“It’s like OCD, except with thinking. He’d get a notion in his head, I want a red car, and then he couldn’t get it back out. He’d spend six, seven hours saying over and over again, I want a red car, I want a red car, I want a red car. Now substitute red rum for red car, and you can see the danger of perseverative thoughts.”

D.D.’s eyes widened. “He’s going through all this, and he’s what, seven, eight years old?”

“He’s going through all this, and yes, he’s eight. And we’re seeing more kids like him all the time. Parents think the worst thing that can happen to their five-year-old is cancer. They’re wrong; the worst thing that can happen to their five-year-old is mental illness. Cancer, the docs have tools available. Mental illness in prepubescents … There are so few drugs we can use, then the kids develop a tolerance, and by age eight we’re out of options. They require a lifetime regimen of anti-psychotic medication, except we don’t have anything left. One week we get them stabilized. The next they plunge back into the abyss.”

“Is that what happened to Ozzie?” D.D. asked.

Danielle picked up the case file, read briskly. “We took Ozzie off the aripiprazole. At which time he claimed ghosts were appearing in the windows of his room and ordering him to kill people. So we put him back on a very low dosage of aripiprazole, trying to minimize the side effects while still making some attempt at regulating his brain chemistry. In the short term, we noticed a positive change in behavior.”

“In the short term,” D.D. repeated. “Meaning in the long term …?”

“We don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

The nurse shook her head. “His parents discharged him. Against our advice. They had moved, gotten a new place. Denise said it was time to bring him home.”

Alex held up a hand. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Ozzie reports ghosts are telling him to murder people, and they take him home?”

“It happens.”

D.D. leaned forward. “Tell me, Danielle. Forget the file for a second. It’s you and me, trying to understand what happened to one boy. What made you think Ozzie had hurt someone? Why were you so certain this story had an unhappy ending? Why did he leave?”

Danielle didn’t answer right away. Her jaw worked. Then, just as D.D. was starting to lose hope …

“Denise found a spiritual healer,” the nurse expelled curtly. “A shaman who promised to make Ozzie all better. No chemicals. No crazy drugs. He was going to heal Ozzie by bringing him into the light.”

“Say what?”