“This is the resident doctor at the hospital. You must come and get your son immediately. We are not equipped to deal with him here.”

“How can they just change their mind? They can’t just refuse when they’ve already accepted him! Chezky’s supposed to be admitted to the hospital tomorrow!” My voice was reaching panic. “I don’t care if they made a policy change today. Let them change whatever they want tomorrow!”

“Welcome to Covid. The hospital refuses any new admissions as of 11 a.m. today.” Becky’s voice sounded more exhausted than I’d ever heard her before. I could only imagine the chaos Covid was having on her already busy psychiatric practice.

“Everyone’s scrambling,” she continued. “No one knows what’s going on from one day to the next. Meanwhile, they’ve informed me not to bother contacting them about Chezky’s admission. They will contact us when they are ready after Covid.”

After Covid? The pandemic was sweeping across the world, and I was supposed to hang in there until it ended? Schools were canceled, the kids were all home, and Chezky… well, Chezky now thought he was Hashem.

“I’m sending a gezeirah to all Yidden,” he boomed when his sister tested positive. “Do teshuvah, or I’ll kill you all with Corona!”

Locked up in a house with a psycho teenager takes a pandemic to a whole new level.

The kids were bored, antsy, scared, and always hungry. I was past collapsing, trying to maintain some level of order and structure in a home that was ruled by a psychotic deity.

Late one night (or was it already morning?), I was on shift, blearily keeping an eye on Chezky as he swooped with seemingly endless energy around the dining room. “I’m a malach, and I’m practicing flying!”

When he flew into his room and slammed his door, I slumped to the floor, my back leaning against the door, knowing that in this position he couldn’t get past me.

How much longer could we continue this way? I’d always been the type to push forward, to rise to the occasion and do what was needed. But now, my thoughts circled in a feverish haze of complete exhaustion… going nowhere. I’d lost myself. We’d become dysfunctional, and the other children were suffering. In a world gone crazy, the craziness of my own home was taking its toll on all of us.