Fighting Postpartum Depression - Fighting Postpartum Depression and Psychosis

Written by Louise Kiernan

He had walked in from a Thursday staff meeting at Cook County Hospital, expecting to pick up Melanie. They had planned a day out together. It wasn't until he had made half a dozen telephone calls and two trips to the lakefront to look for her that he saw the note.

"Sam, I adore you, Sommer and Andy, Mel."

Puzzlement dawned into panic. Her family contacted police and with her friends scattered around the city to search her favorite spots: the Osaka Garden in Jackson Park, Bloomingdale's, the Garfield Park Conservatory.

A neighbor later told the family she saw Melanie getting into a cab. After that, she vanished, a thin woman in an orange peacoat, sweat shirt and jeans.  

Melanie's last stop

The woman who arrived at the Days Inn across from Lincoln Park late Saturday night was neatly dressed and clean, polite almost to a fault.

Her bag had been lost or stolen on the train, she said, and she didn't have any identification on her. But she did have cash. Could she book a room?

Tim Anderson, the front desk supervisor, was sympathetic but skeptical. He told her he couldn't allow someone to pay cash without photo identification. But she was welcome to wait there until she heard from the lost-and-found.

So, Melanie spent most of Sunday in the hotel's cramped lobby, little more than an alcove with two armchairs and a sliding-glass door. Occasionally, she chatted with Anderson. She asked him where she could get something to eat and he directed her to a coffee shop around the corner. Later, she bought a chicken quesadilla from the restaurant next door and he let her eat in the break room.

From time to time, she left the hotel. At some point, she went to the Dominick's at Fullerton and Sheffield Avenues, where an employee in the cafe later would find a blank card with a photograph of Melanie and Sam enclosed.

Melanie's family had turned to the local newspapers and television stations asking for help in finding her. Her photograph was in the Sunday newspapers in the convenience store across the hotel lobby. No one recognized her.

She didn't strike Anderson as someone who was hiding or homeless, but something about her just didn't seem right.

Before Anderson left for the day, he says, he told his replacement not to allow her to check in unless she produced some identification. But just after 5:30 p.m., her bill shows, Melanie paid $113.76 for a room, in cash. She checked in under the name Mary Hall.

She was given Room 1206, on the top floor of the hotel. From her window, she could see the Lincoln Park Zoo, which was her father's favorite place to spend his birthday, walking with Melanie.

Just before 6 the next morning, a cyclist riding by the hotel saw a woman perched on a window ledge and ran inside to tell the clerk.

Within minutes, firefighters were in Melanie's room, trying to talk her back inside. She sat on the other side of a window, her back straight and pressed against the glass.

Paramedic Deborah Alvarez tried to reassure her. This woman, she thought, looks as frightened as a child. Melanie answered but the glass blocked her voice. Alvarez never heard what she said.

After about 20 minutes, a firefighter approached the window. Melanie turned a little, as if she were going to try to pull herself up. Then, she turned back, put her hands at her side and dropped from the ledge.

Gasps and screams rose from the small crowd that had gathered across the street. One of Melanie's shoes fell off and bumped against the building.

Alvarez raced for the elevator, hoping against hope. When she ran outside, she saw that Melanie's body had already been covered.

In her room, the bed was made. On the radiator cover was a copy of the Chicago Sun-Times. The front-page headline was about her.

On a night stand next to the digital clock sat a neat stack of notes, written on hotel stationery, with a pen laid perfectly straight in the middle.

Melanie wrote a note to her parents. It said, in part, "Please let Sommer know how much I loved her during the pregnancy."

She wrote a note to her husband, telling him to continue with their plans to move to Georgia and thanking him for loving her in "such a generous, sweet way."