by G. H. Ephron
“I’d say you’re being paranoid. But there’s a lot at stake,” Kwan said. “I’ve got a friend, a cancer researcher—did a study that didn’t find the kind of whizbang results that the drug company funding the research was hoping for. He finally had to sue them in order to publish.”
“Suppressing results is one thing. Cooking her data, that goes quite a bit further,” I observed. Where was the line between self-serving and criminal behavior? If someone had altered patient data, they’d crossed it.
I opened the top file in the stack of overage subjects. A man. Forty-six years of age. But was he really that old? There was no name in the file. Only a number code assigned to the subject. In another file, probably in the box somewhere, there’d be a master list with the actual names associated with each code number.
I pulled a pen out of my pocket, but there wasn’t a scrap of paper on Destler’s desk to write on. I rummaged in the garbage can, pulled out an envelope, and began to copy information onto the back of it.
In crabbed handwriting that would have done Matthew Farrell proud, I wrote the case number of each overage subject, plus the age and gender. I asked Kwan to look for the file containing the master list of patients.
“Just tell me I’m not on Candid Camera,” Kwan said, but he started searching anyway.
I had a rationalization ready. “It’s perfectly okay. Destler’s the senior administrator. Right now, he’s the one with oversight for this research data. By showing us the files, he gave us permission to look at private information.”
“And I suppose you believe there’s a sanity clause, too?”
“What matters is that we don’t disclose this information to anyone else.”
“Found it,” Kwan announced, just as Virginia stuck her head into the room.
“You boys about finished?” she asked. “I’m just going to downstairs to drop off some mail.”
“When is Dr. Destler due back?” I asked.
“Now,” she answered, and disappeared.
Kwan had the master file open. “Gimme the numbers.”
I read off the numbers, one at a time, and copied down the names he read back. We were closing the storage box when Destler returned.
“I hope you’ve seen what you needed to see,” Destler said.
I hoped we had.
21
AS WE walked back to the unit, Kwan was pensive. “It’s an easy line to cross,” he said finally. “There’s a lot of pressure to get the right”—he drew quotation marks in the air—“results. To meet your quota. You find yourself tempted to take shortcuts and …”
“Getting all self-righteous about it,” I added, helpfully.
“I suppose I may have been a bit overzealous,” he admitted. “Lucky me. I have you handy to keep me honest. I just hope the next suit we fit you out for isn’t horizontal stripes with a ball and chain.”
“Horizontal stripes. So unflattering.”
As we entered the unit, I asked, “What do you think about continuing Olivia on Kutril?”
“We don’t know much more than we did before we looked at the research data,” Kwan observed. “Only one patient with similar symptoms, and he was over fifty and dropped out of the study. Not very helpful.”
“I hate to take her off it. I think it’s working.”
“How much can it be reducing the craving? Wasn’t she snorting Ritalin just last night?”
“She says she wasn’t. And actually, I’m not sure,” I admitted. “She looked like she could have been.”
“But?”
I paused to sort out my thoughts. “If she was taking any, it was a choice she actively made. I have this strong feeling that she’s just a hair away from choosing not to. I hate to yank her off with just a week to go.”
“Suppose you finish the treatment and the tremors and cogwheeling don’t disappear?”
“Couldn’t we slow down the treatment?”
“I suppose we could reduce the dosage. Continue for a couple of days longer. If the tremors continue, we stop. She’d need to continue treatment for some additional days. But doesn’t she go to prison at the end of the week?”
“Maybe Chip can use this to give us another week with her.”
Kwan slowed and stopped. “Peter, if Destler knows Olivia was out and about last night, you can bet the police will find out, too. And suppose we get another week? Isn’t it just delaying the inevitable?”
“The drug treatment could buy a little time,” I said. “Unless someone pulls the real killer out of a hat, there’s not much more I can do.”
I called Chip and told him about our plan to extend Olivia’s treatment regimen for another week. He said he’d file a motion the next day and asked if Kwan could be at the hearing, in case the judge needed to hear from her physician. “And maybe we should have Olivia’s psychiatrist testify, too. Those threatening e-mail messages speak to whether she’s dangerous. We might need someone who can explain how they were part of the therapy.”
“I’m sure Daphne will be there if we ask her to. I’ll talk to Olivia and see if she’ll agree to it,” I said.
It was midmorning by the time I got to Olivia’s room. I was beyond exhaustion. My head felt like the inside of a recently used cannon. The coffee I’d had only increased the craving.
Olivia wasn’t there. A chair was pulled up to the window, and the curtains were pushed aside. It might have been my imagination, but I thought there was a dent in the protective screening over the dirty window, at about where Olivia’s forehead would have been.
I checked the closet. Empty. The bathroom door was open. She wasn’t in there either. I checked the dining room and the common area and continued on to the nurses’ station.
“I put her to work, helping Mr. Fleegle pack up,” Gloria told me. “He’s off to a nursing home.” As I stood there with my mouth open, she added, “Something must have snapped last night. It’s like she’s got religion. Good religion.”
I walked down to Mr. Fleegle’s room. Jess was in the doorway. I came up behind her and watched over her shoulder.
Olivia was folding one shirt, then another, and laying them in a beaten-up plaid cloth suitcase. Mr. Fleegle was sitting, one elbow on the chair arm, gesturing with outstretched fingers as if he were conducting an orchestra with a cigarette held aloft.
“Are you going to perform during your stay here?” Mr. Fleegle asked Olivia. “The place could use a pick-me-up. I’d be enchanted to hear you sing again.”
Olivia smiled at him and gave a little curtsy. “Why, thank you so much, Mr. Fleegle.”
“We’ve been friends too long. Please, call me Sam.” He glanced up and saw me and Jess in the doorway. “Celeste, you have visitors.”
Olivia glanced over at us. She folded the last shirt and came over to the door.
“Got a minute?” I asked.
She looked back at Mr. Fleegle, who was nodding lightly, like there was a jazz beat going on in his head. “Gloria wanted me to …”
“I know. But this is important. Why don’t you go tell Gloria that I pulled you away?”
Olivia hurried off. “Definitely not Asperger’s,” I said to Jess. “She’s far too empathic.”
“Mr. Fleegle thinks she’s someone he knows.”
“Reduplicative paramnesia,” I said, putting a name to the symptom. “We see it in patients with Alzheimer’s or with schizophrenia. All forms of dementia. And Olivia is doing by instinct something that, as a psychologist, I had to be trained to do. Enter into the delusion with the patient. To deny, to try to argue, only backfires. Reality never mediates delusions. It’s too unsettling.”
I watched Olivia walk back toward us. She seemed to be moving easily, not shuffling. We went into the dining room.
“What’s the Coconut Grove?” she asked as she took a seat.
“It’s an old Boston nightclub. Why?”
“Mr. Fleegle says he’s a waiter there. And he thinks I’m a singer who works there, too. I played along. I didn’t w
ant to upset him.”
I laughed. “The Coconut Grove burned to the ground about fifty years ago.”
“Fifty years ago?” Olivia gasped. “Was anyone hurt?”
“A lot of people were killed. Four hundred something is the figure that sticks in my mind. Psychologists studied the effects on survivors.”
“I guess you could get pretty bent seeing that,” she said.
“Sleep disturbances, nervousness and anxiety, paranoia, guilt,” I said. “It was the beginning of our understanding of what we now call post-traumatic stress.”
“Is that what’s happening to me?” she asked. “And this?” she said, holding her upper arm and bending the lower half. The movement was smoother, but there was still a jerkiness.
“We think that’s because of the Kutril. But we don’t know for sure. It could be a drug interaction. Ritalin on top of Kutril.”
“I told you,” she grumbled, “I didn’t do any.” I was glad the old Olivia hadn’t completely disappeared—overnight cures make me nervous. “Is this going to get worse?”
“We don’t think so. To be on the safe side, we’re reducing your Kutril dose. If that doesn’t work, we’ll stop the treatment completely.”
I took the master key out of my pocket and slid it across the table. Olivia stared at it, then up at me. “You want to tell me about this?”
Olivia didn’t answer.
“It’s your mother’s master key, isn’t it?”
She nodded.
“And last night isn’t the only night you and Matthew escaped, is it?”
Olivia stared down into her lap. She twisted off her thumb ring, put it back on again.
“How long have you two been getting out?”
“About a week,” she mumbled.
“Where did you get the drugs?”
“From Dr. Smythe-Gooding’s office.”
Not “Dr. Daffy”? Maybe Olivia was starting to realize she was in over her head. “This key doesn’t open her office. How’d you get in?” I asked.
“She never locks.”
Of course. That was how Olivia kept herself supplied with enough Ritalin and God knows what else—courtesy of Dr. Daffy’s open door, open drawer, and the generosity of the drug reps.
“So you helped yourself. To what?”
“Ritalin.” She looked at me. “For Matthew. I showed him how to snort it, but that’s all.”
“What else?”
“Valium. Prozac. The usual shit.” She was so matter-of-fact about it.
“You took the drugs and then what?”
“We went to one of the buildings no one uses anymore.”
“Last night, did you hear anything while you and Matthew were in Dr. Smythe-Gooding’s office?”
Olivia didn’t blink. She looked at me as if my face had some puzzle in it and if she stared long enough, the pieces would fall into place. “No, I didn’t.”
“Which staircase did you go down? The one closest to Dr. Smythe-Gooding’s office?”
“I … I don’t remember.”
“A man fell to his death last night, around the time you and Matthew were in that office. He fell off a staircase in the Drug and Alcohol Unit.” Olivia’s face grew long. Her hands tightened into fists. “It was Dr. Liam Jensen. He worked with your mother.” The name didn’t spark a flicker of recognition. “Remember, they had an argument at the end of her party.”
Olivia’s face hardened. “He wanted to hurt her.” She stared down at her hands. She spread the fingers. “I know what you’re thinking. I mean, I’m not where I’m supposed to be. It looks like I’m doing drugs. But I didn’t kill anyone.” Channing’s eyes stared out at me from Olivia’s face, daring me not to believe her.
“I know you didn’t,” I said.
“Are they going to think I did?” Olivia asked. “Are they? Why is this happening? I wish Mommy was here.”
“You miss her.”
“I want to lean up against her. She used to run her fingers through my hair, right here.” Olivia touched her head, closed her eyes, and stroked her own forehead gently. Her breathing slowed, and her body relaxed. Olivia folded her hands in her lap. “Only she’s not here. And I can’t forget.” She exhaled a shaky sigh.
“There are lots of things people do to help them move on. I row. Fix my car. Work long hours.”
“Does it help?”
“All of it helps. It lets you get on with the day-to-day. But you don’t forget. And you don’t really want to forget. It never stops hurting. The pain comes back at you when you least expect it. When your guard is down. That’s why so many people try to keep their senses occupied. They smoke. Eat all the time.”
“Drink too much coffee. Do drugs,” Olivia added.
“I don’t think that’s why you’ve been doing drugs.”
Olivia didn’t say anything.
“You’re more than a little bit like your mom, you know. You deal with fear by running headlong into whatever it is that frightens you. By acting like you’re not afraid, it makes you feel like you’re in control.”
We sat in silence. Olivia tucked her feet up under her and rested her head against my shoulder. I put my arm around her. I touched her face. She was crying. It was a gentle crying, a letting go.
Finally, Olivia sat up. “Am I going to prison?” she asked.
“We’re trying to do everything that we can to prevent that,” I said. “Mr. Ferguson is working to get your stay here extended by another week. That will give us time to complete your treatment and give your body a few more days to regain control.”
“I don’t want to go to jail,” Olivia said. “It all feels so out of control. Like nothing I do makes a difference. Like I’m tied down and they’re making me watch a terrible movie. Only it’s not a movie. It’s my life.”
That was a pretty melodramatic image. Still, I knew what life as a bad movie felt like. “You can’t control whether they send you to prison. Or that your mother died. But you’ll feel less helpless if you put yourself in charge of what you can control. For one thing, you can say it’s okay for Dr. Smythe-Gooding to testify on your behalf if we get a hearing scheduled. She can explain to the court why you were taking Ritalin, and that writing e-mail to your mother was part of your therapy. That might help convince the judge to let you stay here.”
Olivia bit her lower lip. “And if she doesn’t testify?”
“Then, I don’t know what,” I said. Olivia’s eyes widened with dread. “Is there something that you haven’t told us? Because once your attorney questions Dr. Smythe-Gooding, the prosecutor can ask questions, too.”
Olivia looked down into her lap. She picked at her pant leg and shook her head.
“You sure about that?” I asked.
“Sure I’m sure,” Olivia said, her old defiance in place.
Olivia and I walked back to the nurses’ station. I smelled it before I saw it. A fresh pot of coffee was burbling in the little glassed-off office behind the desk. I held back a groan.
“Go ahead, have a cup,” Olivia said. “Bet’s over. You won.”
“I didn’t win,” I admitted. “You were right. I was drinking too much coffee. I was having a few before I got in here. Then I couldn’t get through morning meeting without more.”
“Gloria says that you’re a grouchy pain in the ass when you haven’t had your coffee. And she says lately you have the attention span of a gnat.”
I laughed. Sounded like Gloria. “She’s a fine one to talk.”
“She drinks decaf in the afternoon,” Olivia offered.
“She does?”
“Moderation.” Olivia said the word solemnly.
“Do you think that’s what you need?” I asked her seriously.
“No. If I started to take Ritalin again, I’d probably take too much. And I don’t want to feel like that, ever again.” I hoped Channing was somewhere listening. “Dr. Zak, it’s okay with me if you want to go back to drinking your coffee. Maybe I’ll try it, too.”
; Moments like this were the reason I’d gotten into doing therapy in the first place. Here was classic transference—Olivia identifying with me. I felt a surge of satisfaction.
Later that afternoon, I met Daphne in front of the Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Unit. We were strolling down the path toward the cafeteria. The air smelled loamy. The forsythia was budding, and one bright yellow witch-hazel bush was in bloom. Daphne lit a cigarette.
“I don’t know,” she said, when I told her she might be needed to testify at the hearing.
“Olivia has given her permission,” I said.
Daphne didn’t answer at first. “What kinds of questions are they going to ask?” she said finally.
“They may ask what you know about how Olivia became addicted to Ritalin. How she abused it. And they may ask your opinion about the messages she wrote to her mother.”
Daphne squinted into the low sun. “Has Olivia told you she’s been stealing Ritalin?”
“She has.”
“And you’re sure my testimony will help her? You could be opening up a tin of …” Daphne waved her hand as she tried to come up with the expression.
“A can of worms?” I suggested.
Daphne nodded.
“You’re right, it could backfire. Especially since the DA can ask you anything he likes once you’re on the stand. Is there anything that he could ask that would be a problem?”
Daphne paused, midstep. “I don’t think so. But lawyers can twist your words. It’s what they do.”
She was right. And Monty Sherman was a gifted word twister. “Her lawyer will call you only if it’s necessary,” I said.
“You know I’ll do whatever I can to help. Olivia is innocent.”
Despite our differences, that was one thing we agreed on. “I’ll let them know,” I said. We resumed our walk. “By the way, I’ve seen the raw data from Channing’s Kutril study.”
“How did you manage that?” Daphne asked. She sounded surprised.
“Destler showed me the files.”
“Ah,” Daphne said, as if that explained something. “So they had it all along.” I couldn’t read her look.