Two Priests and a Police Team

During my first episode of psychosis, I was convinced it was the end of the world. A very warped end of the world where saints become police officers and doctors, working alongside the evil ones. As you can imagine, I had no idea who I could trust.

I was refusing to eat or drink, I hadn’t slept in three days, and I was running a fever when my husband and parents decided it was time to check me into the hospital. Once I discovered where I was being taken, I panicked and decided to run away. Hence, the police involvement.

While God didn’t send me a literal angel to take care of me, he did send me a police officer with the perfect demeanor and a name that included the word Peter. If you remember, the saints were the good guys, so I knew I could trust him.

He did his best to convince me to check in at the hospital, which I was convinced was sure to be the end of me. So I demanded that I see a priest before going in. I wasn’t sure what side the priests were on, but I wanted to find out.

And so, our friend, who is a priest, was put on the phone, and I talked to him for a while before deciding that priests were safe. But I still wasn’t convinced that the hospital was safe. So I demanded to speak to another priest.

As my husband says, I kept moving the goal post. After at least an hour and a half of waiting, the second priest called me. “You can trust Jesus,” I remember him saying.

After hanging up the phone, the nurses moved in, ready to move me along into the examination room. My husband has since shared that they were loaded up with syringes, ready to knock me out, before he pleaded my case. Because I have Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, unknown-to-me chemicals being loaded up in my system could have made me incredibly ill.

Then came James and some other doctor that I immediately recognized as an evil one. James, the good guy (he’s a saint, remember?), acknowledged that MCAS is a real illness, while the other doctor questioned it.

Ultimately, they decided to leave me be. They took my blood and led me off for a CAT scan before bringing me a ham sandwich, which I scarfed down, forgetting that I had committed to not eating. They brought me in a second one while I sat with my dad in silence. The air vent kicked on, and I was certain war was raging outside the building. I wondered what would happen next. I debated making another run for it.