by Robert Bloch
Q. Doctor, can you tell us something about how it feels to perform a miracle on such a remarkably rich man?
A. One, I do not perform miracles. I operate. Depending upon my skill and the conditions which preexist, I either succeed or I don’t. Two, I do not operate on a checkbook. I operate on people. Three, surgery of this nature is dependent for its success upon the specialized effort and skills of an entire group, a surgical team as it were, with each member making a vital contribution to the outcome. I count myself most fortunate in being able to work with and to rely upon such a team. Some of them, as you can see, are present with me now, and others are not. All of them deserve full credit for what they have done to help bring about the success of this operative procedure. (Applause) Gentlemen, I’m going to ask you to excuse me now from any further questioning. Thank you.
Excerpt From the Diary of Natalie Everett
Under Dateline October 15
Catharsis, that’s the name of the game, and as far as I’m concerned it is a game, no matter what Gradwell said. If you can’t talk to me, if you have a communication problem, write it down. Get yourself one of those diaries with a lock and key, you don’t have to show it to anyone until you feel that you really want to, but I’m hoping that one of these days you’ll reconsider and resume these sessions with me or with someone else and then what you’ve written may prove helpful. That’s what the man said, the shrink, the creep. Sorry, Dr. Gradwell, but you told me not to repress anything. And I just happen to think you’re a creep.
All right, so you’re not a creep; if you were, I wouldn’t be following your advice, would I? Keeping a secret diary like a schoolgirl—I mean the old-fashioned kind of schoolgirl, who knew how to read and write. Careful there, Natalie, your hostilities are showing.
But really it does seem a bit much as they say in the English movies. Writing everything down strikes me as a form of mental masturbation and no wonder I feel self-conscious.
No, I don’t feel self-conscious at all, I just feel confused. Identity crisis, Gradwell called it. They have labels for everything nowadays, brand names for everything. And that makes me Brand X, I suppose. Only I’m not buying it.
Very well then Natalie, just what are you doing? As if I didn’t know. All this scribbling, talking to myself really, like some kind of a nut. I know exactly what I’m doing. I’m trying to avoid what happened last night. I’m not going to talk about it, I’m not going to write about it, I’m not even going to think about it. Not anymore. It’s over and done with, there’s nothing I can do now to change what happened. Nothing. So forget it.
Today, then. After I got home this morning. Some homecoming. The place was a mess, I was a mess. And no Charlie. First I took a nice long hot bath and then I put on my slacks and cleaned the whole apartment. That took care of two messes, but not the big one. The no Charlie situation, of course. And there really doesn’t seem to be any way I can clean that up.
I knew he’d stayed over at the hospital again. I’d known it ever since I caught that flash on the late news last night at the studio, about Hollis Todd coming to L.A. A long time ago, before things started to happen, Hollis Todd had checked in for observation and I knew about his heart. Not from Charlie; even then, he wasn’t really talking to me anymore and certainly not about anything involving a patient, but I happened to hear Hollis Todd had checked in or observation and I knew. So if Todd was coming back now it meant only one thing—there was going to be a transplant. Which also meant that Charlie would be sweating it out down there waiting until they found the right donor, if they found one, because they can’t use just any heart. There has to be a match.
I wonder if Charlie called last night to tell me he wasn’t coming home. I’m positive he didn’t try the studio, but he might have called here. Which means he’s going to want to know where I was all that time, which means I’ll have to invent some kind of—
No. Take it easy there, girl. We’re not even going to think about last night, remember?
Today. Now. Just a little while ago. While I was working on the apartment I kept switching channels on the portable just in case there’d be something in the way of a late news bulletin. All they were doing was talking about Polanski, the great Tony Polanski, how he was dying. The same stuff that had been in the morning paper which I’d already put down the incinerator, along with the rest of the garbage. The last thing I wanted to hear was about him, so I switched off the TV and left it off while I made a late lunch. I had three cups of coffee and four cigarettes one right after the other. Of course what I was really doing was trying to keep from phoning the hospital and asking for Charlie. He always hates that, particularly at a time like this; besides I had a pretty good idea what was going on. Not that there’s really anything “pretty” or “good” about the idea, or about what was happening, either. You do like to hide behind words, don’t you? Come out, Natalie, come out come out wherever you are.
So. After I put the things in the dishwasher I turned on the TV again and there it was, this press conference with Geiger. Right at the beginning he mentioned Charlie, something about how he expected him to be there but he must have gone off to bed. Which told me he was all right.
Continued Extract From the Statement of Charles Everett, M.D.
Q. Dr. Everett, why didn’t you attend the post-transplant press conference as Dr. Geiger requested?
A. I was tired. There was no, uh, exhilaration such as there usually is when you finish an operation of this type.
Q. You were disturbed?
A. Yes.
Q. By what you saw.
A. Yes.
Q. Dr. Everett, I think it would be easier if you answered in somewhat more detail. What specifically was it that disturbed you?
A. Is this for the record?
Q. No, sir, it’s just a preliminary statement. Everything you say is voluntary. It cannot be held against you. Shall we continue?
A. Well, I don’t know what set me off. I had been under some strain. There were difficulties at home and I was sleeping at the hospital. And then I suppose I was irritated with Mr. De Toledano that night. He got to me. I don’t like to see medicine equated with a bank account. But here was Mr. Todd coming all the way across the country and then, just as if watches had been synchronized, bang, we had a donor for him. And not just any donor, but one of the rarest compatible donors around. I don’t want to imply that this was all active. But it was lurking somewhere in the back of my mind. It must have been, to make me notice the things I did.
Q. Which were?
A. Well, first, there was that circular abrasion on Mr. Polanski’s neck. It was fresh and looked like it came from some sort of friction burn. Not the sort of thing that happens normally in this kind of accident. Then there was the presence of clotted blood, not just on the lips but on the teeth. And I noticed what seemed to be an unusual amount of foreign matter under the fingernails. I wanted to take a closer look. That’s why I ordered the body not to be released.
Q. There could be several explanations for what you saw?
A. Right now I can think of a couple of dozen.
Q. What did you do then after the operation?
A. I went to the hospital morgue. I ordered the attendant to remove the body from the freezer and place it on a table in the examination room. I told him I wanted to be alone.
Q. What did you expect to find?
A. I don’t know. At this point I was already beginning to feel as if I’d made a mistake. It was like waking up in the middle of a bad dream. Everything is all right and you feel slightly foolish. That’s how I felt. But I decided to go ahead. I did want to make a thorough examination of that body, just to make sure.
Q. What did you do?
A. Well, I took a syringe and some sterile solution and removed specimens of blood from the lips and teeth. Then I cleaned the fingernails with tweezers and dissolved some of the substance in sterile solution. It was dried blood. Now I had two vials—one containing blood specimens from the m
outh and teeth, and the other containing blood specimens from under the nails. I took them into the morgue lab. I asked Miss Johnson to run off a test and give me the blood types on both samples. I waited while she did so. Both specimens—from the mouth and from the fingernails—were the same.
Q. Was the blood Mr. Polanski’s?
A. Mr. Polanski’s blood-type was AB-negative. This blood was B-positive.
Q. What did you do with the specimens?
A. I told Miss Johnson to file them for me. Under my name. Nobody was to touch them.
Q. What else did you do?
A. I went back into the examination room. I examined the neck abrasion closely. It was a definite friction burn. There were also a series of contusions under the arms.
Q. What would these indicate?
A. If someone is trying to ward off a blow, he would put his arms up in front of him, the underside out.
Q. Wouldn’t Mr. Polanski have done this instinctively at the moment of impact with the car?
A. Yes, but the contusions would have been uniform. There was no pattern to the contusions under the arms. They were vertical, horizontal, diagonal.
Q. Is that all?
A. No. There was a fracture above Mr. Polanski’s left temple.
Q. Couldn’t that result from the accident?
A. It could, yes. But the condition of the body indicated that Mr. Polanski received the force of the impact full face. And this trauma looked as though it were the result of contact with a blunt instrument. Of course right away I thought of the wheelchair.
Q. Mr. Polanski’s wheelchair?
A. That’s right. It had been brought into the hospital, along with his clothing and effects. They usually keep this stuff in lockers in a storage room outside the morgue and release it to the next of kin when they release the body. So I had the attendant bring it in. It was a mangled piece of metal, as you can imagine. The brake handle had apparently come off at impact in the accident.
Q. In other words, this could account for the head wound—the handle coming off and flying up to strike Mr. Polanski’s temple.
A. Yes. There was blood on the handle. But at both ends.
Q. Did you run a test on the blood?
A. The same procedure, two specimens in separate vials, one from each end of the handle. Miss Johnson gave me the results.
Q. What did you discover?
A. One specimen matched Mr. Polanski’s own blood type.
Q. And the other?
A. It matched the blood taken from Mr. Polanski’s lips and from under his fingernails. B-positive, not his blood type.
Q. Dr. Everett, what conclusion did you draw?
A. I didn’t then. It seemed—it seemed as though I was back in the bad dream again. I wanted to think it over. I wanted to talk to someone. So I left the hospital and drove home. It’s about four miles. I wanted to talk to my wife.
Continued Excerpt Front the Diary of Natalie Everett
Under Dateline October 15
It must have been about seven o’clock when Charlie came home. I’d just finished supper—God, how long has it been since I’ve fixed dinner, a real dinner-type dinner just for the two of us? Anyway, supper, a couple of cold cuts and a salad, that’s what I had, and I was putting the things away in the refrigerator when he walked in. He looked awful. I’ve seen him before after these operations and I have a pretty good idea of what he must go through, but this time he was just drained, completely drained.
The terrible part of it is, he didn’t say anything. If he’d only say something I’d know what to do. Even if he started yelling at me, arguing, I could at least yell back. Not that I want to fight with Charlie, but even a quarrel is still some kind of communication. It’s this silent treatment that gets me. I don’t know how to handle it, I can’t reach him, he just freezes up the minute he walks in and sees me. So it’s the same old story, trying to pretend nothing’s really wrong.
I asked him if he’d had anything to eat, would he like me to fix him some bacon and eggs or a sandwich. And he said no, all he wanted was a drink.
I can’t remember the last time he had a drink, maybe New Year’s Eve, but I didn’t say anything. I got a bottle of Scotch down from the top shelf in the pantry and he took it and poured himself a good stiff shot into a water glass and carried it into the living room. Then he sat down and stared out the window, just as if I wasn’t there.
I couldn’t stand it any longer so I asked him was something wrong, had something gone wrong with the operation. He said no, the surgery had gone fine. So I tried again and asked why he hadn’t gone to the press conference.
He said, “You watched it?” and I told him of course I had, I was home all day. He gave me a funny look then and said, “What about last night, you weren’t home last night. I know because I called you twice and no answer.”
I told him I was sleeping, I didn’t hear the phone ring.
Then he asked me how come I stayed home all day, why hadn’t I gone to the studio. And me and my big mouth, before I could think I said I was too tired because of the late session, we’d cut three numbers. He picked right up on that and said oh, then you weren’t home last night, you were at the studio. And I said yes, I was, what did he expect me to do, sit around the apartment day and night waiting for a few kind words over the telephone? He had his work to do and I had mine.
God, it sounds stupid, all this “Then I said and then he said” nonsense. Stupid and ugly. But he’d caught me off-guard and I had to say something. That part about the studio was a mistake; even if nothing had happened last night, it was still a mistake.
“I just said I was asleep because I know you don’t like to hear me talk about the studio,” I told him. And that part is true, he hates for me to even mention it—sometimes you’d think I was working in a whorehouse instead of for a recording outfit. “I’m sorry,” I said. “You come home beat and I flare up at you. All I really want is for you to tell me what’s the matter.”
He took a big swallow of his drink and stared out the window again. It was starting to rain. And then he said he couldn’t tell me what the matter was, he couldn’t put it together in his mind. Things eat Charlie alive before he ever tells anybody. I remember when somebody offered him that practice out in Pacific Palisades, a very good practice, big money, and it ate at him for two weeks, should he or shouldn’t he, before he ever told me about it. This is the way he was tonight. He gulped down the rest of the Scotch and then he said, “I’m going to sleep here, all right?” “You pay the rent,” I said. That big mouth again—the second it came out I wished I’d bitten off my tongue instead.
So he went into the guest room.
I turned out the lamps in the living room and sat there watching the rain through the window. Natalie the Tragic Heroine. The Misunderstood Wife.
I know I should have gone in and talked to him. But I can’t talk to him, not about the things that really matter. I can’t talk to him about last night . . .
About tonight. I sat there watching the rain and after about half an hour it stopped. I lay down on the couch and covered myself with my afghan and tried to sleep.
It must have been about eleven o’clock when Charlie got up. I heard him come into the living room and I pretended I was asleep. He started to walk past me and then he leaned over and tucked the afghan up around my shoulders. I kept my eyes closed and I heard him go over to the front door and open it. He left very quietly. I don’t know where he went. Maybe he just wanted to get away from me.
I wish I could get away from me too. That’s why I got up after he left and decided to write this. I couldn’t stop thinking about last night and I thought perhaps if I kept my mind occupied—
I’m still thinking about last night.
Continued Extract From the Statement of Walter Geiger, M.D.
. . . Yes, in Bel Air. Dr. Everett rang my bell about eleven-thirty that night, eleven forty-five. I had been resting since I arrived home late in the afternoon and I was just fi
nishing a snack in the breakfast room when Edith, Mrs. Geiger, showed him in. He apologized but I told him it wasn’t necessary, I was expecting him. We went into the den and I asked him to sit down. He was very tense. I’d noticed a nervous reaction in him before after similar surgeries and I consider it natural enough under the circumstances, I sometimes feel it myself. But this was different. It was more like the tension I’d sensed earlier that day, midway through the operation. Now he’d come here specifically to talk to me and it seemed as though he didn’t know how to begin. I decided the only way to break the ice was by a direct approach. I asked him why he’d ordered Tony Polanski’s body held. I told him the family had called, that they wanted the body, and that I had released it to them before I left the hospital. Dr. Everett said, “It’s been embalmed, cleaned up?” I told him yes, I would assume so. And inasmuch as it was getting late I’d appreciate it if he’d come to the point. What I expected to hear from him then was some explanation for what had happened in surgery. But I certainly did not expect the explanation he offered.
Q. Which was?
A. Dr. Everett had a notion, based on various pieces of extremely tenuous medical information, information open to several interpretations, that Tony Polanski had not been injured in precisely the way outlined by the accident report. He said he had first noticed these discrepancies while the body was being prepared for surgery, and had subsequently ordered the witholding of a release. Following the completion of the operation he went to the morgue and conducted an examination which, to him, seemed to confirm his initial reactions. He mentioned throat abrasions, a head wound inconsistent with the accident as reported.
Q. Did you make any comment upon his statements at this time?
A. Yes, I did. I reminded him that an accident report is merely a record of what one or two exceedingly overwrought witnesses think happened. I told him what we both knew, what any intern on ambulance duty knows—scarves get caught in things and then you see throat abrasions, pressure burns. Heads get in the way of metallic objects, and a wheelchair is such an object. “But that doesn’t explain the blood,” he said. “There was blood under Polanski’s fingernails, as if he’d clawed somebody, and blood around his mouth. I had samples tested, and it’s B-positive. Somebody else’s blood.” I told him this did not strike me as unduly significant, considering that the driver of the car had, by his own testimony, jumped out and tried to help the boy. I reminded him that the driver of the car suffered glass lacerations, lacerations he considered too minor for treatment, but which undoubtedly had caused some initial bleeding. This, of course, would explain why traces of his blood were found on Tony Polanski’s body. Clawing is not an unnatural reflex under such circumstances. I also reminded Charlie that this accident was immediately reported by the driver’s wife. Nobody was running away from it.