by John Decure
Put me at ease again, now, in the courtroom, in a way I’m at a loss to explain.
Give it up to a Higher Power, Mendibles. Then go about your business. Meaning: kick some ass and take some names.
“Mister Heidegger should speak for himself, Your Honor. I’m ready to go.”
“Very well,” the judge said. “Proceed.”
I was out of practice and still operating outside The Zone, indeed; but I knew a few things about questioning witnesses on cross. One is that they’ve likely seen their share of TV shows and movies in which the confrontation is overblown and the attacks are vicious and demeaning. Opposing witnesses expect you to come at them hard, so their defenses are up. Way up.
But those defenses can be broken down simply by making the witness feel comfortable. You do this by asking easy questions, as many as necessary, and if you have to, you sugar-coat them. Get the witness talking until fielding your powder-puff queries becomes routine. Only then do you even think about making inroads.
The fact that these guys regarded me as something of a pussy didn’t hurt me either. They didn’t expect me to go hard because I wasn’t capable of going hard. Wrong—but I could play the pushover a little bit longer.
An egomaniac like Dr. Don would enjoy nothing more than hearing the sound of his own voice. I obliged by kissing his ass, questioning him about his TV-host experience, his philosophy when it came to family therapy, the impressive scope of his private practice, some of the charitable work listed on his mile-long resume. He lapped up every question.
I took him into the realm of Rue Loberg’s care with a discussion of the most routine part of any doctor’s care: the charting. At least I’d had the chance to read through the chart early this morning, sitting in my office as the sun cracked over the San Gabriel Mountains. There were blind spots in those records—holes that even I could see. A 6:00-a.m. call to Bradlee’s last-minute expert, Dr. Glick, confirmed every problem I saw and revealed a few more I wouldn’t have noticed.
Dr. Don took me through the cycle, from doing early intake and making a diagnosis to session notes, to cessation of therapy. I had him walk me through the beginning and middle first, and he never suspected a thing. After twenty-five minutes, I was finally poised to ask questions that meant something.
“The charting you’ve detailed for us is very thorough, Doctor. Is this the norm for you?”
“Yes, it is. As I said, I pride myself on keeping meticulous patient records.”
“Now, Doctor, you’ve described the patient as a very troubled woman, whom you’d diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Did you feel your care and treatment of Mrs. Loberg was successful?”
Dr. Don paused for the first time in half an hour before answering, and he cast a glance at his counsel. To my left, Heidegger shifted his butt in his seat, his pen poised as he studied his notes.
“I think ‘successful’ is a relative term. It’s not as if we’re curing cancer, it’s not so black and white. I would say, however, that yes, yes, she did make significant progress with me.”
“But you described her, in your testimony, Doctor, as quote, ‘incapable of recognizing social and personal boundaries.’”
“Yes, but—”
“Isn’t that a hallmark of borderline personality disorder?”
“Yes.”
“You also noted, in the beginning, that the patient had unresolved guilt over being victimized by multiple male authority figures in her life. Doctor, do you recall testifying that Mrs. Loberg was still, as you put it, ‘a woman wracked with guilt’?”
“Yes.”
“So that didn’t get resolved either, not while she was in your care, did it?”
He laughed without a sound. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”
“But you did. In so many words.”
Heidegger made an objection that I was being argumentative. For the first time in an hour, the judge looked fully awake.
“Overruled. Please answer the question, Doctor.”
“Heh. Yes, well—”
“Was she still wracked with guilt?” I asked.
“She was.”
I directed the doctor to his last chart note, his final session with Rue Loberg.
“You had an opportunity to reflect on the patient’s condition before writing the notes here, didn’t you Doctor?”
“I don’t recall. That’s June, and June is usually a busy month for me, so I might have been rushed for time, with other patients and conferences I typically attend that time of year.”
“Objection,” I said, “move to strike. Nonresponsive. And the witness is speculating.”
The judge sustained my objection and instructed the witness to answer. Dr. Don’s thin smile was gone, and he glared at me through his smart-guy glasses.
“Yes, I wrote notes. I could’ve written more, I suppose.”
“Isn’t the standard of practice when you terminate with patient that you make a final assessment, Doctor?”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t do that.”
“No.”
“For a patient with major unresolved problems.”
“She had her challenges.”
“And doesn’t the standard of practice in the profession require that a psychiatrist in his last session with a patient make referrals for the patient to see other professionals as needed, should the patient still face significant problems and issues, and still require ongoing care?”
“Yes, but—”
I was nearing The Zone and was not about to let him talk his way out of this.
“—and isn’t Mrs. Loberg, as you described her, just such a patient still struggling with some pretty difficult problems?”
“Yes.”
“But you made no such referrals, did you?”
“Well, as I recall, we did talk about, uh, something to do with her insurance, or…”
I wasn’t going to let him ramble.
“Doctor, why don’t you just read for us the handwritten notes in their entirety, right now, into the record. The final comments you made.”
He adjusted his glasses, the lapels in his blazer drooping. Then he wiped his brow inelegantly and started in.
“Patient wants to terminate treatment, unresolved issues re: male authority figs, can’t open up at home w/ hub. Or w/ DF.”
“That’s all you wrote. There’s no referral to another professional there, Doctor.”
“No.”
“And you are ‘DF’—Donald Fallon?”
“Yes.”
“She was your patient for over sixty sessions and she couldn’t open up to you.”
“Well, we did make some inroads that aren’t captured by my chart notes, sir. Not everything that goes on between a patient and their psychiatrist is reflected in the records.”
“Good thing for you,” I said. “Very convenient, in this case.”
“Objection!” Heidegger was unglued by my insinuation. Predictably, the judge chided me. But it was worth it. Dr. Don was stuck in his own charting contradictions and Heidegger was a long way away from his next fist pump.
“You were another authority figure in her life,” I continued. “And she was supposed to be able to tell you anything, because you were her doctor, her therapist. But she couldn’t do that, because she believed you were sexually attracted to her.”
“I was not.”
“You failed to note in the chart anything that would even suggest that, by that point in your interactions with Mrs. Loberg, you weren’t solely acting as her therapist.”
“Objection!” Heidegger shouted. “Argumentative!”
This time the judge calmly overruled the objection. He knew where I was going.
“You noted not a single problem between you and the patient.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at here,” Dr. Don said innocently.
“You were, as you put it, just a man. That’s normal for psychotherapy?”
“Objection!”
> The judge’s face was impassive. That kind of impenetrability was a good sign. Dr. Don’s shtick was wearing on him.
“Overruled. Please answer.”
“That’s simply a characterization I made here, today.”
“But you couldn’t write about those feelings you had for her. That would be unprofessional. Point to your negligence. So you put it all onto her shoulders. It was her fault that she couldn’t open up to you.”
For the first time today, Dr. Don looked exasperated. A sweat stain was forming at the bottom of his shirt collar, and he tugged at his tie as if it were strangling him. Then defiantly, and without warning, he fired back.
“That’s not how it happened. By the way, transference and countertransference are common occurrences, Counselor. Your own expert even said so, but since you weren’t even present, you wouldn’t know that.”
Well—the man had chutzpah, all right. Juevos. It was my time for a little theater. Standing up, I made my best face, like I couldn’t believe what I’d heard. Dug a finger into my ear for good measure.
“Wait. Isn’t it true that you characterized the patient’s inability to open up to you as her fault?”
Before Fallon could answer, I spread my hand as if to cover the courtroom with one sweep.
“And now, Doctor, you’re admitting to me, and to this court, that you had feelings for the patient, feelings that would raise issues of countertransference on your part?”
Donald Fallon, MD, was at a loss. The court reporter, a middle-aged brunette who rarely looked up except to adjust the white sweater she wore loosely over her shoulders, had stopped to stare at the witness. Heidegger tweaked his pen like a tiny propeller between his fingers, waiting. Fallon turned toward the bench and judge.
“Is… that’s not what I said.”
“Nothing further,” I said, taking my seat.
“Re-cross?” the judge asked Heidegger.
Now it was the defense that wanted to take a break. Boo-hoo.
I objected. “The witness isn’t finished testifying. His counsel shouldn’t have a break now, to prep the witness any further.”
“Let’s keep going,” said the judge. “Counsel?”
Fallon’s arms were crossed as if he was about to have a tantrum. He was burning a stare at me, but the heat was easy to deflect. I was gliding along, so excited by being alive that I forgot to even breathe. A glum Heidegger rifled through his notes as the judge waited. Dr. Don seemed rattled in a way his lawyer dreaded—and feared. Heidegger seemed to feel my expansive satisfaction. I knew he’d never take me for granted as a lawyer again.
“No further questions, Your Honor.”
24
DUKE P. WINSTON, MEDICAL DOCTOR, MS, PHD
Notes for my memoir, a work-in-progress with the rough working title: Always on My Mind, A Psychiatrist’s Journey…
The staunch grandeur of the former Broadway department store building is a visual salve; that is, after witnessing a woman I surmise to be a drunken prostitute stoop behind the Lexus sedan two spaces over from where I’ve parked my car and urinate standing stark upright. She catches me staring back at her in revulsion and, apparently resenting the visual incursion, curses me first, branding me a dirty old man, as if all the world were a freelancer’s potty and I’d forgot to knock before entering.
Verisimilitude, Duke; deliver the goods, by golly.
She is scruffy, her hair an unruly rat’s nest, her sweaty rolls bulging in a tight pink skirt and skimpy white blouse and despite our mutual Caucasian status, she doesn’t hesitate to verbally assail me as a rich honky pud-whacker that practices certain unmentionable sexual acts upon his mother.
Not bad with the first two assessments, I must say, as I am reasonably well-heeled and have, since the death of Glenda, my beloved wife of thirty-seven years, routinely engaged in acts of self-gratification (note: far too much verisimilitude; but one must go with the flow to make the writing go—edit later); yet the latter slur is merely invective that misses the mark. I scuttle away, formulating an over-the-shoulder assessment of this vulgar, verbose streetwalker:
Classic narcissistic behavior; poor impulse control; anger management issues; and, considering her line of work, a wealth of self-image issues to boot. Oh, yes—and let’s not neglect to slap on a fashion violation for the tacky, ill-fitting couture.
Still got it, Dukester (note: edit out all self-aggrandizement).
I shouldn’t have been smiling, but I must say, I enjoyed the rapidity with which I’d aggregated my observations, and when you’re good, you’re good (note: see previous note). My undisguised, sunny self-satisfaction, however, further perturbs the woman and she follows me toward the sidewalk, gaining on me as she continues to curse, having moved on from standard name-calling to some rather colorful descriptions of anatomical impossibilities involving foreign objects lodged in my rectum. Perhaps the parking attendant, a gaunt Latino thumbing a wad of bills as he hands out receipts, can help me. But he’s disappeared into the recesses of the lot, leaving me as alone and forgotten as Gary Cooper in High Noon.
Like Coop, I too am a gunslinger of sorts, the hired gun riding into town to lay down the law. Not in any dusty, mean streets of yore, but in court today on this sexual misconduct dust-up, this pecker peccadillo of a case (nice alliteration!) brought forth by the medical board against one Donald Fallon, MD, a psychiatrist with flavor-of-the-month written all over his grinning, telegenic face. Should he lose his license, I feel certain he’ll land on his feet as a political appointee on some corrupt commission whose unstated purpose is to stifle the will of the people; or perhaps, a manic pitchman touting miracle ointments on late-night infomercials. (Note: Change all names! These are private, go-with-the-flow impressions only—anticipate big cuts; openly seek legal advice from publisher’s in-house counsel.) But unlike Coop, there is nothing heroic about the task I’ve been hired to fulfill. My intellect is my gun and words are my bullets. A check for services rendered is my reward.
How do I live with such a potentially unseemly trade-off? I tell you, without qualms: It’s a job and somebody’s got to do it. If not I, another medical savant whose integrity has been compromised by a pursuit of the almighty dollar would take my place in a heartbeat. (Note: locate softer place to land, so to speak.)
Somebody’s got to do it, indeed. Oh, if my wife were to read this tripe. My dearly departed Glenda was a former literature professor and Virginia Woolf scholar at Loyola, and she despised the profligate overuse of clichés as the most flagrant of myriad offenses to the English language. My beloved Glenda abhorred the trite blandness of everyday howdy-doody American vernacular, and no doubt, she would judge this writer equally harshly for rendering yet another hackneyed justification. But here it is:—and forgive me, my love—if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. (Note: see previous note.)
I stand directly across the street from the stately old Broadway’s entrance—which now bears the name of the Junipero Serra Building—and though the morning traffic is fairly dense, I waste no time wading into the one-way lanes, determined to pad the distance between myself and the angry harlot, who is presently assuring me of her intent to inflict bodily injury upon my person. Though I hardly dare to look back lest I further enrage her, I surreptitiously take note of her rather stocky build and the boldly depicted dragon tattoo on her right forearm, which contorts whenever she shakes her fist, scarily animating the beast’s whip-like tail. A bustle of pigeons takes flight from the pavement before me and in the same breath, a horn blasts—I’ve jaywalked straight into the path of a slow-moving delivery van. The driver can either brake maniacally or unceremoniously squash me like a bug on his front bumper and let his insurance company deal with the aftermath; yet, fortunately for me, he chooses the former. Shrugging an apology, I scurry to the other side of the street and bound over to the double doors, grateful to still be alive.
In the Broadway’s wide glass front doors’ reflection the distinguished gent in the black Hermes suit with th
e neatly trimmed gray hair, sharp nose and precision moustache comes face-to-face with himself, and though a tad out of breath, his faculties are well intact, the mind clicking along as incisive and alert as the sunshine banking down through these gorgeously appointed facades of yesteryear. The man in the thousand-dollar suit seems pleased to have survived his latest little adventure. (Note: exceptional man-on-the-street details—take care not to over-edit.) What else can I do but salute him with a wink and a thumbs-up?
Ten feet into the lobby my buoyancy takes a blow.
Up steps a security guard who—how to say it?—could be the malevolent tart’s brother. Arms as thick as tree trunks, a bland scowl that betrays a tortured, impoverished childhood. My smile bounces off his mile-wide chest like a rubber ball off a brick wall. I’d chosen the open aisle of entry reserved for court personnel, eschewing the line of regular folk crowding in to be processed through a metal detector while their personal items were placed on a conveyor belt to be scanned. (Note: soften privileged tone.) Apparently, I’ve erred.
The guard blocks my path with a hollow stare that no doubt served him well traversing the mean streets and tragic back alleys from whence he’s sprung. (Note: this detail’s a keeper—gritty!)