"Your father is all set to be released tomorrow," the social worker said, her voice cheery, as if this were good news.

My stomach dropped.

My father was about to be released from his third hospitalization in five months. A decade earlier, he'd had an episode from which he never fully recovered. He had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder in his early 20s, but managed to maintain stability for years. In 2008, at 44 years old, he became manic. Then he crashed into a deep depression that never loosened its icy grip. That episode, which happened when I was 18, rendered my dad unable to work or live alone. When my parents' marriage ended three years later, he moved in with his mother, spending the days sleeping in the sun in a bay window and the nights shuffling about, locked in his own internal hell.


My father's bipolar cycles, with hospitalizations at least once a year, somehow became normal for our family. However, the winter before the social worker's call—the eighth year in this cycle—was particularly brutal. In January, I brought him to the hospital for manic symptoms. We spent 12 long hours in the emergency room before he secured a bed in a psychiatric hospital. As he was restrained on a stretcher for transport, I prayed for the best. But when he got to the psychiatric hospital, the staff immediately recognized that his symptoms were not related to his being bipolar—he was showing signs of a stroke. Unbeknownst to me, he was transferred to the neurological department at a third hospital. I awakened to a call from the doctor in the middle of the night, seeking information about this confusing patient.