Edmick,
Thank you for relaying that information and particularly about your wife. Here is a story (%100 true) about an incident that I had the fortune/misfortune to have participated in. This was to be in my next book, but I see no harm in sharing it here. For whatever weight may be given:
As part of my duties while working as a Deputy Sheriff for Charleston County, aside from “hunting” folks, I had to do a “call-out” rotation for the “Therapeutic Transport Unit.” It was to serve as the enforcement arm for the SC Probate Court - that handled Wills, Trusts and Mental Health commitments.
Some older folks may recall cartoons of white paddy wagons and white clothed folks that show up and snatch up “crazy people.” Here, it was done in coat and tie via unmarked police cruiser.
The mental health commitments came one of two ways. One, by order of the court, whereby, someone has been deemed with a “mental health problem” and found necessary to be forcefully committed or two, by an on-site team of doctors who would respond to emergency situations (suicide attempts, drug overdoses etc..) and sign “involuntary commitment orders.”
On one such occasion I was called out to pick up a young black woman on Wadmalaw Island. She had been deemed by the court to be “Schizophrenic with ‘acute religious’ delusions” and found necessary to be forcefully (involuntarily) committed.
I showed up at the residence (for the internet sleuths) in Rockville, to find this woman out in the water at low tide in the pluff mud. She was there with her arms outstretched and head to the sky, singing and talking. Her family was there and were fearful because they, as well as she, could not swim. I was dressed in nice attire and really didn’t want to go in the water, so I just called out to her. She answered and I told her that I was there to “take her to the hospital.” She acknowledged “ok” and walked right to me. She was wet and muddy when I put her in my car.
During my ride to Columbia (the state mental health facility) I asked her what she was doing in the water. “Talking to the Angels” she said. As a student of history, I was intrigued by the likes of “Joan of Arc” and such who had “visions”, and admittedly I was a “smart ass.” I asked her “what were the angels saying?” Without a bit of stutter and soundly confident she replied “Reggie, they told me not to tell you.” I was stunned. She didn’t know me, I had no name tags nor had I used a phone that might have given my name away in conversation. I would later become the “talking head” for the department on TV for “most wanted” segments, but then and there I was a “nobody.”
She never said another word during the hour and a half ride. She hummed and smiled all the way. I was so dumbfounded that I dared not to ask any more questions. I dropped her off and that was that. It was a good ten years or so later that I ever told a soul. To this very moment it sticks to me like something I cannot in so many words describe.
Please share this with your wife.
Reggie