I just spoke with Jeremy's mother earlier this evening. They still don't have any news. She said they came to Traverse City yesterday and spent all day here talking to churches and our local SafeHarbor homeless program. I don't have a full understanding of the situation but I have a possible theory that I shared with the police, albeit a much abbreviated version of what I've shared here. I had called the cops yesterday but they weren't particularly interested; they just gave me the family's phone number and said that the family was handling it, so I'm not sure how involved the authorities actually are in trying to find Jeremy at this point.
I do have a theory, though, based on an experience that happened to me in the same hospital a few years ago. My dad had been killed the year before, I wasn't getting along with my family, and although I didn't know it at the time, I had become ragingly hormonal with what I now know to be PMDD (Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder (a VERY SEVERE form of PMS). Anyway, I attempted suicide shortly after Christmas in 2009 and was thusly hospitalized in-patient in Munson's "Behavioral Health Center". In other words, I was locked up on the psychiatric floor of the hospital, in the unit of the hospital known as "Center One."
I was despondent over a situation that had happened at home with my family, though, which was what had triggered my suicide attempt. So when I was first admitted into the psych area of the ER I was sobbing and pounding my arms against the walls...devastated. Or, in the minds of the ER staff, "misbehaving". That brought three or four security officers to my door, where they stood, watching everything I did through the window. Before long I had worn myself out and just huddled up on the bed crying, feeling betrayed by my mother.
The point to my telling all this (and I apologize for the length, is to show the attitudes of the ER staff and the Community Mental Health worker who determined my fate. My behavior was unacceptable to the CMH doctor and so she was very cold and hostile in her assessment of me. She ended up sending me to Center One (oddly, not on the first floor) where I was assigned a psychiatrist. He was nice, and I was coping much better by the next day. That's when I realized I had been reacting partly due to hormones. My psychiatrist had even arranged to mediate a meeting between my mother and myself, and I was really eager for that to happen because I was hoping we could finally get past some of our long-standing issues. My mother agreed to the meeting, which was scheduled to take place after my doctor returned from New Years break.
But Dr. Conlan, the CMH worker I had angered in the ER, wasn't going to let that happen. When none of the nurses were around she popped into my room for a surprise visit (just a few days before the new year), perched up on my window sill with her arms crossed, and told me that I was "treating the place like a hotel". Her attitude was so accusatory that I lost it and flipped my bedside tray table over in anger, which was all she needed to have me put in the solitary room, pinned down by several security officers, and drugged with a cocktail of multiple tranquilizers. When I woke up, about a day later, I was strapped to a guerney in the breezeway of a different hospital downstate, attended to by my ambulance crew. I was ultimately taken to the Kalamazoo State Hospital but there had been some kind of a paperwork fowl-up so I wasn't permitted to enter either hospital and so they had to store me off to the side in the breezeway. Dr. Conlan had sent along instructions that my arm and leg straps were not to be removed under any circumstances.
My family knew I had been taken to Munson after my attempt — my mother had to have a tow-truck pick up my wrecked car — but nobody told her I had been transferred downstate, and when I was finally admitted to K-Zoo State Hospital I was not allowed phone privileges. Those I had to earn over time. It was a terrible, terrible place to be. And I couldn't let anybody know I was there. So, as far as my family knew, I just disappeared.
If, while Jeremy was at Munson Hospital, he behaved in any way that angered the hospital or CMH staff, then they WOULD retaliate. I have no doubt of that. They are very well known for doing that. They make sure everyone knows that THEY are the ones in control.
Anyway, without going into all of the background as I did here, I did suggest this possibility to Jeremy's mother. Also, she asked me if I had heard of Center One. She said they had told her that Jeremy was not there, and she asked me if they would lie to her about that. The truth is they sometimes HAVE to lie. If they don't have a patient's permission to inform callers that they are there, they are required to deny it. So it is also possible that they performed a "take-down" on Jeremy, separating him from his wallet, and that they have him locked up on Center One.
An odd note, though. They would NEVER let anybody have a wallet while they were in-patient on Center one. All possessions are locked up until the patient is discharged. And I have NEVER known them to allow smoke breaks. Some places do but I'm pretty sure that Munson only allows smokers to use nicotine gum or wear nicotine patches. That unit didn't have any access to the outside that I ever saw. Probably one that is used just in case of fire. I really wonder where exactly Jeremy was smoking. And the cop I spoke to seemed to be saying that Jeremy had just been released from the center. So maybe something entirely different happened. If he's not in Center One or down at K-Zoo then I would definitely be worried about his safety.
I should mention that there was one time in the ER that I was mocked for having vocal tics and punished for not speaking. I had gone to the ER because of those very symptoms (from a new medication) but I could only communicate by writing and they took my paper away, so I couldn't make them understand that I wasn't misbehaving. They strapped me down that time too and were punishing me so angrily, acting with a mob mentality, that I was afraid they were going to go too far and accidentally kill me. It got so bad that I filed a police report the next day. It's just not a safe place for people with problems.