by John Gapper
He’d lost his grip on me as we’d tumbled and I tried to shuffle away and run, but I didn’t get far in my dazed and blinded state. I’d managed only a few paces before I stumbled on a stone and he caught me, throwing himself forward and hooking one hand around my ankles. I pitched headfirst into the darkness and he landed on top of me, knocking the breath out of me again. He rolled my body over to face him.
I was on my back, with my legs above me on the slope and my head half resting on a boulder by the edge of the lake. His left knee pressed down on my chest and he pinned me by the neck with one hand as he raised the other arm above my head. I couldn’t hear anything, and his face was a black shape, silhouetted against the white glow coming off the rink. Then he thrust his arm down and struck me on the side of my forehead with brutal force. Later, I would realize that he must have picked up the stone on which I’d tripped and used it as a weapon.
In the moment, all I knew was excruciating pain and fear that a crazy person was ending my life, alone in this park, far from home.
Then darkness.
Then nothing.
When I regained consciousness a minute or two later, another man was bending over me, holding a wad of tissues to the wound on my head.
“Can you hear me? Are you okay?” he asked.
He had short gray hair and was wearing an orange jacket with security written on it. His face looked reassuringly worn and experienced. I tried to nod, but it hurt the muscles in my neck.
“I’m all right,” I mumbled.
“I’ve called an ambulance. You’re lucky I heard you. That guy wasn’t messing around.”
My head was throbbing with pain, but the tissue had stanched the bleeding. I reached up and checked my face with my hand, feeling for wounds. My features seemed to be intact, but I felt bruising and swelling around my right eye, where I’d been struck. I tried to remember what had happened, checking myself for concussion. All wasn’t clear, but my brain was functioning well enough for me to know that the damage wasn’t severe.
After a while, I heard the insistent squawk of the ambulance and its red lights reflected on the man’s face as he examined me. They reminded me of the glow on Anna’s face only half an hour before, and the memory made me wince. Then the paramedics came and, after checking my pupils for signs of brain injury, carried me up the slope and into the ambulance. I felt it hurtle north through the park and tried to sit up to check with the paramedic next to me where we were going, but I found I couldn’t move-they’d strapped me to the gurney to keep me from falling off. I’d seen a lot of schizophrenics brought into the psych ER like that and been happy they were restrained, but I didn’t like it myself.
“Don’t move,” the paramedic said sharply, inflating the pad he’d placed on my arm to check my blood pressure.
The ambulance swung to the right-eastward-and exited the park on the Upper East Side. I knew where we were going then. It was somehow inevitable, and there was nothing to do but lie back and accept the ride, ironic as it was. The paramedic leaned across me casually and took my wallet from the pocket of my jacket, which was strewn across my feet. He seemed to want to check for himself who I was.
“Wow. Hello, Doc,” he said, looking at my Episcopal ID card. “Relax, we’ll take care of you.”
“Who attacked me?” I said.
“Security guy didn’t know. Said he’d shouted at him, but he’d run away. You get all kinds in the park. You were lucky.”
I saw the tall shadow of Episcopal from the window, and then we drove into the ambulance entrance and they wheeled me into the medical ER. We were greeted by a resident and directed to one of the cubicles. They left me there alone and I rested for a few minutes, wondering what could be keeping them. Eventually, the curtain parted and a female doctor walked in, wearing green scrubs and a blue surgical cap, and picked up my notes.
It was my ex-girlfriend.
“Oh God,” I said, craning my head up to see her.
“Great to see you, too,” Rebecca replied briskly. “I’m on call and I got paged. For some reason, they thought I’d be worried.”
“Why would they think that?”
She paused as if collecting herself and exhaled through her nose, gazing down at me on the gurney. I could see her eyes soften into the old Rebecca. Then she pulled off her cap and I saw that she’d had her auburn hair cropped, making her eyes look larger and more vulnerable. She’d lost weight, too: misery at not having me around, I flattered myself.
“I leave you on your own for five minutes and this happens. Can’t you take care of yourself?” She sounded affectionately exasperated.
“I like your hair,” I said from my horizontal position.
“Thanks,” she said, containing a smile and glancing down at the foot of the gurney. “Can you move your toes?”
“My spine’s fine. Everything’s working.”
“Then sit up and I’ll take care of that cut. You lost consciousness, they said. Do you remember anything?”
“Quite a lot. I don’t think I’m badly concussed.”
“You’d better have a CT all the same.”
She let down the side of the gurney and I sat up with my legs over the side to let her remove the makeshift dressing and clean the wound on my forehead. Then she held the two sides of the cut in place and sealed it with Steri-Strips. I could feel her fingers working on me expertly and dispassionately, trying to make the scar as small as possible, and I thanked God for her medical training and professionalism. No matter what she felt about me, I was sure she’d do the job well.
“There,” she said, standing back to take a look at her handiwork and stripping off her surgical gloves. “You’re not pretty at the moment, but you’ll be as good as new in a couple of weeks. Who did this to you?”
“I thought you’d sent him.”
“Funny guy. You always told me not to go in Central Park at night, that it was full of your patients. What were you doing there? Night out?”
My head was starting to throb heavily and I didn’t have any idea of how to answer that. A woman asked me to come for a walk in the park and then she kissed me-just before I got attacked. I didn’t think so. I met her skeptical gaze-the look of an old lover with a lingering interest.
“I felt like a walk.”
Rebecca looked unconvinced but unwilling to push it much further in case she found out something hurtful. Instead, she looked down and scribbled on my chart, as if to bring our session to a close. As she did, I felt anxious. It wasn’t just that I couldn’t tell her what I’d been doing in the park. I didn’t know why my attacker had picked on me. He’d left my wallet in my pocket, so he was either a bad thief or not a thief at all. Maybe he’d been a paranoid schizophrenic, but it had felt as if he’d known what he was doing.
“Listen, Ben. Are you okay? I heard about that Wall Street guy. I meant to call you, but …” Her voice trailed off and she shrugged regretfully.
“It’ll be sorted out. Don’t worry.” It felt better to be handing out that advice rather than receiving it, although no more convincing.
“I hope so,” she said, hanging the chart back on the gurney. “They will take you for the scan and then I’m admitting you for the night. We ought to watch you for concussion. You’ve been acting strangely.”
The sheets were welcomingly clean and crisp. Harry hadn’t thought much of them, but they worked for me. After the scan, which revealed nothing of concern going on inside my brain, they wheeled me up to a private room on the eighth floor that no one was using that night, rejecting my offer to walk. With Vicodin inside me and the familiar hum of the equipment by the bed, I soon fell asleep.
I didn’t take to the breakfast-a floppy pancake with fake maple syrup and apple juice in a sealed plastic container, washed down with tasteless coffee. The stuff had usually been cleared long before I got to see the patients, and it made me understand why some of them were so grumpy about the place by the time I arrived. The sun shone through the corner window, and I lay
on my bed with The New York Times, waiting for the bureaucracy to grind its way toward signing me out again. My head hurt and I hadn’t enjoyed the first sight of my battered face in the bathroom mirror, but I’d survived.
There was a knock at nine thirty a.m. and I put down the paper, half expecting Rebecca to reappear, but Jim Whitehead stuck his head around the door instead. He’d given no warning of his arrival and it didn’t fill me with enthusiasm, but I didn’t have much choice. I couldn’t refuse my department head the right to check on me.
When he wasn’t at York East, Jim hung his shingle off Park at Sixty-fifth. I suspected it was his way of making a professional statement, of moving away from Episcopal, which prided itself on being open-minded about treatment-drugs, cognitive behavioral therapy, whatever worked-for the high church of Sigmund Freud. The clue was his couch, a black-leather-and-chrome affair I’d noticed when I’d dropped by his office in an apartment building stuffed with physicians. It made sense: Manhattan was the only place on earth with enough rich neurotics willing and able to spend five hours a week talking to the human equivalent of a brick wall.
Now that he’d got me lying on my back, I wondered if he’d take the opportunity for a spot of analysis, but he stood there with his clipboard for a minute, regarding me with an expression that suggested doubts about my mental stability. Then he took a seat by the bed and rested the board facedown on his lap.
“You had a lucky escape,” he said.
I rapped the untouched side of my skull with the knuckles of my left hand. “I’m okay. Last time I go walking in Central Park.”
“That sounds wise. You’re not having an easy time. If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.” He paused briefly before coming to the point. “I came to say that I’ve met with Mrs. Duncan about the Shapiro case. She’s considered all the points on which you might be vulnerable.”
I might be vulnerable? That didn’t sound like an expression of solidarity. What was it Duncan had said about Episcopal being behind me, just before she’d threatened my career? If they were behind me, they were a long way back.
“She’s very professional,” I said carefully.
“There is one thing that concerns me. I’ve reviewed the case with everyone else who was involved-as well as myself, of course. I talked with Dr. Knox and the nurses in the ER, and Mr. O’Meara too. He told me that Mr. Shapiro arrived with a gun. Is that right?”
That jolted me, and I made a show of folding up The New York Times and putting it to one side of the bed before I answered.
“Mrs. Shapiro brought one in for safety. She’d found her husband with it.”
“Was it the murder weapon?”
I looked out of the window, examining the pattern of steel and glass on the building opposite and conscious of not wanting to face Jim. I thought of Pagonis showing me Harry’s gun in the interview room at Yaphank. It hadn’t been the Beretta that Nora had brought to the ER, but it no longer felt as though that made a difference. I’d let him walk out of there without knowing what he might do, despite being handed a gigantic clue.
“It wasn’t, no. He had another one,” I said.
Jim glanced at his clipboard as if longing to pick it up and make a note of what I’d said. Then he gazed directly at me, his eyes boring into mine with the expression of a teacher whose promising pupil has let him down.
“You didn’t tell me about that and neither did Mr. Shapiro, since he wanted you to treat him. That worries me. I think it would have changed how I approached the case if I’d known. I wouldn’t have been happy handing over responsibility to you like that.”
My head started to throb as I grasped the purpose of Jim’s visit. He hadn’t been worried about my health. He’d come to make sure that I wouldn’t drag him into the affair by deflecting the blame to him. It angered me that he had rushed to my side so blatantly to shield himself, just as he’d nipped into the hospital on that Saturday to recruit Harry. He acted deliberately, but he could move fast enough when it suited him.
“Mr. Shapiro is my responsibility, not yours. You don’t have to worry about that,” I said curtly.
“I want to be clear, that’s all. I’ll do everything I can to support you through this, Ben,” he said.
Jim was the one who glanced away in embarrassment this time: unlike Duncan, he had the decency to look ashamed. As gestures of support went, his ranked pretty low on the scale, however. Even Harry’s wife had offered more than that.
It was four p.m. by the time they let me out, and I treated myself to a cab ride home down York Avenue, under the Queensboro Bridge, clutching a paper bag of drugs. I’d taken a shower to wash off most of the blood and mess from having been rolled around in the Central Park gravel, but dirt was still clinging to my hair near the gash on my forehead and the driver had given me a suspicious look when I’d climbed in the back.
I walked into my building warily, prepared to be accosted by one of the neighbors or by Bob, but the lobby was empty. I made it to the elevator and along the hallway without having to explain my appearance to anyone. My luck didn’t last. As I neared my apartment, I reached into my pocket for my keys and realized they weren’t there. I couldn’t believe it at first-nothing else was missing-and I poked my pockets in case I’d stowed them somewhere. But they were gone. There was nothing for it: I had to retrace my steps wearily along the hallway, into the elevator, and down to the lobby. Bob had returned from wherever he’d been, and I walked up to him resignedly.
He looked up and his eyes widened. “My God.”
“I got attacked in the park, but it’s not as bad as it looks,” I said. “Can I have the key to my apartment? Mine’s missing.”
I went back the way I’d come and got to my front door again, not expecting anything else to be awry. I lived in an apartment building, so the security was good, and I didn’t believe the man had taken my keys. It didn’t seem likely given that he hadn’t been interested in my wallet. They’d probably fallen out as we’d rolled down the slope or had scuffled in the dirt by the pond. Maybe I’d find them if I went back tomorrow, and it wouldn’t matter much if I didn’t. So I opened my apartment door and switched on the lights without concern.
My mistake was obvious from where I stood. Someone had been through the place like a whirlwind, pulling books from shelves and papers from the desk. Cushions had been tossed to the floor, and a mess of stuff was strewn chaotically on the rug. I stood there in shock for a minute, trying to take it in. It looked like a room in Twelve South after a schizophrenic or a manic patient had lost control, with objects flung around. The walls and the furniture seemed to be intact; only light things had been cast aside. I shivered, knowing for certain that my assault hadn’t been a random act. Someone had been after me.
What if he’s still in there? I thought. We were taught to retreat from danger if we were in doubt-to find a security guard and use superior force. Many psychs and nurses got attacked, and it was drilled into us not to take chances. But I wanted to find out what was going on without the need to involve Bob-or even worse, Pagonis-immediately. So I halted, breathing silently and listening for human activity. After two minutes, having heard nothing, I walked slowly down the hallway toward my bedroom, leaving the front door ajar behind me. I needed to be able to get out of there fast if I was wrong about the place being empty. My bedroom door was half-open. I pushed it all the way, my heart thudding, and peered inside.
It was in the same state as the living room. The duvet, sheets, and pillows had been ripped from the bed and thrown around, together with clothes from my cupboard. He’d swept all the objects off the counter in the bathroom-even Rebecca’s vacation seashells. A couple of them had smashed, and I crouched to pick them up. I was upset by it, as if the family jewels had been trashed. They were the only material things I had left of our relationship.
Kneeling there, I looked to one side and saw one of Rebecca’s dresses, which she’d left behind by mistake in my closet. It was bundled in a heap in the corner
of the room. I held it up and saw it was slashed from top to bottom with a knife or a pair of scissors. There were deep rips running through the material, from the neck down to the waist. It disturbed me more than the rest of the mess, and I went back out into the bedroom to examine my own clothes, which he’d also pulled from their hangers. They were rumpled but intact. He’d singled out Rebecca’s dress to be cut in half, as if he’d had a reason to resent it. It gave me the nasty sensation of seeing into the mind of someone with a sadistic grudge.
Back in the living room, I piled a few cushions on the sofa and sat down to collect my thoughts. I supposed I should call the cops who’d been called to the scene in the park, to whom I’d described the assault before I’d checked out of Episcopal. Perhaps I ought to call Pagonis and fill her in, too. Yet I knew that I wasn’t going to do either. That would be the end of whatever privacy I had left, and I’d be dragged straight into an investigation that would make things worse. I didn’t even want to call Bob to inquire how the guy had got past him, although he had a lot to explain. What was the point of a uniformed presence in the lobby if a maniac could just walk past? But if I told him, he’d be up here in a minute trying to explain, and everyone in the building would know within a day.
I walked round putting my things back and finished by checking on the bottles of pills my intruder had pulled from the bathroom cabinet. In the back of my mind, I still hoped it might have been an addict’s burglary-the last reassuring possibility-but they were all accounted for. My head screamed and I felt overwhelmed. I undressed, swallowed a Vicodin, and fell into the bed he’d torn apart.
14
Sometimes I think I chose to be a psych to avoid having to answer questions. It’s one of the craft’s comforts that you can bounce back inquiries from patients about what you think or feel and hide behind a wall of detachment. The trouble is, I’m not sure I could answer the questions even if it were allowed. Whenever I was in therapy myself-which we were encouraged to be, but which I’d lately let slip-I would note all my patients’ feelings for me and mine for them, every bit of transference and countertransference. Yet I’d mislaid my feelings about myself somewhere.