiculous! I am not…”, her breath hitched, and she felt like every breath lacked oxygen.

“Maya, please try to calm down.”, Teddy desperately wanted to avoid having to sedate or restrain Maya, but she wasn’t sure anything could get through to her at this point.

“Don’t you…”, another breath, “tell me to…”, another breath, “calm down”, another few rapid breaths, but everything became blurry, her ears were ringing only penetrated by the alarming beeping of the heart monitor.
All the anger faded and was washed away by a tsunami wave of fear, raw existential fear. She couldn’t see or hear anything anymore, all she knew was that she needed to get out of here, to leave, to get away from… everything.

She just needed everything to stop. Everything was too much and not enough at the same time. She was stuck in a white, impenetrable, soundless, shapeless box.
Teddy saw the shift from anger to terror. She could no longer get through to Maya, who seemed terrified and in the throes of an intense panic attack. She really needed her to calm down though, her body couldn’t take this amount of exertion right now.

She quickly debated whether to just sedate her right now, but she felt for Maya so much in this moment and decided to try one other thing. She sat down on Maya’s bed and took both of her hands in hers. She expected some resistance and was surprised when Maya seemed to desperately hold onto her, anything really that connected her to reality. Teddy squeezed her hands tightly and carefully rubbed her forearms with what hopefully provided calming, grounding pressure.

When Maya felt something touching her hands, she was surprised to feel her body reacting that way. The white fog slowly stated to get less thick and she realised that it must be Teddy touching her. She didn’t want to open her eyes and face her though, so she just pretended that this wasn’t happening, that she wasn’t stuck, locked away in this hospital room, all of her agency taken away.

No Maya, you are staying in there! I found the candy bar wrappers; you won’t be going to those friends of yours again and there won’t be dinner tonight.”, he screamed through the door of Maya’s childhood bedroom. She felt the walls closing in on her, she felt ashamed that she had disappointed her father, but she needed to get out of those four walls, she needed to be able to breath again.

She turned the doorknob only to find the door to be locked. She desperately rattled on the door, only to hear her father scream back: “If you touch that door one more time, there will be no food tomorrow either.” She jumped back from the door as if it were to blow up any second. Her breathing became more laboured, and she sank to the floor. Her eyes shot to the window. The sky was overcast so it was easy to find clouds that looked the most inviting, soft…

 Teddy had felt Maya whimpering and mumble something unintelligible, also she was pretty sure she could make out the word ‘dad’ a few times. She tried to calm her down and bring her back to the present moment. But then Maya suddenly calmed down seemingly on her own; her breathing slowed and she seemed less agitated.

“Maya, can you hear me?”, she tried again. Teddy felt Maya’s body freeze. Her voice reminded Maya of the current situation she was in, she wanted to escape, to go back to the numbness, the relief of the clouds, but something in teddy’s voice made her listen to the next thing she said:

“Maya, can you open your eyes for me, just for a second?”

It amazed Maya how much effort this seemingly simple task took her. As soon as she saw Teddy looking at her, she dropped her gaze, it landed on Teddy’s hands tightly grasping hers. For some reason, she didn’t pull them away, she felt embarrassed to admit that they were the only thing that had anchored her during the last few minutes.

She was no longer angry, just deeply afraid and she really needed this anchor of safety. Teddy recognised the fear in Maya’s eyes and decided to risk to ask her another question:

“What are you scared of most right now, Maya?” Her eyes roamed around the room, wall to wall, corner to corner, too small. Not big enough, not free.

“It’s okay, you can tell me.”, Teddy reassured her as Maya’s breathing quickened again. Too scared of slipping away once again, the words escaped her mouth without editing:

“I don’t want to be locked in. I… my father, he… used to do that and I…”, the words hung in the air and Teddy pieced it together. She remembered Carina telling her some things about Maya’s abusive father after Maya had slept with Jack a few years ago.

“Ok, ok. We can take trips out of this room, that’s not an issue as long as you promise to stay in a wheelchair.” Maya nodded relieved.

“Can we… can we do it now? I just need to know that I… that I’m not locked in here.” “Um… yes, sure. I’ll… get a wheelchair and we’ll take a quick trip now. But I really need you to try and rest after that.”
Maya nodded and was able to hold the fear at bay.