hospital, legal stuff - details needed/plausible?

blue_aura12 · Feb 13, 2013

some context:
MC of my wip - woman having an affair with a married man who is pretty much a sociopath, man manipulates and humiliates her in all kinds of ways but she meets a vampire who offers her immortality, power, revenge, vampire things.

man's wife finds out about affair, comes to MC's apartment and stands on the street yelling threats and insults thru the intercom to her apartment (like in Goodfellas lol) MC goes to the roof where she is met by vampire. in a moment of absolute emotional collapse, MC relents and lets vampire turn her. she jumps from the roof, lands on her feet on the ground to confront angry wife. the shock lands wife in the hospital and obvs no one believes what she saw

husband sees this as an opportunity to have wife declared legally insane, figuring paying for her to stay in a mental facility will be easier than divorce, confrontation, guilt, alimony, child support - also, he figures something is up with his mistress, MC, and that she's trying to find him for some kind of revenge. he's using legal tactics to keep wife in hospital, having a lawyer tell the drs that his wife was unbalanced, violent, threatening to kill him and their daughters, so she's being given meds to keep her docile while knowing something's up and wanting to get out - PLAUSIBLE? i don't really know anything about hospitals or legal stuff like this, plus just wondering how this all sounds

also - one of the woman's daughters is admitted to the same hospital shortly after her, after being attacked. daughter suffered a similar bizarre attack and is being heavily medicated for her shock. the woman finds out her daughter is in the hospital. would they be able to see each other or no? i have a sympathetic nurse who lets slip to the woman that she knows what's going on with them and takes woman to daughter's room but, again, plausible?

some of the stuff i really liked when i came up with it and wrote it, but it feels like some of the hardest stuff to "sell" because i dunno how it comes off to people and translates as far as how "believable" it is (believable for a vampire novel)

thanks so much for reading and any feedback!

Susan Coffin · Feb 13, 2013

blue aura12.

You are way over-analyzing your story. It's all in the execution, meaning it's as plausible as you make it.

Just sit down and write your story.

cornflake · Feb 13, 2013

blue_aura12 said:
some context:
MC of my wip - woman having an affair with a married man who is pretty much a sociopath, man manipulates and humiliates her in all kinds of ways but she meets a vampire who offers her immortality, power, revenge, vampire things.

man's wife finds out about affair, comes to MC's apartment and stands on the street yelling threats and insults thru the intercom to her apartment (like in Goodfellas lol) MC goes to the roof where she is met by vampire. in a moment of absolute emotional collapse, MC relents and lets vampire turn her. she jumps from the roof, lands on her feet on the ground to confront angry wife. the shock lands wife in the hospital and obvs no one believes what she saw

husband sees this as an opportunity to have wife declared legally insane, figuring paying for her to stay in a mental facility will be easier than divorce, confrontation, guilt, alimony, child support - also, he figures something is up with his mistress, MC, and that she's trying to find him for some kind of revenge. he's using legal tactics to keep wife in hospital, having a lawyer tell the drs that his wife was unbalanced, violent, threatening to kill him and their daughters, so she's being given meds to keep her docile while knowing something's up and wanting to get out - PLAUSIBLE? i don't really know anything about hospitals or legal stuff like this, plus just wondering how this all sounds

also - one of the woman's daughters is admitted to the same hospital shortly after her, after being attacked. daughter suffered a similar bizarre attack and is being heavily medicated for her shock. the woman finds out her daughter is in the hospital. would they be able to see each other or no? i have a sympathetic nurse who lets slip to the woman that she knows what's going on with them and takes woman to daughter's room but, again, plausible?

some of the stuff i really liked when i came up with it and wrote it, but it feels like some of the hardest stuff to "sell" because i dunno how it comes off to people and translates as far as how "believable" it is (believable for a vampire novel)

thanks so much for reading and any feedback!

Several ways not plausible, sorry. Just to check, are we talking about current-day America? Assuming that's the case...

There's no such thing as having someone declared legally insane in order to commit them from the beginning, just to start. Insanity is a legal term used in relation to criminal responsibility, mostly.

Second, you can't just 'have someone' committed. It's very hard to commit someone against their will for any period of time past about 24-72 hours (where it's more possible though not definite, if you claim they threatened harm). It takes, in most places I know of, multiple dr.s to sign off on keeping someone against his or her will and they will do so on the basis of their evaluation, not what someone's lawyer tells them. They will listen to what he says she's like, but they're not just going to believe him, at all, nor, even if they did, would that be the basis of keeping her if their evaluations of her did not show those things.

Further, even if they were somehow convinced to keep her, they cannot likely medicate her against her will if she's coherent. If she's very seriously violent, maybe in a situational way, but to be able to keep medicating someone who doesn't wish to be, they need to go to court and none of this is going to fly. All that happened is she says she saw something that seems impossible. She'd figure out soon enough to agree she must've been mistaken, if she's not completely off her gourd, or it's one thing she says she saw. It's not the basis for commitment and court-mandated drugging.

Also, the daughter sees something inexplicable and is suddenly heavily medicated and hospitalized? This too sounds wildly implausible.

Fantasmac · Feb 14, 2013

Anything can be plausible in a story, as long as the internal logic is consistent. Your job as an author is to convince the audience that the events make sense.

That said, in real like no, none of this is really plausible. Like cornflake said, psych treatment has changed a lot over the years and it really isn't possible to have someone committed, One Flew over the Cuckoo's nest style.

Here in California, you can do what's called a 5150 psych hold. If someone presents imminent danger to self or others (suicide/homicide) they can be involuntarily held for max 72 hours (but can still refuse all meds/treatment). You don't need a judge for that, just a qualified doctor or officer of the law. This can be upgraded to a 5250 which lasts for two weeks but you need a judge for that. And there's a completely separate legal procedure to have someone's right to refuse meds taken away (this is very hard to do).

The vast majority of psychiatric admissions are voluntary. The current care model doesn't really involve wrapping people in straight jackets and throwing them in padded rooms.

You can make your current plot work, just be aware that in real life that isn't how things work.

shaldna · Feb 14, 2013

blue_aura12 said:
husband sees this as an opportunity to have wife declared legally insane, figuring paying for her to stay in a mental facility will be easier than divorce, confrontation, guilt, alimony, child support -

Several things - where is this set?

Does the wife have a history of mental illness? Generalyl one episode is not enough to have someone committed - and it's not the husband who gets to make that decision - IF it's made then it will be following a period of examination and observation from mental health professionals.

However, if the wife is coherant and poses no threat to herself or others then she's not likely to be kept.

That said, if she goes completely bat shit insane then they just might for a while.

mirandashell · Feb 14, 2013

It also sounds very melodramatic. If that's what you're going for, cool.

blue_aura12 · Feb 14, 2013

okay so not being committed but i guess being detained for a little bit is what i'm getting at - the 72hrs works i think. i was thinking about having husband (Calvin) try to get a lawyer to sway the doctors to keep wife in hospital longer but that whole bribery, corruption angle seems way too out there.
it just seemed necessary to incapacitate wife for a few days because i have the other, younger daughter meeting up with girls who used to let the vampire feed from them - vampire tried to use one of the girls as prey for the almost-feral, hunger-maddened MC (Felicia) so they know he's a threat now - and playing vampire-hunter, or at least conspiring to somehow get rid of them.
i really haven't started to edit yet - typing, but not going back through and really working on plot-things, so this is all subject to change
really, i only NEED wife at hospital long enough for younger daughter (Molly) to accidentally overhear info she she knows it about Felicia (Felicia's father is in the hospital after she attacks him and Molly happens to be there when the family is visiting) to bring back to the others so they can connect the dots between the vampire and Molly's father, Calvin.

all this shit makes perfect sense in my head, but then when i try to explain it to anyone, it sounds convoluted and ridiculous...

blue_aura12 · Feb 14, 2013

mirandashell said:
It also sounds very melodramatic. If that's what you're going for, cool.

so i'm realizing lol

(also - my boyfriend is obsessed with Doctor Who. he has a tardis bathrobe. seriously.)

blue_aura12 · Feb 14, 2013

cornflake said:
Also, the daughter sees something inexplicable and is suddenly heavily medicated and hospitalized? This too sounds wildly implausible.

more context:
one of the girls (Emily) who used to let the vampire (Verick) feed from her is obsessed with him and becomes unhinged when she realizes he turned Felicia and will no longer see her and the other girls.
Emily kills herself but... comes back - ghoul-like and desperate to find Verick. she's just kinda wondering around, comes across Calvin's oldest daughter (Mackenzie) who bullied her badly in school and Emily attacks Mackenzie... Emily's been dead for a few days and looks kinda rough, too.
that is the attack that makes Mackenzie hysterical and puts her in the hospital, the same hospital as her mother.

Kate Monster · Feb 14, 2013

If 72 hours works ok for your story, I would definitely go with that. It's not all that difficult to get someone put in a 72-hour psych hold; you just need to convince the doctors she's a danger to herself or others. But like others said, "having someone declared insane" is not something that really exists in modern day America.

Also, having the lawyer do it is probably not the best course of action. Doctors dislike having lawyers tell them what to do medically even when it's legal, and if a lawyer calls in acting like he knows what's best for one of their patients, they're liable to tell him to get stuffed. You could potentially have the lawyer bribing her attending physician, but it's a pretty big stretch. You'd have to do a lot to explain why that works, because otherwise it's just WAY too convenient that the exact person they need to bribe happens to be corrupt.

I would find a way to make her look crazy in front of the doctors somehow (talking about vampires where they can hear, or something like that), and then have the husband play it up about how she's been talking like this for a couple of days, and getting violent, and turn on the waterworks about how worried he is about her and how he's afraid she's going to hurt herself or their daughter, etc. etc.

absitinvidia · Feb 14, 2013

The question nobody has asked: Is the existence of vampires something your society is aware of?

Sarpedon · Feb 14, 2013

If he's a sociopath, he can threaten her into committing herself.

frimble3 · Feb 14, 2013

blue_aura12 said:
okay so not being committed but i guess being detained for a little bit is what i'm getting at - the 72hrs works i think. i was thinking about having husband (Calvin) try to get a lawyer to sway the doctors to keep wife in hospital longer but that whole bribery, corruption angle seems way too out there.
it just seemed necessary to incapacitate wife for a few days because i have the other, younger daughter meeting up with girls who used to let the vampire feed from them - vampire tried to use one of the girls as prey for the almost-feral, hunger-maddened MC (Felicia) so they know he's a threat now - and playing vampire-hunter, or at least conspiring to somehow get rid of them.
i really haven't started to edit yet - typing, but not going back through and really working on plot-things, so this is all subject to change
really, i only NEED wife at hospital long enough for younger daughter (Molly) to accidentally overhear info she she knows it about Felicia (Felicia's father is in the hospital after she attacks him and Molly happens to be there when the family is visiting) to bring back to the others so they can connect the dots between the vampire and Molly's father, Calvin.

all this shit makes perfect sense in my head, but then when i try to explain it to anyone, it sounds convoluted and ridiculous...

Yeah, I kept losing track of which daughter is which.

Perhaps you want all the drama and atmosphere of people locked up, etc, but (see bolding) it seems as though you're trying to make long-term convoluted answers to simple, short-term problems.
If you only need the mother out of the way for the daughter to sneak around with her Scooby Gang, why not just make the mother busy, and the daughter a liar?
"Mom, gotta go to the library to study!"
"Meeting up at the mall for shopping!"
"Sleep over at Melly's, do you want her mother to call you?"
I imagine these days with the eentsy little phones, and a busy parent, a teen could give the impression that they were around, just missing actual meetings. No idea what the mother is busy with, but it's got to be better than being locked up. Maybe she's scheming with lawyers to get the husband locked up or divorced? Sure, maybe the lawyers will only explain that you can't get someone locked up at will, but, the meetings would keep her busy.

And, if Molly only needs to be in the hospital long enough to overhear some information, do you really need to lock the older daughter up as well?

If Mackenzie was injured in some sort of an attack, they'd take her to hospital, yes? And, if the medical staff or the police question her and she freaks out, the combination of the injuries and freak-out might get her taken in overnight for observation. (I'd think that a hospital seeing a freaking-out young woman with a bizarre story would be thinking in terms of her being on some kind of drug, and hang onto her 'til it cleared her system, or testing showed what she was on.)
This would give Molly plenty of sitting around the hospitat time, to overhear stuff. (If the sister was babbling about being attacked, and zombies, etc, I imagine the parents wouldn't just leave Molly all alone at home.)

blue_aura12 · Feb 14, 2013

absitinvidia said:
The question nobody has asked: Is the existence of vampires something your society is aware of?

no, probably should've mentioned that

cornflake · Feb 14, 2013

The other thing that hasn't been clarified that bugs me about this - the people you want committed, at least the wife, are vampires, no?

Wouldn't a medical professional kind of notice someone wasn't so much alive?

I mean a psych evaluation is going to be the least of her problems once they notice she's undead.

blue_aura12 · Feb 15, 2013

cornflake said:
The other thing that hasn't been clarified that bugs me about this - the people you want committed, at least the wife, are vampires, no?

Wouldn't a medical professional kind of notice someone wasn't so much alive?

I mean a psych evaluation is going to be the least of her problems once they notice she's undead.

no, sorry, should've clarified. there's only one vampire initially. no one in calvin's family becomes a vampire.

blue_aura12 · Feb 15, 2013

frimble3 said:
Yeah, I kept losing track of which daughter is which.
Perhaps you want all the drama and atmosphere of people locked up, etc, but (see bolding) it seems as though you're trying to make long-term convoluted answers to simple, short-term problems.
If you only need the mother out of the way for the daughter to sneak around with her Scooby Gang, why not just make the mother busy, and the daughter a liar?
"Mom, gotta go to the library to study!"
"Meeting up at the mall for shopping!"
"Sleep over at Melly's, do you want her mother to call you?"
I imagine these days with the eentsy little phones, and a busy parent, a teen could give the impression that they were around, just missing actual meetings. No idea what the mother is busy with, but it's got to be better than being locked up. Maybe she's scheming with lawyers to get the husband locked up or divorced? Sure, maybe the lawyers will only explain that you can't get someone locked up at will, but, the meetings would keep her busy.

And, if Molly only needs to be in the hospital long enough to overhear some information, do you really need to lock the older daughter up as well?

If Mackenzie was injured in some sort of an attack, they'd take her to hospital, yes? And, if the medical staff or the police question her and she freaks out, the combination of the injuries and freak-out might get her taken in overnight for observation. (I'd think that a hospital seeing a freaking-out young woman with a bizarre story would be thinking in terms of her being on some kind of drug, and hang onto her 'til it cleared her system, or testing showed what she was on.)
This would give Molly plenty of sitting around the hospitat time, to overhear stuff. (If the sister was babbling about being attacked, and zombies, etc, I imagine the parents wouldn't just leave Molly all alone at home.)

yeah, not gonna lie, i was in love with the drama of the whole hospitalization thing... does seem like it would be a lot easier to take that whole angle out - maybe save that ambitious stuff for a future novel lol

i'll have to see how it goes when i finish it then go back to edit/rewrite

debirlfan · Feb 19, 2013

If you're looking for a reason to lock the wife up... You said she was screaming at the girlfriend over the intercom? Perhaps neighbors heard her screaming threats at the woman? Where does GF go after she jumps off the roof? Does she disappear from the area? She was turned into a vamp - might there be traces of blood in her apartment?

If GF is nowhere to be found and wife is ranting and behaving somewhat violently, I could see her being carted off to the psych ward (or the police station) because they suspected that she had harmed the other woman.

blue_aura12 · Feb 20, 2013

hmm that is a good idea, too, thanks!
i'm almost done writing the novel - writing the first draft, but i'm rewriting it at the same time... these are all ideas i'll be taking in when i do the "massive overhaul" with this subplot and some other things i want to tweak, so see if it will work or not

hospital, legal stuff - details needed/plausible?

blue_aura12

Susan Coffin

Tell it like it Is

cornflake

practical experience, FTW

Fantasmac

chronically underwhelmed

shaldna

The cake is a lie. But still cake.

mirandashell

blue_aura12

blue_aura12

blue_aura12

Kate Monster

Prophecy Girl

absitinvidia

A bit of a wallflower

Sarpedon

frimble3

Heckuva good sport

blue_aura12

cornflake

practical experience, FTW

blue_aura12

blue_aura12

debirlfan

blue_aura12