Wanda knows she’s being poisoned.
The nurses come to her room and tell her to breathe from a tube, and Wanda can see glass particles entering her lungs.
So she refuses to inhale. Sometimes her doctor, whom Wanda trusts, convinces her to relent and breathe the stuff in. Other times she stays strong.
Roughly six times in the last six months, Wanda has stayed strong. Each time, her lungs began to fill with fluid—an effect of the congestive heart failure she suffers from. Each time, she has had to be restrained, intubated, and cared for at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center, causing her immense psychiatric trauma. The last time this happened, Wanda nearly died.
On a late April morning, as an array of mental health workers, attorneys, and court officials meet to talk about her in a tidy room at Portland’s brand-new Unity Center for Behavioral Health, Wanda has refused to breathe the glass poison for days. Another trip to Emanuel may be necessary, but that’s not the reason for the day’s hearing.
Instead, the group has gathered to determine whether Wanda, who’s in her 60s, should remain in state custody.
For much of the last six months, she has been one of a rising percentage of patients in Multnomah County committed against their will to the care of the Oregon Health Authority (OHA), which believes the paranoid schizophrenia Wanda suffers from puts her at dire risk.
