Mental Health

Posted by: Blue

The cruiser car fishtailed around a slick corner slightly as I accelerated out of a turn.  The night was lit up in all directions with the reflections of red white and blue lights.  The siren wailed, then yelped, then wailed again as I went through red lights on the way to our call.

Dispatch came over the radio again: "For the information of all units on the priority two weapons call: the female is now stating that the male with the gun has it against her head and he is going to kill her unless police came right away."

The rpm's climbed.  The brake fade started to become evident as we neared our call location.

One after another, within about 30 seconds, the five crews sounded-off that they were arriving.  We were third on scene after our supervisor and a downtown car. 

None of us were in our home district.  We had come flying in from all different corners of the city.  The South cars were all tied-up.

We ran up to the door, myself and another guy from downtown standing on opposite sides of the door, the other cops covering the back exits and windows.  The house was in darkness.

I knocked.  There was a delay, then a rustling heard inside.  I waited.  My earpiece chirped "For the information of all units on the gun call, the female is now giving a different address across the street from the original address she gave.

The front step light came on.  A sleepy middle-aged male came to the door in his underwear.  "Can I help you?" he asked groggily...

My radio chirped again "Dispatch, that second address doesn't exist.  Can you confirm please?"

"Sir, we've had a 911 call to this address regarding guns.  I'm going to need to come inside and check the well-being of everyone here."

Eight officers pushed past the male as he stammered "okay... but I don't have any guns!"

The house was cleared and as we were apologizing to the homeowner, dispatch came on again; "The female is now stating that she isn't sure of the address, but she is demanding that police come soon before she's dead.  Cell triangulation shows she is somewhere over in the East Division."

"Dispatch from street supervisor, I'm just looking at historic calls from this female... it seems she frequents an address over in the East Division.  We'll head down there."

Again the cruisers jumped to life and roared across the city.  We were there in four minutes.

The address had a suite in the basement.  We went around back and knocked on the door, only to find it was ajar.  We slowly descended the stairs, turning on the light as we went.  There was a female figure hunched-over on her phone in the dark, whispering into the microphone.

We approached her carefully.  My partner softly said "Ainsley?"

She spun around, a fearful, confused look in her eyes.  I spotted the meth pipe next to her on the arm of the couch.  I grabbed it as she tried to swat it away.

We calmed her down and brought her to the hospital.  She begged us not to.  She said she had Schizophrenia, anxiety and she was bi-polar.  She said she was just having a bad night.  Her boyfriend usually calmed her down and helped her with the voices in her head, but she didn't know where he was.  Hadn't seen him in a few days.  Hadn't been on her meds in a week.

We sat with her at the hospital until the psych doctor could see her.  She had a conversation with people we couldn't see the entire time we were there.

The doc said it had been more like a month that she had been off her meds.  And they took a full week to begin to work.  They were going to release her until my partner requested the doctor speak to her a little more in depth.  The doc reluctantly agreed. 

Ten minutes later, he came out of the room and said "Yeah... we'll be keeping her."

She was 29 years old and she must have been beautiful before the meth took control of her.