“How many people do you find dead in the alleys?” he demanded, wiping the tears from his eyes. “How many people die because you won’t hospitalize them?”

I felt my heart thumping against my chest. I said nothing.

“I know this isn’t your fault,” he recanted, wiping his nose on his sleeve, “but this is like losing my son.”

“I understand your frustration—”

“—no, I don’t think you understand,” he coldly interrupted. “He isn’t your son.”

I took a deep breath. “Let me rephrase that,” I replied. “You’re right—I don’t completely understand, but I’ve had to speak with many other families about situations that are very similar to this one.”

He looked away, the tears continuing to trickle down his face.

“He’s not going to accept any help—he thinks that the secret messages from the textbooks will save him. How much worse does he have to get before he’ll get care? He can’t go home tonight—I don’t know what he’s going to do. The law in this state grants too much freedom to people; it’s gone too far.”

My heart continued to thump in my chest.

His son was reclining on a gurney a mere two rooms away, his fingers intertwined with each other and serving as a humble pillow for his head. His right ankle was crossed over his left and his light brown eyes peered at the ceiling tiles. The hunter green polo shirt, overlaying a thin, white tee-shirt, complemented his smooth, cocoa skin. His jeans, purposely tattered at the heels, barely hinted at the shape of his lean legs. A metal watch with a large, orange face adorned his left wrist and a single ring of silver was on his right thumb.

“I know it sounds weird when I say it,” the son said, a self-conscious smile appearing on his face. He was handsome; his smile radiated warmth and playfulness. He ran his right hand through his shaggy brown hair, the thumb ring glinting from the overhead lights. “The case law not only provides information about how society has organized itself in the past, but also contains the collective wisdom of all the people who have lived before us. We cannot change the future if we do not understand the past. There’s the content of the papers; then there’s the actual messages contained within. Everyone can read the messages, but few people pay attention.”

It was his first year of law school. He had stopped attending classes a few weeks prior because he believed that he needed time to recollect himself. He was receiving too much information.

“The messages are everywhere—it’s almost like I need to assemble the information to make it coherent. This responsibility is daunting—but I’m learning so much about the genesis of morality. There are other ways of living; ancient peoples had codes of conduct that were superior to our current way of living. This information is accessible; it leaps out of the books in a different print—it’s like it’s between the lines, or the words really mean something else, or it’s a code. I don’t know why I have been selected by these past societies to transmit this information to the present time, but we could benefit so much from learning about this untainted information. It is a boon to our culture.”

He had borrowed over four hundred books from the law library; about half of them were overdue. They were stacked throughout the space of his loft, creating small towers of knowledge upon which rested numerous sheets of notebook paper, each covered with sentences that contained few commas and even less periods.

“I choose not to use the computer anymore,” the law student continued. “The radiation from the electromagnetic fields of the television and computer interfere with the messages sent from the past. I find that if I focus my mind on texts only, the messages travel with greater ease from the collective consciousness into my brain. Everything else is just noise, a distraction—and I can’t waste time. There are still probably close to a thousand books that I need to read to complete my edification of correct morality. Once I can capture all of these ideas and transform them into a succinct paper, then I can disseminate it to the public to resolve the world’s problems.”

Security officers had to escort him out of the library four times the previous week and police officers found him loitering outside of the city’s public library at dawn, forehead pressed against the glass, eyes closed, and kneeling in quiet repose, on three consecutive mornings.

“I can’t tell my dad about all of this; when I say ‘collective consciousness’ and talk about the interfering radiation, he thinks I’m messed up in the head. That’s not what I actually mean,” the son said, flashing that beautiful smile while coyly looking away. “It’s just a different way of communicating.”

“He’s psychotic,” I murmured to my colleague. “He’s totally psychotic and it’s probably going to get worse unless he receives treatment. He’s bright, though, and has enough cognitive reserve to pull it together. He’s declining inpatient hospitalization, or outpatient care, or any mental health intervention, really—he says he just wants to go home and read more tonight before going to bed, so he’s at least sharing a reasonable, safe plan—and we have absolutely nothing to offer the mental health professionals to get him detained. His dad is understandably freaking out.”

“Don’t worry,” the law student said, sitting up on the gurney, twisting his thumb ring. “I’m just trying to figure all of this stuff out; I’m not going to hurt myself or anyone else. I’m just trying to help humanity.”

“He’s telling me that he doesn’t need to eat as much anymore because knowledge is his primary sustenance now!” his father bitterly said. “He started yelling in the car about the absence of morality in my soul and hoped that the collective consciousness would blot my mind out because I am not facilitating the transfer of messages from the past to the present! My son—my son!—thinks that when he dies, the collection of knowledge that he has accumulated in his brain from these ’studies’ will spread throughout the world through the sixty-fourth dimension! This is not my son! And you’re telling me that he can’t get hospitalized?!”

I took a deep breath—I knew he was not going to like what I was about to say.

“In the state of Washington,” I began, “psychiatrists—physicians—do not have the power to involuntarily detain people for mental health reasons due to concerns about civil liberties. The only people who have that power are individuals known as “mental health professionals“, who are agents of the county. There are only two states in America that use this system. The reason why this system was put in place was that physicians could unjustly violate the rights of others—for example, if I didn’t like someone, I could get him detained for illegitimate reasons. This dual agency is problematic, right? Thus, a third party—a mental health professional—is called in to assess the situation and order detention, if he deems it appropriate. Mental health professionals, or ‘MHPs’, are generally social workers and psychologists who are familiar with both psychiatric conditions and the law.”

The father nodded.

“MHPs will only detain people if two broad conditions are met: The patient has to be an ‘imminent’ danger to himself, an ‘imminent’ danger to others, or gravely disabled—that is, unable to care for one’s own safety and health. These prior conditions must be due to a mental condition. These are the criteria that the MHPs look for when interviewing patients.”

I swallowed.

“MHPs need evidence that the patient is a danger to self or others or is gravely disabled. ‘Evidence’ means reports from witnesses who heard the patient make threats, police reports, things like that. This evidence is submitted to court in the form of an affidavit and the person who wrote the affidavit may have to testify.”

I took another deep breath.

“Your son would benefit from inpatient hospitalization to prevent further worsening of his symptoms. However, he is unwilling to be hospitalized at this point and we don’t have any evidence that he is trying to hurt himself or someone else… and he’s clearly still taking care of himself right now. Thus, it is highly unlikely that the MHPs would detain him.”

“So you’re saying that he has to get worse before he could get treatment?” the father sputtered. “What kind of law is that? I understand the concerns about freedom and whatnot, but this is my son and I don’t know what’s going to happen to him if he keeps on doing this stuff! What if someone assaults him outside of the library? What if someone beats him up because he’s going on and on about ‘the genesis of morality’ and ‘transmission from the past’ and ‘the collective consciousness’? I can’t take him home this evening—he doesn’t trust me—and he needs help. He’s not going to follow up at that appointment you’ve scheduled for him—he thinks that only the textbooks can save him—and so he’s just going to get worse?”

I felt my heart thumping against my chest. I said nothing.

His father put his hands over his face and began bawling, his hoarse voice breaking into sobs.

His son was kneeling on the floor in quiet repose, eyes closed, forehead pressed against the folded sheets of paper that were on the floor.