Chapter 5
Lakeview Behavioral Health Center looks exactly like its website.
Too-green grass. A meditation garden with a fountain that's turned off.
The building itself is newer than I expected — clean lines, big windows, the kind of architecture that says we're not what you think to families pulling into the lot for the first time.
I've seen a hundred of these places. Toured them for patient transfers, called them for bed availability, read their discharge summaries. They all have the same language on the welcome sign: Healing begins here. Or some version of it.
This one says: Where recovery finds you.
I park in visitor lot B and sit in my car for two minutes.
The lot is half-full — mostly Hondas and Toyotas, a few nicer cars near the entrance.
Staff versus visitors, probably. A woman in scrubs crosses from the far row carrying a lunch bag and a water bottle.
She badges through a side door without looking up.
That door. That badge access. Colette would have used something just like it. Forty minutes from my house. Driving my sedated body through this parking lot in the dark. Badging through. Wheeling me in. I wonder if I was in a wheelchair or if I walked. I wonder if anyone in this lot saw us.
I'm wearing jeans and a sweater — no scrubs, no badge. I don't want to walk in as a colleague. I want to walk in as a patient requesting her records.
My ID is in my purse. The insurance letter is in the pocket of my jacket.
I have a prepared statement in my head — professional, calm, legally grounded.
I know my rights. I know their obligations.
Forty-five days for mailed requests, but they cannot refuse a supervised in-person review of my chart with valid identification.
I go in.
The lobby is nicer than ours. Softer lighting, actual art on the walls — not prints, originals. A receptionist behind a desk that's designed to look like it's not a barrier, even though it is.
"Hi. Can I help you?" She's young. Smiles easily. Name tag: Brianna.
"I'm here to request a copy of my medical records." I keep my voice steady. "I was a patient here in March of last year."
Her smile stays in place but her eyes do that flicker — the quick assessment. Is this person stable. Is this going to be a situation. I know the flicker because I do it ten times a shift.
"Of course. Let me get our records coordinator. Can I have your name?"
"Wren Gallagher."
She picks up the phone, speaks quietly, hangs up. "She'll be right out. Would you like to have a seat?"
I sit in a chair that's slightly too low — a choice, not an accident. Everything in a psychiatric facility is a choice. The furniture height, the lighting temperature, the distance between chairs. I designed a unit renovation three years ago. I know.
The lobby smells like lavender diffuser and new carpet.
Soft music — something ambient and without edges.
A water feature trickles against a slate wall near the elevator.
It's all designed to soothe, to communicate safety and calm.
And it does — I can feel it working on my nervous system even though I know it's architecture, not compassion.
A man comes through the lobby — fifties, khakis, visitor badge. He's carrying a vase of tulips and his eyes are red. Visiting someone. I watch him press the elevator button with his elbow because his hands are full.
That could have been Drew. Fourteen months ago, that could have been my husband walking through this lobby with flowers, pressing the elevator button, riding up to whatever floor they kept me on. But he didn't come. He wasn't allowed.
Brianna catches me looking. "The flowers are nice, aren't they?" she says. "We allow fresh flowers on the unit. Some places don't."
"That's kind," I say. My voice sounds normal. Professional. The voice of a woman who belongs here by choice.
The records coordinator comes out in under five minutes. Older woman, efficient, a manila folder already in her hand.
"Ms. Gallagher? I'm Diane. Come on back."
I follow her through a door that locks behind us — I hear the click — and down a short hallway to a small office. She gestures to a chair across from her desk.
"So you're requesting records from a previous stay?"
"Yes. March 14 through 17, 2025." I hand her my driver's license. "I have the right to review my chart in person. I'd also like copies of everything — intake, progress notes, medication administration records, discharge summary, and the petition for involuntary hold."
Diane doesn't blink. She's done this before. "I'll need to verify your identity and have you sign a release form. The review can happen today, but copies will take one to two business days. We mail them or you can pick them up."
"I'll pick them up."
"Fine." She slides a form across the desk. I sign it. She makes a copy of my license, staples it to the form, and then opens something on her computer.
"Give me about ten minutes to pull the physical file and set up a review room. You're welcome to wait here."
She leaves. I sit in her office with my hands flat on my thighs and I wait.
The walls have the standard diplomas and certifications. I scan them out of habit. And then I see the staff board — a framed photo composite next to the door. Rows of faces with names underneath. Medical staff, nursing staff, administrative staff.
I stand up and look closer.
Third row. Fourth from the left.
Colette Marchetti, PMHNP. Staff privileges, Inpatient Unit.
Not PRN. Not per diem. Not temporary float. Staff. Active. A permanent position at this facility while telling me for two years that she only does outpatient private practice.
I take a photo of the board with my phone. Then I sit back down.
Ten minutes becomes fifteen. I count the ceiling tiles.
Twelve across, nine deep. One hundred and eight.
The light hums the same frequency as the one in our med room.
My pulse is somewhere north of ninety but I don't check.
Not here. Not where someone might see me pressing my wrist and chart it as something.
Diane comes back with a file folder — thin. Too thin for a seventy-two-hour hold. Ours are usually an inch thick with documentation.
"Review room is set up down the hall. You'll have thirty minutes. Let me know if you need clarification on anything — I can't interpret medical content, but I can explain our filing system."
"Thank you."
The review room is a small conference room with a table, two chairs, and a window that looks out at the too-green grass. Diane sets the folder in front of me and closes the door behind her.
I open it.
The first page is the intake assessment. Date: March 14, 2025. Time: 22:47. Patient brought in by spouse — Andrew Gallagher. Attending: C. Marchetti, PMHNP.
Chief complaint: Husband reports patient has been expressing suicidal ideation for approximately two weeks. Patient denies, appears agitated, disoriented. Spouse tearful, reports patient has not been sleeping, has made statements about "wanting it to end" and "not being able to do this anymore."
I read it three times.
Wanting it to end. I said that. In February, after a triple shift.
I said it to Drew in bed with my face in the pillow.
"I want this to end. I can't do this anymore.
" I was talking about my schedule. About being understaffed.
About the patient in room 6 who kept screaming my name every time I walked past.
She took my words out of my mouth and put them in a chart without context. Without me.
I keep reading.
Mental status exam: Patient alert but disoriented to time. Affect flat. Speech pressured. Eye contact poor. Denies SI/HI but clinician assessment contradicts patient self-report based on collateral from spouse and referring provider.
Referring provider. That's Colette. She referred me to herself.
Assessment: Major depressive disorder, severe, with possible psychotic features. Patient meets criteria for involuntary 72-hour hold per state statute. Imminent danger to self based on collateral information and clinical presentation.
Psychotic features. She gave me a psychosis tag.
That's — that's nuclear. That's the kind of diagnosis that follows you.
Into background checks, into professional licensing renewals, into custody disputes.
That's the kind of documentation that could disqualify a nurse from holding a position of institutional authority.
Like a hospital board seat.
I turn the page. Progress notes, three days' worth. Each one signed C. Marchetti.
Day 1: Patient confused upon admission. Administered lorazepam 2mg IM for agitation. Patient slept through night.
They sedated me. Of course they sedated me.
I don't remember the hold because I was sedated for most of it.
I wasn't at my mother's house sleeping fourteen hours because I was tired.
I was in this building, forty minutes from home, drugged and charted and diagnosed while my husband sat at our kitchen table believing he'd saved my life.
Day 2: Patient calmer. Oriented x3. Denies previous suicidal statements. Medication adjusted — started sertraline 50mg. Patient cooperative with treatment team. Continues to deny crisis — typical presentation for patients in acute depressive episodes following intervention.
Continues to deny crisis — typical presentation.
I know that language. I've written that language. When a patient says they're fine and we don't believe them, we write exactly those words. Patient denies, however clinical presentation suggests. The professional override. My truth against her credentials.
Day 3: Patient stable for discharge. Mood improved. Insight fair. Discharge plan: outpatient follow-up with C. Marchetti, medication management, safety plan reviewed with patient and spouse.
Outpatient follow-up with Colette. She discharged me to herself. She created the crisis, held me for it, and then positioned herself as my ongoing treatment provider. A complete closed loop.
Except I never went to a follow-up appointment. Which means either she documented one that didn't happen, or she let it go because the hold itself was enough. The seventy-two hours. The diagnosis. The chart. That was the product. Not my treatment. My disqualification.
I close the folder.
The grass outside the window is very green and very still. The fountain is still off. Someone walks past — a tech in scrubs, keyring on their hip.
I signal Diane. Ask for the copies. She says two business days. I say fine. I leave through the same lobby, past Brianna with her easy smile, past the sign about recovery finding you.
I sit in my car in visitor lot B and I press both hands flat against the steering wheel. I don't count my pulse. I don't need to. I can feel it everywhere — temples, throat, fingertips. My whole body is a drum.
She drugged me. She locked me in a room. She wrote words on paper that could end my career. And then she came to my house three weeks later with a bottle of wine and asked me how I was feeling.
I start the car. I'm not shaking. I'm very, very still.
Two business days.
And then I'll have every page.