Few men would have disagreed with Duane’s numerical assessment of Shari, although many women might have found her long-limbed, narrow-waisted, Barbie-doll body to be a bit too much. Not everyone, male or female, would have noticed and appreciated her elegant posture and the graceful way she moved her hands when she gestured. Consensus would be achieved, however, regarding her face, a harmonious and freakishly symmetrical arrangement of bow-shaped lips over a slight overbite, a pert nose, high cheekbones and absurdly long eyelashes suspended like canopies over almond-shaped green eyes, all topped off with an explosion of wavy, cinnamon-colored hair. Duane described her to his friends with the phrase “total crotch appeal,” although after twenty years of hard drinking and eight years of narcotic painkillers, Duane himself was largely immune to that aspect of her appeal.
“I’ll bet they’re all after you at that hospital. You’re like a roe sack in a pond full of trout down there. Just pick out the right sucker and make him think you’re interested. How hard could that be?”
“I don’t understand this stuff,” said Shari. “Don’t I have to be not interested for it to be harassment?” Shari realized that with her questions, she was now conspiring with Duane. The realization released some of her tension. She hated to be at odds with her husband.
“Yep, you’re right,” said Duane. “But don’t let anybody else but him think you’re interested, see? So he’s got no witnesses. Everything has got to be your word against his. You’ve got to be sure that he never tells anybody about anything that goes on between the two of you until you can get proof that he got you in bed. Then we hit him with the lawsuit. Until we sue, he’s gotta keep the whole thing a secret.”
“How can I be sure he’ll do that?”
Duane’s tongue went at his mustache. He swigged his beer. “Okay. He’s married. Yeah, and with kids. Not grown-up kids. He can’t be going through a divorce, but I guess he can’t be too happily married, either. Hmm. Now that I think about it, it might be pretty hard coming up with a guy who meets all the criterias.”
Duane looked at Shari. She was looking down at the floor and her cheeks were as pink as a sunrise.
“You’ve got a target in mind already, don’t you? Tell me about him. Do you know how much he makes?”
Shari shook her head and stood up suddenly. “This is ridiculous,” she said. “I can’t do this. I can’t believe you’d want me to do it. Wouldn’t it bother you if I were with another man? Wouldn’t it hurt you?”
“Well, sure it would. It would hurt me a lot. It would cause me pain and suffering and emotional distress. That all goes into the damages.”
Duane grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her back down on the sofa. He put his left hand on her thigh and turned her face to him with his right hand. His callused fingers felt like tree bark against her cheek.
“Look, sweets,” he said. “Look what I’ve put myself through so we could have some nice things.” He grabbed her left hand and held it up next to his scarred forearm. “Look what I did so you could have that rock on your dainty little hand. And don’t ever forget what I went through to get us this place. And the Durango.”
Shari briefly considered pointing out that Duane could have gotten a job so they could have those things, but she had done so in the past a few times and it never resulted in anything but yelling and additional beer consumption. Except once. That time, the debate over Duane’s employment status had escalated to the smashing of a beer bottle against the Z-brick wall, and climaxed with Duane hurling a battery-operated wall clock the length of the room. The clock had been a wedding present from a friend of Shari’s whose union job Shari had offered as an example to Duane. As a tearful Shari scrambled to see if the clock was repairable, Duane said “time flies” and laughed for ten minutes.
The next day, a remorseful Duane drove into Jefferson to look for a job. There were not many employment opportunities in Jefferson. The city was supported by a few aging factories and retail outlets that catered to nearby farming communities. Jefferson’s economic growth curve was as flat as the farmland surrounding it. Duane managed to land a job waiting tables at a restaurant, but he was fired within the week. Hard to hold any kind of job when you get up at eleven and open your first beer around noon.
Shari rejected the idea of mentioning employment as an alternative and tried a less confrontational approach.
“We’re doing okay on what I make at the hospital. We don’t need to do anything crazy like this. Besides, I can’t pull it off. It scares me. What if I screw up and they get on to me and I lose my job?”
“Don’t worry about a thing, sweets. This is my arena. I’ll read up on harassment claims, figure out how to play it and walk you through every move. And what if you do get canned? There’re plenty of receptionist jobs around for a babe with your looks. Think about the things we could get with some extra money, some real money. You know, you got to take risks if you want to get anywhere in this world.”
Shari’s green eyes moved around the room. In spite of herself, she was thinking about some things she wanted. A new dishwasher, air conditioning, some decent clothes. Duane, for all his weaknesses, was very clever about this sort of thing. He might be able to pull it off. Plus, there was another aspect of the project that might be, well, not exactly unpleasant.
“Look,” said Duane, “you don’t have to decide right now; we’ll sleep on it. But tell me about the target anyways.”
Shari sipped her beer. “Well, the guy who’s the president of the hospital right now is supposed to be rich, like a millionaire or something. You know that big mansion on the peninsula in Lake Weyawega? That’s his. He’s married and has a kid, but they say his wife is nuts. She’s even been a patient in the hospital’s psychiatric unit. And, well, I think he might be a little attracted to me. I mean, he’s friendly with everybody but he pays extra attention to me. He stops at the information desk to make small talk almost every day.”
“If he’s not blind, he’s attracted to you. How old is he?”
“Fifties, I’d guess, but . . .”
“But what?”
She had been about to say, “But he’s still very handsome.” Her face got warm. She decided not to share that piece of information with Duane. Instead, she said, “But he’s still young enough to, like you said . . .”
“Be led around by his dick?”
Shari said nothing.
“He sounds perfect,” said Duane. “What’s his name?”
CHAPTER
2
Arthur Winslow sat in a molded plastic chair in a hallway on the fourth floor of Shoreview Memorial Hospital feeling anxious, exhausted and vaguely embarrassed. The fourth floor contained the psychiatric unit. Three doctors were down the hall in a patient room, examining Arthur’s wife, Lorraine. Arthur was the CEO of the hospital, but he had to sit in the hallway on the psych floor while three guys in white coats poked, prodded and pawed his wife. The three were a psychiatrist, a neurologist and a radiologist. Earlier there had been others poking, prodding and pawing, including an emergency room physician, an internist and an orthopedic surgeon.
It was five in the morning and Arthur had not had a minute of sleep all night. A large, barrel-chested man, he sat with his elbows on his knees, his chin cupped in his hands. His leonine head felt heavy, as if weighed down by the drooping bags under his weary eyes. But after twenty-two hours in the same clothes, his custom-tailored dress pants still held their crease, his white oxford shirt its starch.
Arthur had come home from work late the previous evening to a prickly reception from his wife, followed by a fusillade of paranoid accusations over cocktails, a dinner of cold poached salmon accompanied by bitter sarcasm, and strawberries with belligerence for dessert. Lorraine, who had long been argumentative, had become increasingly so over the past year, ever since her hospitalization for depression. For months she had been moody and irritable. A procession of prescription medications had not made a dent in her erratic behavior.
With
the after-dinner Cointreau, Lorraine had begun ranting and shrieking. When she attempted to rise from her seat to make a point about something or other, she stumbled and collapsed like a fumbled marionette. Reaching out to break her fall, she sustained a compound fracture of the radius in her left arm and her forehead grazed the corner of the mahogany dining room table on the way down. When Arthur tried to help her up, he noticed the twitching in her fingers and worried that the clunk on her forehead might be worse than it looked, so he called an ambulance. The ambulance took her to the Shoreview Memorial emergency room, and the all-night vigil began.
For hours the staff wheeled Lorraine around the hospital for various tests and examinations, with long waits in between. It seemed like an incredible brouhaha, and it didn’t make sense to Arthur. Something horrifying was happening, but he was being kept totally in the dark. He knew an army of on-call specialists didn’t come in for consults in the middle of the night for a broken arm. Arthur tried to calm himself with the thought that the doctors were probably going overboard giving Lorraine extra-special care because he was CEO of the hospital and a well-known lawyer to boot.
The doctors were giving Lorraine special attention because of Arthur’s status, and something horrifying was happening.
Arthur stared at the linoleum floor. Stripes of bright colors ran down the middle of the floor, each indicating by its color the area of the hospital to which it led, so that people would not get lost within its cavernous reaches. It bothered Arthur that he had supposedly been running the hospital for four months, but he did not know which color went where. He thought the green line led to administration, where his office was, but he was not even sure about that. He considered waiting in his office, which would have been more comfortable, but decided it would make a better impression on the staff if he stayed as near Lorraine as possible during this ordeal. Lorraine was so heavily sedated that she was only vaguely aware of Arthur’s presence.
Just when Arthur was considering storming into Lorraine’s patient room and demanding an explanation, a young, blond nurse walked up to him, folded her hands in front of herself demurely and bent over at the waist to speak to him.
“Mr. Winslow, there’s a police officer here to see you.”
“A what?”
“A policeman.”
“To see me?”
“Yes.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know.”
“You mean, a policeman, like with a badge and uniform and everything.”
“Well, actually, there’s two policemen. One has a badge and a uniform, the other is wearing a suit and tie. The one in the suit is the one who said he wants to see you.”
Christ, thought Arthur. A detective. At five in the morning. What could a police detective want with him at five in the morning? The blond nurse walked him back to the nurses’ station at the entrance to the unit. There a lanky uniformed cop with a crew cut and a holstered revolver stood in “at ease” position next to a stocky, dark-haired man in a wrinkled poplin suit who was chewing the stem of his eyeglasses. The guy in the suit had a five-o’clock shadow with about twelve extra hours on it.
“You wanted to see me about something, Detective?” said Arthur.
“You Arthur Winslow?”
“Yes. What’s the problem?”
“I need to get a statement from you about the incident at your house last night,” said the detective. He opened a black leather card wallet and showed Arthur a photo ID that identified him as Detective Joseph Lopopolo. He had a five-o’clock shadow in the ID picture, too. Arthur glanced at the ID and tried to register the name.
“There was no ‘incident’ at my house last night,” he said. “My wife was getting up from the dinner table and she stumbled and fell down. She hurt her arm in the fall. End of story.”
“Did you and your wife have a fight last night, around the time she sustained her injuries?”
“Uh, no, I wouldn’t say we had a fight.”
“You wouldn’t say you had a fight? Or you didn’t have a fight?”
“No, no. We didn’t have a fight. What makes you think we had a fight?”
Detective Lopopolo shifted the stem of his glasses to the other side of his mouth and scratched the side of his nose with his thumb. He flexed his jaw muscles.
“Sir, I’m checking out two reports the department received last night of a domestic disturbance at your house. Following which we recorded an ambulance dispatch to your address, following which we learned that your wife was treated for a broken arm and a blow to the head. I need to get your statement as to what occurred at your house. When your wife sustained her injuries, was anyone else present?”
“No, nobody else, just Lorraine and me. Our daughter was . . .” Arthur hesitated. He made a conscious effort to compose himself. Fatigue and confusion were making him act like an idiot. He would never let a client answer questions like these without knowing more about why they were being asked.
“Just a minute,” he said. “May I ask who reported a domestic disturbance?”
“You may ask. I don’t have to tell you. Ah, what the hell, you might as well know. It was a warm evening, you musta had your windows open.”
“Well, yes, but my house is surrounded by forty acres of woods.”
“Yeah, I know. On the peninsula in Lake Weyawega.” Arthur sensed a note of resentment in Lopopolo’s voice, as if he thought Arthur didn’t deserve forty acres on a peninsula. “Do you know how sound carries across open water on a still night? Two fishermen in different boats with cell phones reported screaming comin’ from your place. One of ’em said it sounded like someone was being murdered or tortured. We sent a squad to check it out. It passed the ambulance goin’ the other way about a hundred yards from the end of your driveway. So what was goin’ on?”
“Nothing was ‘going on’. I just told you, my wife stumbled.”
“Was she screaming at the time she stumbled?”
“You don’t understand. She just gets that way sometimes. She was . . . I wouldn’t call it screaming.”
“What would you call it?”
Arthur examined the detective’s face. He was chewing the stem of his glasses and sneering. The uniformed cop was taking notes on a steno pad.
“Am I being accused of something, Detective?”
“I’ve answered enough of your questions,” said the detective. “Are you gonna give me a statement or not?”
Arthur considered his options. He was too tired and upset to handle this right now. It was not a good time to deal with the police.
“Not right now, Detective. I need to see how my wife is doing. Can I call you later today?”
“You’d be doin’ yourself a favor if you talked to me now.”
“I prefer not.”
“Yeah, I suppose you want to talk to your lawyer first,” said the detective sardonically. “Here’s my card, I’ll give you ’til four this afternoon.”
Detective Lopopolo and his colleague turned and walked out through the swinging doors before Arthur had a chance to ask what would happen if he didn’t call by four. The cop’s implied accusation was not only unjust, it was outrageous. Now anger was building in Arthur, impelling him to action, blotting out the fatigue and fear and befuddlement that had settled into his bones and joints over the course of the night, immobilizing him like arthritis. He strode purposefully down the hallway to his wife’s patient room and walked in. The blinds on the window were open and he was surprised to see it was getting light outside. The three doctors were standing in a circle and talking. From what Arthur overheard on the way in, they were discussing the stock market. Lorraine was out cold in the bed, with an IV in her arm and her mouth agape. Her face was pale and she looked ten years older than she had the day before.
“Will someone please tell me what is going on with my wife? When can I take her home?”
Two of the doctors quickly excused themselves and left the room. The third doctor, a hefty, balding man wearing torto
ise-shell glasses with Coke bottle lenses, stayed behind. The plastic ID card clipped to the lapel of his white lab coat identified him as Jeffrey Treacher, M.D., a neurologist. There were two guest chairs in the room. Dr. Treacher sat down in one and told Arthur to sit down in the other.
“Mr. Winslow,” said the doctor, “we need to get a little more information from you about your wife’s medical history.”
“More information? I must have answered a hundred questions tonight. When are you going to give me some information? I understand somebody gave the police a lot of information about my wife’s injuries. As soon as she gets in, I’m going to have the hospital attorney, Karen Hayes, look into this. I think that’s a breach of patient confidentiality, against hospital policy, against the law and against medical ethics!”
“Please calm down, Mr. Winslow. I thought Karen was out on maternity leave.”
“She’s been back part-time for a month.”
“Okay. Well, you can talk to her about that later, but there’s something else you need to talk to her about. Mrs. Winslow’s chart indicates that she doesn’t have a durable power of attorney. You’re a lawyer, you probably know what that is.”
“Of course,” said Arthur. “It’s a document that a person signs to give someone else authority to make health care decisions for him in the event he becomes mentally incompetent. Neither Lorraine nor I have a durable power of attorney. I suppose we should do that. I’ll ask Karen about it.”
“I strongly recommend that you get one for Mrs. Winslow as soon as possible. We think she’s going to need a lot of treatment, and at some point it’s likely she will lack capacity to give consent.”
Arthur felt a sudden sensation in his face like a jolt of electricity, and a watery feeling in his bowels. His skin coated almost instantaneously with cold sweat and for a moment he thought he might lose consciousness.
“What are you talking about? What’s wrong with her? What’s she need treatment for?”
Lawyered to Death Page 2