One Year Later
“Do you want to see my husband? He’s very handsome.” Shae’s eyes sparkle as she passes me the small, framed photo she’s been cupping to her chest.
I turn it over, smile sweetly at a photo of Dean and Jesika together, and then pass it back to her. “You make a beautiful couple.”
“We’re expecting a baby.” Shae rubs her rounded belly.
“Oh, really?” I pretend to be surprised. This is what she says every week. All our visits are the same, and still, I keep coming. “Do you know what the date is?”
Shae doesn’t respond. She’s not the woman who sauntered into my office as a teenager twenty years ago, that’s for sure. I suppose that’s why I’m here. To try to uncover what happened—where things went wrong—and if I could have done something different. Maybe I didn’t push her enough, or maybe by the time I found her at the tender age of seventeen her destructive patterns were already set.
Of all my cases, hers haunts me the most.
“Mia honey, time to take your meds.” Shae’s head snaps upas she glares at the nurse who’s just come into the room. “That’s a girl,” the nurse purrs as Shae swallows down the pill she’s been passed.
“Any progress with Shae?” I ask the nurse, just as I do every week.
She gives a curt shake of her head and then leaves the room.
Shae was sentenced three months ago to Pacific View Adult Psychiatric Hospital. Thankfully, the judge allowed me to continue to visit her while she withered away in a jail cell awaiting her trial. The reality of Shae’s situation was far worse than even she could have realized. In truth, Bishop had flipped on her to gain favor with the judge, and he, in turn, froze all of her assets before she’d even left Chicago.
“My husband is visiting me this weekend. He works so hard. I’m so lucky. He’s practically a workaholic.” Shae—or Mia, as she prefers to be called—traces her fingertip along Dean’s smiling face. “He’s so determined to support our family. I just know he’ll be the best dad.” She’s rubbing her belly again. She did this throughout the trial—according to Shae, she’s been expecting Dean’s baby for over a year now. While I admit she has gained some weight, she hardly looks pregnant. The internet sleuths were up in arms when Shae was sentenced. Many claimed her insanity plea was all an act, right down to her claims of being pregnant with her husband’s baby.
“How do the new medications make you feel?” I avoid using her name at all. I’ve been trying to work with her to come back to Shae’s reality, but so far, she only responds to being called Mia.
“I hate the meds.” Anger distorts her face. “I wish I didn’t have to take them.”
“Do they make your mind feel foggy? That’s what you complained about with the last medication.”
“They all make me feel foggy. Why don’t you try takingthem?” Shae looks up at me, and for a moment, I swear I see a flicker of awareness in her strained expression. She’s not quite the girl that I knew, and I wonder if she ever will be again. I suppose this is why I still visit her, because no one else will. I am her only family, and during the trial, it was just me and her legal and medical team behind her in the courtroom. The prosecution, on the other hand, was overflowing with Dean and Jesika’s network of friends and fans, and the judge had to limit the number of news media allowed into the courtroom due to fire code capacity restrictions.
Shae’s trial was standing room only. She made history, so much so that before the final arguments were given, she was already turning down deals from all the major streaming platforms to tell her story. Shae was famous, and one of the biggest internet true crime forums dubbed herThe Widow Influencer.Internet headlines were taken with her girl-next-door beauty and her brash sense of audacity to commit fraud to the tune of over $100,000.Page Sixcoined her the internet’s biggest grifter, and the wild part was that through all of it, she found her supporters. Some women’s groups defended her actions by stating she was only doing what she could within a unbalanced, patriarchal system. Shae did what she had to in a man’s world; she was merely a pawn at the whim of privileged and entitled men like Dean.
Each day of her trial was live streamed, and some true crime forums even had watch parties as they waited for her sentence to be read. Shae was a true crime sensation in the era of feminism and gender politics, and everyone had a different opinion. A women’s rights lawyer even wrote an op-ed for the Sunday edition ofThe New York Times, explaining that the very act of putting a mentally ill woman on trial and televising it was a sexist move perpetrated by a profoundly flawed capitalist society, and that every woman, and every man wholoves women, should petition for Shae’s release. Where was the justice in a young, single woman being victimized by a male-dominated system, one that overlooks mental health in favor of punishing the mentally ill for crimes their illness led them to commit? Mental health advocates decried the lack of solid support within the justice system for women dealing with severe mental illnesses, and that a broken healthcare system was to blame for the ongoing struggles Shae faced as she spiraled and continued to lose her sanity.
And the cameras loved her. Shae seemed to play into her misunderstood It girl role. She came to the courthouse with her hair in elegant chignons or soft waves, and she wore tailored designer suits or demure cashmere sweaters and pencil skirts by upscale labels. Fashion blogs popped up following each of her daily courtroom style choices, and the hashtag#TeamMiawas flooded with outfit inspirations after each appearance. The internet buzzed with which stylist she used, because surely she couldn’t be making her own fashion choices when she was so clearly mentally unstable in every other aspect.
Ironically, if Shae were ever to be released from her sentence, she would have endless opportunities awaiting her. Oprah herself would jump at the chance to talk to her, but right now…right now, Shae doesn’t even know her own name.
I have faith that someday she’ll walk out of this hospital. Maybe with the right mix of medications and therapy, she can come back from the brink and live a healthy and productive life. Her determination and creativity and sense of imagination are unmatched. She could go far if only she could keep two feet grounded in reality.
Some days, I see glimmers of calm rationality. But for the most part, I’m forced to speak to Mia about her marriage to Dean and their unplanned but very welcome surprise pregnancy. Our sessions seem frozen in time, and still, I hesitate topush her delicate psyche too far—she’s been through so much. It feels like I am the last person to have really been withShae. After her arrest by federal agents in the hotel lobby in Lake Tahoe, Shae vanished. The next time I was able to see her—weeks later, after her transfer back to LA County—Shae was gone, and in her place was a manic and deranged Mia. She babbled incoherently and cried uncontrollably. I have no doubt that the way her case was mishandled between the time of her arrest and my first meeting with her in jail is responsible for the shell of a woman that exists before me today.
Had Shae been prescribed the medications she needed from the beginning, she might still be with me.
“Do you remember Bishop?”
She blinks, then her expression hardens and she shakes her head.
“You and he had a brief relationship while you were in Chicago.” Not a single twinge of recognition crosses her face, so I continue. “He was arrested in Millennium Park for the assault of your husband—do you remember that?” She shakes her head nearly imperceptibly. “He also stole your diamond ring.” Still nothing. “He had it with him that night.” I watch her in search of any flicker of remembrance. “Do you remember the canary diamond Dean gave you?”
“Where is it?” comes her expressionless inquiry.
“It was decided it would be best to pawn it to fund your defense.”
“That’s a one-hundred-thousand-dollar ring.”
“And you had a one-hundred-thousand-dollar legal team. You were found not guilty by way of insanity—I think it was worth it.”
