The man in room 117

Alone with his mother for the first time in almost a year, Andrey Shevelyov asked himself a question: could he come home?

She sat next to him and stroked his head. The hotel room had a sour, rancid smell and clothes were lying in the corner. Her nails were long, curved, and streaked with dirt. In prison, his hair was cut, which was matted and infested with lice.

Clean-shaven now, Andrey looked younger than his 31 years , like the gentle, artistic boy he had been before the psychosis took hold. “Zaichik,” his mother called him, a childhood nickname. Rabbit. She brushed a lock of hair over her ear. He lay down on the bed and smiled, and a dimple appeared on his cheek.

“I like to live with you too,” said Olga Mintonye, ​​​​but it was not an honest answer.

Three years ago, when he stopped taking his antipsychotic medication, his son retreated into delusions , bursting into unpredictable and threatening crises. Fearing eviction from their apartment, she and her husband, Sam, filed for a no-contact order to keep Andrey away.

Since then, he has been living in a tent . , wandering Vancouver, Washington, dressed in tattered clothes and carrying machetes for protection. Twice he had been in prison, ranting in his cell against the CIA. On three occasions he was committed to psychiatric hospitals, where guards pushed him to the ground to be injected with antipsychotics.

Now they were together in room 117 of a budget hotel overlooking the highway. The county had allocated $8,400 to temporarily house him, part of a state effort to divert the flow of seriously mentally ill people away from the criminal justice system. It was enough to keep him at the Red Lion Inn for eight weeks.

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