Pat Montesian's directorship: the desperate-willingness intake test and the House's legal shield

texture · UNDATED (standing; Pat's stroke ~7 years before Nov YDAU)

• When: UNDATED standing directorship (YDAU present); Pat's paralyzing alcoholic stroke treated at B&W "almost seven years before" the 8-Nov present
• What: The institution's head. Executive Director Patricia Montesian, M.A., C.S.A.C. (052's transcript letterhead) runs the House marked by her own bottom — a paralyzing alcoholic stroke that left one side kind, one arm withered, and handwriting she can't read (066). Her admissions method is a test of desperate willingness: applicants are tipped to pet her two afflicted golden retrievers (suppurating scabs, "Grand Mall" epilepsy) because whether they will "betray[s] a level of desperate willingness that Pat says is just about all she goes by, deciding" (066); she tells applicants that grim honesty and hopelessness are the only things you need to start recovering (095). Her office is also the House's constitutional machinery: the D.S.A.S. license makes the grounds legally off-limits to all constabulary without her physical presence and notarized permission — the shield that becomes load-bearing at the fracas (events 15, 22) — and her Board connections move the waiting list (the B&W E.R. physician who treated her stroke sits honorarily on Ennet House's Board of Directors and leap-frogs Joelle over "literally dozens of waiting-list people," n134; event 8). The claim that Pat got sober in Ennet House under the founder is not supported by the novel's text.