by Walter Marks
I’m the Brit, Roger Bannister, the first man to run a sub-four-minute mile. I’m Kipchoge Keino, the African marathon runner, who built up his lung power by chasing mountain goats high in the hills of Kenya. I’m Marty Glickman, the Olympic sprinter and rarity of rarities — a Jewish track star. I am Power, Endurance, I am a Triumph of the Human Spirit, I am — the pain shot through my lower rib cage — I am an out-of-shape, out-of-breath putz kneeling on the dirt track, clutching my side.
I reviewed my medical training. No, this isn’t myocardial infarction. It’s a stitch in my side.
After a while the pain died down, and I got to my feet. I was okay.
I’m not gonna give up. If I can’t run, I’ll walk the course. The longest journey starts with a single schlep.
Pacing slowly around the track, my thoughts turned back to Victor Janko. Ben was right — I should have transferred Victor to the hospital room. Then it hit me — if I’d gotten him out of his cell before last night, the guard wouldn’t have destroyed Victor’s artwork. This tragedy would never have happened.
After one lap, I’d had it with the exercise and introspection. I was feeling even worse.
I returned to my car, and put my khaki pants on over my running shorts. There was only one thing left to do — go back to the penitentiary and clear out my desk.
Just as I got to my office, a guard told me Dr. Caldwell wanted to see me right away.
When I opened the door, he was at his desk sucking on his E-cig. It sounded like a dentist's saliva extractor. "'Morning," he said brightly.
"Hello, Ben."
"I quit smoking again," he said. "I think I can tolerate the loss of nicotine, as long as I don’t give up the oral gratification."
"Are you wearing the patch?"
"No," Ben replied. "I’m taking Zyban this time."
"That’s the same as Wellbutrin, isn’t it?"
"Yes."
"So...it’s an anti-depressant."
"Yes," Ben said.
"How’s it working?"
"Well, I still miss tobacco," he answered. "But I’m not depressed about it."
Ben grinned. Ordinarily I would have laughed. I only managed a nod.
"David, I want to discuss your resignation."
"There's nothing to discuss."
"Okay, okay," Ben said, "I won’t try to talk you out of it. But I wonder could you do me a favor? Just hang on for a couple weeks till I find a replacement. Otherwise I’ll be really short-handed."
"I wouldn’t be much help."
"Look, it’s only fair. I believe two weeks’ notice is the customary deal."
"I don’t want to hang you up," I said. "But I’d be useless.”
"You’re wrong, David. You’ve done a great job with the men around here. Just because the Janko situation didn’t work out..."
"It was my fault."
"You’re being awfully hard on yourself."
"No, I’m not," I responded firmly. "The truth is — I’ve been completely irresponsible."
"Come on, David," Ben said. "Why are you judging yourself so harshly?"
I didn’t answer him.
"You’re carrying some extra baggage," Ben said.
I averted my eyes.
"Why did you come here, anyway?" Ben asked.
"Pardon me?"
"To the State Penitentiary?" Ben said, pressing me. "Why didn’t you go into private practice?"
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"Look, David," he said. "Thirty years ago, when I was starting out, African-American psychiatrists were not exactly...in demand. When I finished my training, I decided I should at least try to go into private practice. So I opened an office on Park Avenue...Park Avenue and 125th Street. Well, I soon found out Harlem wasn’t ready for shrinks then, even black ones, and my practice went belly-up within a year. I ended up here because it was the best job I could find, and it offered me a measure of security. Now, it turned out to be the perfect job for me. But you — you’ve got a whole world of opportunity open to you. What made you choose a place like this?"
"Like I said in our interview — I thought I could do some good up here."
"You can do good in lots of places," Ben said. "And make plenty of money doing it."
"I don’t look at medical care as a commodity — something you sell at the highest possible price."
"So you don’t think doctors should be paid well for their work?"
"I didn’t say that."
"You think treating poor, disenfranchised convicts makes you a better person? A better doctor?"
"I didn’t say that either." I was getting angry.
Ben spoke harshly. "Maybe you took this job because you can’t hack it in the real world. But up here in the slammer, you’re surrounded by 'the dregs of humanity; misfits and losers'. And next to them, you almost feel like you’ve got your shit together."
He stared accusingly, but I said nothing.
"That’s it, isn’t it?" Ben said. "You came up here to run away."
"Jesus Christ," I shouted. "You sound just like my father."
"I do?"
"He said I was running away, too," I said. "I can still hear him; 'You’ve taken a job in the hoosegow? When are you going to start acting like a grown-up?' Then he accused me of behaving like some ‘idealistic hippie running off to join the Peace Corps' — as if that were the ultimate insult."
"You’re sounding a tad rebellious, David. Maybe coming up here was your way of pissing your father off."
"I didn’t come to Vanderkill to piss anybody off," I said. "I came up here to do a job."
"Doing what?"
"Being a doctor. It just turns out I’m no fucking good at it."
"You are good at it," Ben responded. "But you’re lousy at facing your problems. You’ve done some fine things up here; but you don’t see that. All you see is your mistakes. Okay, so you mishandled some aspects of the Victor Janko case. What makes you think you’ve always got to be perfect? Jesus, the first time you mess up, you act like you’ve committed a major..."
"It’s not the first time,"
"What do you mean?"
"It’s not..." I caught myself.
"What do you mean, 'it’s not the first time'?"
I didn’t want to answer. I’d been repressing the memories for so long, to dredge them up now and talk about them was too painful.
But I always knew this day would come, when I could no longer keep the past bottled up; because the pain of hiding it would be worse than the pain of letting it out.
I looked at Ben, then spoke with difficulty.
"Last year," I said. "When I was finishing my residency..." I paused. "There was this woman...Melissa."
"Who was she?"
"A patient...at Bellevue.
Ben looked at me intently but showed no reaction. "You want to tell me about it?"
I recognized that tone — the same non-judgmental neutrality I used with my patients.
"I...I was treating Melissa for depression," I said in a pained voice. “In our sessions, she was always overtly seductive. She wore tight blouses... a button open that should have been closed...high-heeled shoes, short skirts, anything to call attention to her body..."
An image of Daisy flashed in my mind.
"Melissa’s favorite thing," I continued, "Was giving me these vivid, almost pornographic descriptions of her sexual activities — sex with men in public places, group sex, masturbation with strange objects, lesbian encounters. I think a lot them were fantasies she made up to turn me on. And I have to admit...sometimes she really got to me."
I stopped, feeling ashamed.
"Okay," Ben said. "A little counter-transference. Happens to the best of us."
"There's more," I said. "At one session she laid it on the line — saying she knew I was attracted to her, I was just fighting it. Then she said let’s do it...right there in my office. I did my best to, y’know, reject the idea without rejecting the patient. But when I said no,
she got furious and stormed out.”
"What happened after that?"
"That night she called me at home and apologized. Then she asked me to come over to her apartment...saying she desperately needed someone to talk to. She said her roommate was out for the night, and she was terribly lonely and depressed. I told her I’d see her in my office the next morning. She burst into tears, and warned me that if I didn’t come over, she was afraid she might kill herself. She kept begging me...I'll never forget her voice crying out please...please...please. I told her she was a strong woman, strong enough to cope, and that she should just relax — maybe take a warm bath, try to get some sleep."
I took a deep breath. "The next morning," I said. "Her roommate found her in the bathtub. She’d cut open her wrists with a razor blade."
My eyes got teary. Ben looked at me with compassion. "It must have been tough for you."
"I let her down," I said in a choked voice. "I could have helped her."
"How?"
"I could have listened to her more carefully...heard how much she was hurting, her desperation. And I could have gone over to see her. But I was afraid of her seductiveness...and my own desires."
"You did the right thing," Ben said. "It would have been inappropriate to go to her."
"But I should have recognized her suicide threat was real," I said. "If I weren’t so hung up on my own problems I would’ve seen that. I could've taken some kind of action — told her to meet me somewhere else, like a coffee shop...or had her hospitalized. "
"David," Ben said. "You had no way of knowing she’d act out. Hell, around here guys are always threatening to kill themselves. Most of the time it’s bullshit. Once in a while it’s not. You try to make the right call, but you’re really just guessing. Like I told you — predicting dangerous behavior is impossible. "
"It can’t be impossible."
"Predicting anything is impossible," Ben asserted, raising his voice for the first time. "All you can do is make your best guess. We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, or even in the next five minutes, do we?"
I didn't answer.
"So what makes you think you can predict anything as complex and mysterious as an act of impulsive violence?"
I nodded, acknowledging his logic. Ben spoke in an empathetic tone. "You feel guilty about Melissa, don’t you?’
"Of course."
"That may have a lot to do with why you took this job," Ben said. He paused, then said softly — "What I’m suggesting is — you sent yourself to prison...for punishment."
Then he rephrased it. "You didn’t come here to serve people," he said. "You came here to serve time."
Ben’s statement stunned me.
"And there was an added benefit," he went on. "No female patients."
Yeah, but I didn't let that stop me. If I couldn’t find a female patient, I’d just get involved with a male patient’s girlfriend.
I wasn’t sure what to say, so I was grateful when there was a knock on the office door.
"Dr. Caldwell," came the nasal voice of Nurse Rachit. "I need to talk to you. It’s about Victor Janko."
I indicated I didn’t mind the interruption.
"Come in, Flora," Ben called out.
"Mr. Janko’s awake now," she said. “You want me to keep him sedated?"
Ben turned to me.
"He needs to be looked at," Ben said. "You want to do it, or should I?"
The idea of coming face to face with Victor made me very anxious.
"David," Ben said. "Janko doesn’t know me that well. I think a familiar face..."
"You’re right," I said.
I got up and went to the door. "David," Ben said. "You are gonna give me the two weeks?"
I nodded a reluctant yes.
My meeting with Victor at the hospital room was brief. After the trauma of the previous night, Victor had completely withdrawn. He lay in bed, eyes closed, silent. I told him I knew it was Stevie Karp who’d slashed his paintings, hoping he’d respond. Victor only sighed and turned his face to the wall.
I told the day nurse sedation wasn’t necessary, but prescribed Ativan in divided doses, which would take the edge off his anxiety and depression.
I went back to my office and found a note on my desk that I’d missed I call from Dr. Wang. I returned his call. He said Ninja was much better, she’d had taken food this morning. She could go home today.
Whew.
I told him I’d pick her up at 6:30.
I gently placed Ninja into her vivarium. I’d changed the water, and the sand and pebbles. I opened the bag of organic turtle wafers Wang had given me, and placed one in her dish. The vet told me the wafers had been developed at Oklahoma State U. and that the red color and slightly fruity scent really appealed to box turtles.
Maybe so, but Ninja turned up her nose and walked away. I picked her up and put her on my forearm, expecting her to take a little walk. She took a tiny nip out of a red arm hair, then pulled her head into her shell.
She’d seemed lively enough at Wang’s office, but now she was spacing out again. Maybe it was the change of environment. I put her back in the box, and gave her a good talking to.
“Hey, girl. Don’t do me this way. You know I’m only minding you for little Henry Simpkins. What happens if the kid gets better and comes home looking for you? Okay, okay, I know it’s a long shot but hey — ya never know. So you can’t flake out on me. Now, whatever’s messin’ up your turtle system — Get Over It.”
“Say what? Don’t gimme any back-talk. Just shut up and eat your wafer.”
I scratched her shell affectionately, and then went out to the Silver Streak for dinner. I still couldn’t believe I had screwed up so badly with Victor. I had to find a way to help him.
Chapter 27
The next morning, I ran into Nurse Kim in the parking lot. She looked at me sympathetically.
“I heard about Victor,” she said. “Why do you think he did it?”
I didn't want to answer, so I just shook my head.
“You didn’t believe he was violent, did you?”
"There’s something you don’t know about Victor," I said.
"What’s that?"
"I think he’s innocent. I don’t believe he killed that woman."
"He’s...not the Baby Carriage Killer?"
I gave Kim a short version of Victor’s story. I finished by showing her the NY Post photo of Leo Hagopian.
"So," she said, examining the picture closely, "Under this guy's head cloth you say there are scratch marks... caused by the fingernails of the woman he killed?"
"That’s right," I answered. "And that Band-Aid on his chin is where Victor slashed him.
Kim studied the photograph again. "If there are scratches on this guy's forehead," she said, "I think you may have something."
"What do you mean?"
"You ever hear of Advocates for the Innocent?" she asked.
"Sure. They get falsely convicted people out of prison."
"I saw a TV documentary on them,” Kim said. “Those lawyers and investigators really know their stuff.
One of their cases was this guy doing life in Dannemora for killing a woman after having forced oral sex with her. Ten years later they dug up her body and found traces of semen on her teeth. Using DNA testing, they proved it didn’t belong to the prisoner, and he was set free."
I looked at her with great interest.
"I'm thinking," she went on, "If the murdered woman scratched her killer, tiny particles of his skin would still be under her fingernails. If you could get the body exhumed, maybe the DNA would prove Victor didn't do it."
"Kim," I said appreciatively, "I think that’s a great idea."
She nodded.
"Where are these Advocate people?" I asked.
"I think they have offices in New York."
"The other thing I need to do," I said, "Is find Leo Hagopian."
"That may not be too easy."
"Yeah. Who knows
if he’s even alive?"
“I’ll check WhitePages.com,” she said. “Find out if he's listed anywhere in the country."
"Thanks," I said. "I’ll go talk to Victor."
I went over to Victor’s hospital room and found him in his usual position, lying in bed on his back. He didn’t respond to my greeting. I told him I had something he'd find interesting. He reacted by closing his eyes.
I took out the picture of Leo Hagopian. "Victor," I said aggressively, "I want you to look at this picture."
Victor opened his eyes and put on his glasses. It took him a few seconds to focus. Then his expression became animated. "That’s him," he said. "The guy in the sweatshirt...the guy who attacked me.
"Right.”
"When was this taken?" Victor asked.
"At the murdered woman’s funeral. His name is Leo Hagopian. Does that name mean anything to you?"
"...No."
"Victor," I said. "I’m going to try and find him. But I need your help. Can you tell me anything about him? Does this picture bring back any memories, anything you haven’t told me?"
"Um...no," Victor said apologetically. "How...how are you going to prove he did it?"
"There’s an organization called Advocates for the Innocent...are you familiar with DNA?"
"It's...what we're all made out of, right? "
"Yes. The killer's genetic material might still be on the body of the victim. Which may prove you didn't do it."
"But this guy...what’s-his-name?...Leo. You don’t know where he is?"
"No," I answered.
Victor looked worried. "Gee, he could be anywhere, couldn’t he? And what if he, like, doesn’t want to be found?"
"It could be a problem."
Victor's body suddenly slumped. He shook his head sadly. "Ah, it’s hopeless, Doc. I know that.”
"It’s not hopeless, Victor. I promise you, I’ll do my best to find Hagopian.
"Might as well try to look for a needle in a haystack."
"It's really not that hard to find a needle in a haystack," I said. "All you need is a magnet."
I went down to the nurses’ station. Kim said she’d struck out with Leo Hagopian — he wasn’t listed anywhere.
"Well," I said, "There’s gotta be a way to track him down. Meanwhile, I should contact Advocates for the Innocent; find out how they work, get their opinion on this case. I’ll call them first thing tomorrow."