>Parks responded calmly, “It’s legal. It’s legal.”
Years ago in college, my friend was depressed, and as a coping mechanism would sometimes write suicide notes. He'd read them and realize he wasn't quite at that point and it would help him get along. It was a process.
Anyway, somehow some of his notes were discovered, he was arrested (I still don't know the details here) and put into some weird absurd protective custody thing in a psychiatric hospital. I was allowed to see him exactly once. The one time I managed to get in he looked like shit. Bags under the eyes, light gone, just, hollow. He said they forced him to take these anti anxiety meds that make him feel like a zombie, that if he didn't take them and admit he needed medication, they wouldn't let him out. But he wasn't "earnest" enough about his treatment and so he still couldn't get out of that hellscape.
After about ten days of being unable to contact him, being stonewalled by the cops and the doctors (working with his parents, who were out of state and just as confused/frustrated), I completely snapped. I loaded my remington and 2 boxes of shells into my truck and was planning on driving straight into the lobby of the hospital and forcefully removing him. I was furious but remember having a clear plan - wasn't going to shoot anyone, figured the truck through the lobby plus a crazy fucker in a mask with a shotgun would force their hand and let him go and then we'd drive to mexico or some shit. Consequences be damned, silly fucking laws be damned, I was getting my friend out. I was tossing my gunbag into the back when I got a call on my cell from him saying he finally got out and needed a ride.
God only knows if I had gone through with it, maybe I would have come to my senses in the parking lot, I can only hope. All I know is that there was nothing more frustrating or infuriating I have ever experienced than watching him go through it and being completely stonewalled. I've had friends go to jail and I've gone to jail and that's fair, that makes sense. There's a process. There's bail. You broke a written rule and you spend some time for it. You get to talk to a judge. The judge gives you rules and you follow them and you get out.
But where he was, there was no rules. You are in at the whim of the doctor and you get out at the whim of the doctor.
I imagine the daughter felt something very similar here - where's the process? Who's the authority? Where are the rules written down and when did she agree to them? How could that daughter have protected herself and her family from some absurd hidden legalese?