Addiction

by G. H. Ephron

  “He’s her doctor,” Chip told the toothbrush mustache, and he let me go to her.

  The second officer had turned Olivia over onto her back. I took off my jacket and folded it under her head. Then I pushed her head to one side so if she vomited she wouldn’t choke. I pulled out my wallet and jammed it in between her teeth. Her heels beat on the floor, loudly at first. The second hand on the wall clock jerked ahead slowly as the drumbeat weakened.

  When the sound stopped, the room was silent. The sharp smell of warm urine floated up. Drew was hovering behind me. Montrose Sherman was sitting right where he’d been, his arms folded across his chest, his pencil tapping against his yellow pad.

  I eased my wallet from Olivia’s mouth. She was sound asleep. I touched her shoulder. “Olivia,” I said, pressing my hand gently against her. “Olivia, wake up.”

  Her eyelids fluttered open, the eyes unfocused. She seemed bewildered. Then her looked snagged on me. “Dr. Zak? I’m so tired,” she whispered. She saw Drew behind me. “Daddy?”

  She struggled to a seated position. Then her face twisted with surprise that turned to embarrassment as she put her hand between her legs. “What happened?” Then her glance shifted to the judge, who was peering down over the edge of the conference table.

  “You had a seizure,” I told her. “You lost control. It happens. Just stay here until you feel like you can get up.” I gave her my handkerchief. “Here, you bit your lip.” She pressed it up against her mouth, pulled it away, and grimaced at the sight of blood.

  The judge called for a recess. I hurried out and called Kwan. I told him about Olivia’s seizure.

  “Probably a reaction to the Kutril,” he said. “Could have been triggered by the stress. Sounds like the emergency is over. For now, just keep her calm.”

  When I got back to the judge’s chambers, Olivia was anything but calm. “Get your grubby hands off me,” she shrieked at one of the three EMTs who’d arrived.

  Drew and I convinced them to back off. Drew pulled Olivia into his lap. She curled up against him. I was glad to see her color had returned. A few minutes later, she was asleep again.

  When the hearing resumed, the judge said, “I’m going to allow Ms. Temple to return to the Pearce Psychiatric Institute to finish the treatment program.”

  “But Your Honor,” Sherman started to protest.

  The judge continued in a firm voice, “She’s to remain in a locked unit. Two weeks from today, she goes to the Bechtel Center for Girls for evaluation.”

  Before the judge had finished talking, Sherman was shoving papers back into his briefcase. When the judge adjourned the hearing, Sherman was the first one out the door.

  Two weeks didn’t seem like much of a reprieve. But it would have to do.

  18

  THAT AFTERNOON, I called Daphne. I told her about the arrest and arraignment.

  “Of course Livvy didn’t do it,” she said. “It’s absurd.”

  “If she didn’t, then someone else did,” I said.

  Daphne didn’t say anything.

  “Olivia said I could talk with you about her test results,” I told Daphne.

  Referring to my notes, I described the different ways Olivia grouped the objects. Then I summarized my initial findings. “She’s impatient. Leaves a lot of items unsorted, especially those on the periphery, as if she doesn’t see them. She’s easily distracted, has difficulty maintaining her focus. And she’s inflexible—she couldn’t re-sort some of the items at all. It’s as if she’s overwhelmed by the sheer number of objects.”

  “Interesting,” Daphne said. “Grouping things for eating, just for example. Her oral needs inform the way in which she interprets the world.” The words of an analyst. “Typical adolescent, lets her emotions drive her. It’s as I thought. She needs structure. Discipline. A firm hand.”

  I didn’t say anything, though I’d have put it differently. Confronted by overwhelming information and limited time, Olivia’s ability to cope shut down and her basic drives took a governing role. All the “structuring” in the world wasn’t going to help. She needed a therapist who would be her partner, not a taskmaster or limit setter—someone whom Olivia trusted to step inside her psyche. She needed to hear, “Let’s look at this together. Let me help.” Instead, what she got from Daphne was, That’s not right. Do it this way.

  “That’s why I used a modified form of CTA with her,” Daphne said. “By writing down her feelings, they can’t overwhelm her. She’s better able to understand them and get control.”

  Again, I disagreed. I suspected the opposite was the case. When Olivia wrote her feelings down, they became even larger than life and more frightening. One more thing she had to feel ashamed about.

  Despite Daphne’s fine reputation as a clinician, she was out of her depth with Olivia. Here was a patient she didn’t understand. Instead of treating her, Daphne was beating her up with her own weaknesses. If it had continued much longer, Daphne’s treatment could easily have driven Olivia over a cliff.

  “It’s a bit spare to make a diagnosis, don’t you think?” Daphne said.

  “I’d say this is fairly typical of someone with a right-hemisphere learning disability, neither tuning in to environmental cues or categorizing efficiently. And it might also explain her social immaturity,” I said. “Is that why you started her on Ritalin?”

  There was a pause. It sounded like Daphne took a drag on a cigarette and exhaled. “Is that something Olivia authorized you to discuss with me?”

  That stopped me dead.

  “The Ritalin goes a bit beyond her test results, don’t you think?”

  I didn’t have an answer. Strictly speaking, we’d already gone beyond test results. Why was Ritalin treatment off-limits, while CTA treatment was not?

  “Good, then,” she said briskly. “By the way, I did look into whether there have been any deaths, reported or unreported, in our drug trials. There haven’t.”

  “You talked to Dr. Jensen?”

  “I did. Among others.”

  “You asked him if any patients in his study died during the trial?”

  “Right.”

  “Of causes related or unrelated to the drug treatment?”

  “I said I did.” She sounded annoyed. “Peter, that’s all I can do. I haven’t got mind reading abilities.”

  “If it wasn’t a death in the DX-200 trial that Channing was threatening to report, then what were she and Liam arguing about?”

  “You’re sure they were arguing about reporting a death.”

  “‘A man is dead.’ That’s what Channing said. And she was going to make sure everyone knew what really happened.” I heard the certainty in my voice, but in truth, my recollection was already fuzzy. “Maybe I’ll talk to Liam about it again myself.”

  “But I’ve already told you—” Daphne stopped short.

  “I wonder if he might have helped himself to Channing’s research files.”

  “Peter …”

  “Well, someone did. It wasn’t you. And it wasn’t me. And when I was in Jensen’s office talking to him, there was a jumble of files stuffed into a file drawer. For such a tidy person, it seemed quite out of character. And it’s conceivable that he’d prefer her research remain unpublished since he’s working with Acu-Med on a competing treatment.”

  There was a long silence on the line.

  “Peter, I think you should be extremely careful about these accusations you’re making. An unreported death is a serious matter. It’s one thing to confide your suspicions to me. It would be quite another thing to speak out when you’re not sure.” It was as if she’d flipped off the Person switch and flipped on Hospital Administrator. “My advice to you is keep out of it. There are plenty of nosey parkers and rumor mongers around here without you turning into one.”

  “Someone has stolen her research … .”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “She’s got an empty file drawer that says so.”

  “There are plenty
of other explanations for an empty …” There was a pause. “Hang on,” Daphne said. “Yes? Who is it?” There were muffled sounds, as if she had her hand over the receiver.

  I waited. If Jensen had Channing’s research, if a subject in his clinical trial had died, then why was Daphne protecting him? Was she covering up something the hospital didn’t want exposed? Or had I picked up some of Channing’s paranoia?

  Daphne came back on the line. “Sorry, Peter, I have to ring off. I’ve an appointment. We’ll have to continue this another time.”

  The line went dead. I stared at the receiver.

  The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that harassing Jensen about the missing research files would backfire. I’d already asked him. Daphne had asked him. He insisted he didn’t have them.

  With me and Daphne breathing down his neck, Jensen could easily panic and destroy irreplaceable data, especially since Kutril was likely to beat DX-200 to market and cost a lot less. Jensen’s patent would be worthless.

  It wasn’t long before I had myself convinced. I couldn’t bring Channing back, but at least I could ensure that her legacy wasn’t shredded. Breaking into Jensen’s office was no longer unthinkable. It became inescapable, a responsibility I couldn’t shirk. I called Annie and told her I’d changed my mind.

  At two that night, we were at the back door of the Neuropsychiatric Unit, wind blowing sheets of rain in our faces. We went up to my office. I took off my coat and left my umbrella open to dry out. Per Annie’s instructions, I was wearing dark pants, a dark shirt, and rubber-soled shoes. Annie dropped her backpack to the floor. She took off her rain slicker, shook it out, and draped it over a chair. She had on black leggings and a dark sweater.

  I had a sudden urge to forget about sneaking over to Liam Jensen’s office and, instead, spend some leisurely time peeling off the leggings and stroking those long legs that seemed to go on forever. For a start. But Annie was all business.

  “Okay. Show me how those tunnels interconnect,” she said.

  I pulled a photocopied map from my drawer. It showed each of the buildings on the Pearce campus and the underground passageways that link them. The tunnels were original to the buildings. They’d been used for ferrying meals from a central kitchen to each of the units, and for moving patients to and from special treatment rooms. Still in constant use by day, at night the tunnels were pretty much deserted.

  “Here’s where we are, the Neuropsychiatric Unit”—I drew an X on a block that represented our building—“near the end of this main passageway.” I ran my finger along the tunnel that stretches from one end of the Pearce to the other, interrupted only at the midway point by the doctors’ office building, where the institute’s maintenance and security headquarters were housed in the basement. Other tunnels fishboned off the main one. “And here’s where we’re going.” I put an X on a building at the end of a branch at the opposite end of the campus.

  “How far is it?” Annie asked.

  “A half mile, maybe less.”

  “And security?”

  “Once an hour, a security guard sweeps up and back through all the tunnels. He starts here”—I indicated the doctors’ office building at the center of the map—“and goes this way through the tunnels, heading away from us. Then he comes back to home base and does the same going the other way. Takes about thirty minutes.”

  “Are all of these buildings in use?” Annie asked.

  “Not all. Some are decommissioned.” I wrote a D on the four buildings that had been mothballed. “Too expensive to maintain. Too controversial to tear down.”

  “Locked?” Annie asked.

  “Everything’s locked,” I said. I fished my keys from my pocket and separated one out. “But this one opens all. Works on the elevators too.”

  Annie stared at the map as if she was trying to commit it to memory. She traced our path with her finger. “Very cool,” she said. “When do we start?”

  I checked my watch. It was twenty past. I looked out the window. I could see a dashed line of light at ground level, going from our building up and over the hill toward the next. Those were the lights from windows, high on the tunnel walls just above the ground. They were still on, which meant the guard hadn’t completed his sweep back through, turning them off as he went. As I watched, one stretch of lights went out. A few minutes later, the rest went out.

  “Now,” I said.

  Annie unzipped her backpack and lifted from it a smaller, black nylon pack, which she snapped around her waist. We slipped out into the hall. Only an emergency light glowed at the far end of the corridor. We moved quickly and ducked into the brightly lit stairwell. As we circled down, I ran my hand lightly along the cage of metal slats that surrounds the open central air shaft. Four flights down, we reached the basement and exited through a heavy steel door.

  A tall, narrow tunnel stretched out in either direction, with horizontal windows running alongside the pipes and conduits that snaked along the ceiling. It smelled like a pile of wet leaves, and the air seemed alive with sounds—the bass beat of rainwater running off the roof of the tunnel, the clack of pipes pumping heat and hot water overhead. During the day, the tunnel was well lit. Now, there were only dim emergency lights.

  We moved quickly down the first stretch of tunnel. The floor turned damp as rain leaked from the ceiling. In some places paint was peeling off the wall in sheets. Elsewhere, the old paint had disintegrated and turned granular, leaving little anthills of white powder.

  At a bend, Annie paused and looked up. Above the asbestosencased pipes were rotting wooden planks with insulation tucked into the corners. Dim light reflected off a skim of water that coated the floor.

  We started a long downgrade. “Be careful, or you’ll slip and fall on your ass,” I whispered, “speaking from experience.”

  “Cool place to go blading,” Annie whispered back.

  Just then there was a new sound, like wind whistling through one of the conduits directly over our heads. “You pipe down, too,” Annie said, shushing the ceiling. She shivered. “Let’s get moving.”

  The stretch of tunnel ended in a door to the doctors’ office building. This was the only tricky part. The security office was in the basement. So we took the stairs to the main floor and walked across to the stairs at the opposite end of the building. Halfway there, Annie put her hand on my shoulder. I heard it. Footsteps overhead. There were no doorways, no openings to duck into. My scalp prickled as the footsteps got closer and closer, and then passed over us.

  I grabbed for Annie’s hand and we hurried to the exit door, down the stairs, and out again into the tunnel. Already I was drenched in sweat.

  At the end of the next stretch of tunnel, there were two doors. As I put my key in the door to the continuing passageway, Annie asked, “Where does the other one go?”

  “To the basement of Albert House. Used to be the children’s unit. And before that, it housed one of the institute’s first patients, a wealthy dowager who’d lost her mind. Her family had an exact replica of her house built here. They spirited her from her home in the middle of the night, and she lived out her last days thinking she’d never left home.”

  “You made that up.”

  “Nope. It’s the truth.”

  Like a little kid, unable to resist the temptation of a supposedly locked door, Annie reached for the knob. Then she pulled away. “Hey, little guy,” she said, reaching out a cupped hand. There, dangling at eye level was a fat black spider. I looked up. The ceiling was festooned with cobwebs.

  “Here you go,” Annie said, pinching the thread from which the spider hung. She gently lowered the creature to the floor. It rolled itself up into a ball for a moment, then scuttled away.

  Annie tried the knob. “Locked,” she said. Then she paused, her ear to the door. “Listen,” she whispered, stepping aside.

  I pressed my ear up against the door. Rock music. I shrugged. “Sometimes patients find their way down here. We haven’t got time to check
it out. I’ll call Security as soon as we’re finished.”

  Annie took out a small flashlight, the size and shape of a pen. She flashed a surprisingly powerful beam along the edge of the door. “Still, it wouldn’t be much of a job to jimmy this,” she said.

  I opened the other door, and we continued on our way. “I should have brought bread crumbs,” Annie quipped after we turned one corner, then another.

  “This is our in-house Alzheimer’s test for the aging doctors,” I said. “We’re definitely not lost. In fact, we’re here.” The tunnel ended in a locked door. I inserted my key and the door to the Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Unit opened easily.

  We found ourselves at the base of one of the two stairways at either end of the building. It was dark, the only light cast by the red EXIT signs. I groped my way forward until my foot came in contact with the riser of the first step. Annie turned on her flashlight. She shone the light up into the air shaft. I could just make out the skylight, all the way up at the roof.

  I groped for a handrail but found, instead, the wall of closely set, turned wooden spindles running from steps to ceiling.

  I listened. Nothing but silence.

  “Let’s go,” Annie whispered, and started up.

  The sound of our climbing, even with our rubber soles, seemed deafening. The stairs themselves resonated. I ran my hand lightly along the wooden spindles.

  Four long flights up and we pushed our way out into a corridor. There was emergency lighting at either end. Annie put away her flashlight.

  The rain was beating hard on the roof. Wind howled through the eaves. We padded down the hall, past several offices until we got to the one with the sign LIAM JENSEN, M.D. outside the door.

  Annie tried the knob. It was locked. I tried my key—it was worth a shot, though I knew it worked only on the doctors’ offices on my unit. It wouldn’t even fit in the lock.

  Annie unzipped her bag and slipped out what looked like a leather pocket protector. She opened the flap and drew out one of the slender metal rods lined up neatly inside. She crouched and fiddled at the lock. Swore. Changed tools once, and again. “There we go,” she said. She pulled the door open. Then she tried the inner door. It wasn’t locked.