A crisis, a psychiatric hold, and the green world that watched
On the way to a Saturday morning dance class, I heard one voice in the back seat say quietly but urgently, “It needs to stop. Something has to happen today.”
Another voice replied, exhausted yet still reaching for hope, “I know. It hurts so much. What can we even do? Call 988… the emergency team… when we don’t know where she’ll be in five minutes?”
The desperation in both voices marked the beginning of a day I will not forget.
By early afternoon, when we stepped out of class, our phones were already lit with missed calls and frantic messages from the young woman we were trying so hard to help. She had driven over an hour away to a rural shelter, determined to adopt a dog she could not afford. She had no money for the donation, no money for gas, no grounding in reality. The messages came in spirals — rapid, hysterical, collapsing into tears and pleas for help that had nothing to do with the dog.
Underneath every word, I heard it clearly: a scream for help.
It became a day shaped entirely by fear, by fierce love, and by not knowing what the next mile or next hour would bring.
Later, a call came from two other family members. One of us held the phone like it carried the weight of a decision none of us were ready for. I pulled over on a quiet street where children rode bikes and someone walked a dog — ordinary life moving forward while ours held its breath.
The facts were laid out. Everyone agreed: something had to be done.
That alignment alone felt like a rare exhale after months of confusion.
But agreement didn’t answer the hardest question: What now?
If she stayed put — if the tracking app didn’t go dark — we could try to reach her and bring her to a psychiatric emergency room. None of us knew how. I feared it might become physical, and I knew I couldn’t do it alone.
Still, we moved. Two cars, several adults, all heading toward the small rural town where she had last been tracked. Not a strategic plan — barely a plan at all — just a convoy powered by hope, fear, and the wish to reach her before she vanished again.
The idea was simple: keep her talking, keep her in place, and don’t send money that would allow her to run. She called us one by one, screaming, crying, insisting she was stranded, misunderstood, entitled to help. We spoke gently, telling her we were coming. She didn’t want comfort; she wanted the dog. She hung up and immediately called someone else. Around and around it went — panic sounding like rage.
Then we received a message: someone outside the immediate circle had sent her money after a distress call. It felt like the ground dropped beneath us. We didn’t know whether she had received it. We kept driving. The tracking app went dark. She disappeared again. Then she said she was driving — but not where.
When she finally called me, her voice came sharp and final:
“I’m going to drive over a bridge.”
My heart seized.
“No. Please wait. I’m forty-five minutes away. Just wait for me.”
She hung up.
For a moment everything inside me went still. One of us was already on the phone with the county psychiatric intervention unit. And something deep within me rose — a clarity beyond fear — saying: Don’t wait. Don’t gamble with regret. Don’t soften what is happening because you want the world to be gentler than it is.
📌 In another essay, I write about the quiet inner voice that guides us through moments like this—the intuition that sharpens when life becomes unbearably real.
So I dialed 911.