“And how does he do with things like getting dressed in the morning and meals? Has he had any trouble adjusting to all that?” How is he functioning so well? All he’s ever known is twenty-four-seven care. Even if he has another resident helping him out, it doesn’t explain how he’s able to do things on his own like coming out of his room at the designated times.
“So far so good. Doesn’t seem to be having too many issues. At least I haven’t heard of any, and I’m usually the first to know.” She pauses before going on. “Honestly, the thing I’m most concerned about is his medication. When’s the last time he had a medication adjustment?”
“Gosh, I’m not sure. I don’t actually have access to his full medical charts, only the testing reports from his psychologists and specialists. What’s going on?”
“All of our kids see our staff psychiatrist while they’re here for their medication needs. He comes to the house once a week and meets with whoever needs it. We started doing things that way years ago for our kids because it just made things easier. He stays in touch with their current psychiatrist if they have one so that the two of them can work together, and then they can go back to resuming their care once the child is discharged. Anyway, all that to say we had him meet with Mason this week, and he did a blood draw. It’s totally standard procedure for any kid who’s on lithium like Mason. Lithium can affect the kidneys and the thyroid function, so we always check to make sure they’re in the correct range.”
One of the biggest pains of lithium is the constant blood draws. I’d never be able to do it with Harper. She hates needles. So do I.
“His lithium levels were fine. It was the other blood levels that were concerning.” She clears her throat. “Our psychiatrist found toxic levels of cholesterol-lowering medication in his system. Those results just came in this morning, and I forwarded them to Detective Layne already, so be sure you take a look.”
I did more than take a look. I scoured those documents like they held the cure to cancer. My alarm was raised along with everyone else’s because kids aren’t ever prescribed cholesterol-lowering medication since it’s so dangerous to their systems. It slows everything down to scary, even lethal levels. Kids die from taking their parents’ cholesterol medication every year.
Blanche is convinced he got into his mom’s Lipitor stash, and Detective Layne acts like he’s found the holy grail. He’s confident the Lipitor in his system explains why Mason acted the way he did two weeks ago. Drugs are one of the oldest excuses in the book, but I don’t know what I believe. His blood levels of atorvastatin are toxic, which means he either was taking Lipitor for a long time or took lots of pills at once. But Mason doesn’t swallow pills, so that casts doubt on both their theories and brings up more questions than it does answers.
And then there’s the Ativan he was taking on top of everything else. Blanche didn’t mention it during our conversation, but when I reviewed the psychiatrist’s notes she sent me, I noticed that the psychiatrist took him off daily use and switched to as needed. The medication cocktail in his blood is enough to tranquilize a horse. Any parent with a kid on long-term medication turns into a pharmacist almost overnight. Genevieve is an extreme helicopter mom, so there’s no way she wasn’t aware of every single milligram that went into Mason’s body. She’d never allow him to be on that much medication because of all the overlapping side effects and potential complications—lethargy, confusion, seizures, and mental impairment—that go along with them.
Unless those are the exact things she wants to happen. Genevieve is no fool. She’s not the damsel in distress that she’s got people believing she is. She controls what goes in and out of that boy’s body, and if I had to guess, I’d say she gave him the Lipitor along with everything else they found in his system.
Savannah’s right about her mom. Savannah might be mentally ill, but Genevieve’s the disturbed one, and she needs to be stopped.
All the bedroom doors are open as I walk down the hallway to Mason’s room. I tap on the wooden frame. The room is arranged like any dorm room. Two twin beds. Each pushed up against the wall on opposite sides. A small IKEA dresser sits at each end, and there’s a closet that I’m sure if I opened would reveal a perfect-half divide. There’s a narrow space between the two beds with a striped black rug.
Mason sits on the bed with his back against the wall and his legs straight out in front of him. His tennis shoes hang off the edge. He’s wearing jeans, and his hands are folded on his lap. His noise-canceling headphones aren’t on his head. I’ve never seen him without them. It’s like he’s missing his favorite hat.
I tap on the wooden doorframe again so I don’t startle him. “Hi, Mason,” I announce, but he doesn’t look up. His thousand-yard stare stretches across the room. “Remember me? We played school together a few days ago?”
The difference in his demeanor strikes me immediately. He doesn’t seem agitated. There was always a low level of anxiety thrumming through his body that you could feel just being near him, but that’s all gone, like it’s been drained out of him.
I take a few steps into the room, reach over, and pat the end of his roommate’s bed. “Can I sit?”
His fingers start to twist. Then snap. Twirl.
“Or I can just stand.” I step back, coming up against his dresser. Pages from a coloring book lie on top of it next to other crayoned drawings of dogs and sunsets. “This is a beautiful picture. Did you do it?”
He likes to draw. At least that’s what all the psychologists in his reports said. They all listed it as one of his strengths. So does Genevieve. She claims they do most of their communication through pictures and drawings using real paper. Whenever she says it, she always emphasizes real and in an arrogant way, like she’s better than the rest of us who rely on assistive technology to communicate with our kids. She says she refuses to use screens to communicate with her son.
I couldn’t disagree more. It seems barbaric to have all this technology available and not use it. Harper responds so much better to visual instructions than verbal ones, and she uses her AT devices constantly. Our lives wouldn’t function so smoothly without TouchChat. She has access to over two thousand different phrases, and she’s constantly changing the voices. It’s her favorite part of the app.
Suddenly, I get an idea.
I pull out my phone and open TouchChat. The screen loads, bringing up the discussion Harper and I had over which syrup to use on her pancakes two days ago at breakfast. It’s been three mornings without her at the table, and nothing feels right with her gone. The social worker assigned to the report was dragging her feet on the paperwork, so I went straight to the head of the department, and she assured me things look good for Harper coming home in the next day or two. The judge just needs to sign off on everything, since they’ve decided not to open a formal case.
I clear the speech display bar and bring up the vocabulary area. The familiar seven-by-six grid of boxes opens up, revealing buttons, messages, and symbols. All of them colorful and bright. I tap out a message to him.