Addiction (7 page)

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Authors: G. H. Ephron

BOOK: Addiction
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She dropped MacRae in his tracks. He flashed his silver badge. “Detective Sergeant Joseph MacRae. Of course, we'll follow standard police procedures.”
“Dis-cre-tion.” Daphne enunciated each syllable. “Right?”
“Right,” MacRae muttered, gritting his teeth.
Just then, there was a crash. Olivia was no longer with us in the corridor. MacRae pushed Daphne aside, and I followed him inside. The room had turned cool, and the acrid smell was gone. Through the broken window, blue lights from the police cruiser pulsed against the tree branches. Olivia was sitting on the floor, covered in blood. She breathed heavily; her face was flushed. She held a shard of glass and drew it along her inner arm, creating another long, bright red line.
“Olivia, no!” I cried out. I took hold of her wrist and held firm. She dropped the glass. It wasn't until Olivia screamed in pain that I realized how hard I was holding her, much harder than was necessary to keep her from hurting herself. I picked her up in my arms. She was trembling.
She stared at me, terror in her eyes. “We're going to get you somewhere safe,” I told her. “No one's going to hurt you. Please, don't struggle. We need to stop the bleeding.”
“Take her to Admissions, Peter,” Daphne said. I started off. “I'll telephone and have someone meet you in the foyer downstairs,” she called after me.
“Hold on …” MacRae bellowed.
I hurried to the elevator and stood there, listening to the sound of my own breath heaving, like the bass line to Olivia's shallow, rapid panting. MacRae caught up with us.
“This is Dr. Temple's daughter,” I said before he could ask. Olivia had gone limp in my arms. “She was here when I got here. Dr. Temple was already dead.” It was, strictly speaking, the truth.
“I'll need to talk to her,” he said. “And I'll need to talk to you, too.”
“It can't be right now,” I told him. “You can see that for yourself.” The elevator door opened. I stepped in and turned to face him. He had his mouth open and his arm half raised, but he let the doors slide shut.
A pair of burly mental-health workers were waiting for me in the lobby with a gurney. I set Olivia down, and they strapped her in place. As we went out onto the walk, a police officer emerged from the shrubbery carrying Channing's laptop computer. I realized then how the window in Channing's office had broken—Olivia had thrown the computer through it.
The police officer shouted. MacRae appeared at the open window. The officer held up the laptop. Now Olivia screamed and strained to sit up. She was staring, wild-eyed, at the police officer. One of the straps came loose. One of the men held her down, and the other one snapped the buckle and pulled the strap taut. She was no match for them.
Olivia kept screaming as we ran the quarter mile from the Drug and Alcohol Unit to Admitting. By the time we got up the ramp and inside, her voice was hoarse and her head was thrashing from side to side.
Nurse Dot O'Neill and the admitting doc were expecting us. Nurse O'Neill was a formidable figure of indeterminate middle age, monolithic and apparently without joints. She inspected the slashes on Olivia's arm and didn't seem impressed. She leaned over Olivia and held her by the shoulders. “Ms. Temple, you need to calm down and relax,” she said, her voice low and soothing. “We're going to dress your wound and try to help you—”
Olivia spat at her.
Calmly, Nurse O'Neill wiped her face. She gave me an irritated look. The admitting doc nodded, and Nurse O'Neill went to the
med room and came back with a hypodermic syringe. She pushed up Olivia's sleeve, steadied herself, and jabbed the needle in. Slowly, she depressed the plunger. Even before the syringe had been withdrawn, Olivia started to go limp. Within moments, her face went from screaming red to pink. She seemed to shrink as her body turned slack. Her eyelids fluttered, and her eyes lost their focus.
I called hospital personnel from the lobby and got Drew's phone number. I stood there, holding the phone to my ear, but I couldn't dial. The numbers I'd written on the pink message pad seemed to swim together. My knees buckled, as if someone had given them a chop from behind. I sat, my head buzzing. How could this be happening again? Another woman I cared for, killed violently.
I barely heard the dial tone disappear, then chimes and the voice, “Please hang up the phone and try your call again … .” I could see the door to Channing's office swing open. There, sitting erect in the butterscotch leather chair, my wife, Kate, was staring back at me, eyes wide open. Something about her look made me snap to.
Ralston Bridges had created a scene that pointed to me as my wife's murderer. Was that happening again? Had someone created a scene that was supposed to make it look … look like what? Like Channing had killed herself? Only Olivia walked in, just as I had? And like me, she was too late.
When I looked at the piece of paper again, Drew's phone number was in perfect focus. I punched in the numbers. His assistant answered. She put me on hold.
As I held the phone to my ear, I noticed the smell of coffee. I sniffed. It was my hand. I looked down. There was blood all over my shirt, on my trousers. My stomach turned over. But where had I picked up the coffee smell? I didn't remember spilling any on myself while I was waiting for Channing in the cafeteria. Had to have been from somewhere in Channing's office.
Drew's assistant came back on the line. “I'm sorry, he's off-site.” She promised to page him and get him to return my call ASAP.
It was another thirty minutes before Drew called back. Apologizing, he said he had his beeper turned off. I told him what had happened. He didn't say anything. Just that he was on his way, and thanks for being there for Olivia.
I was waiting on the front steps when he pulled up in his silver Mercedes and parked in a tow zone. He looked tired, his dark suit rumpled, his ice-blue silk tie loose at the neck. His bloodshot eyes gleamed, slightly manic. That's what it was like, those first few hours. You sped along on some chemical the body produced to make you numb and functional, leaving you unprepared for the full body-slam of grief that would flatten you later. And then, even months later, a little detail, a smell even, could catapult you into despair.
“I'm so sorry,” I said. I grasped his hand in mine and put my other hand on his shoulder. What else was there to say?
“Did she suffer?” he asked. He smelled unwashed, musky under a veneer of aftershave.
At least I could answer that with certainty. “No.”
Drew pulled away. “Did she leave a note? Anything to explain …” He looked haggard, his jowls hanging loose from his jaw.
I told him about the message on her computer screen. “Can't live with myself? I'm so sorry?” He echoed the words in disbelief. “That's it?”
“I didn't see anything else.”
“But that explains nothing.” He blinked, held his hand over his mouth. “I can't believe …”
“Maybe she was under some additional stress?”
Drew looked at me, stone-faced. “She was angry, Peter. Not suicidal.”
“Olivia was there,” I told him. His face collapsed. “It's not clear when Olivia arrived or what she saw,” I said gently.
He just stood there, staring up at the building, his arms dangling useless at his sides. “Olivia's in there?” he asked.
A cell phone rang. Then again. It wasn't until the third ring that Drew roused himself, pulled it out of his pocket, and answered it.
A look of annoyance crossed his face as he listened. He turned away from me and cupped his hand over his mouth.
“I can't talk now,” he said, his voice impatient. A pause. “She's dead, all right?” He exhaled a sigh. “I don't know. I'll call you later.” Then a softer, gentler “Promise.”
He turned back. He seemed confused, as if he didn't know what the next thing should be. “Would you like to see Olivia?” I suggested.
He nodded, grateful. “Is she okay?” he asked.
I licked my lips. “No, she's not.”
“She didn't try to—” Drew started.
“She's fine now. She threw a computer through a window and cut herself with broken glass. She's being evaluated.”
Drew was already moving up the front steps. I followed him. In Admitting, Dot O'Neill presided from the nurses' station.
“I'm looking for my daughter,” Drew said.
“This is Olivia Temple's father,” I told her.
She indicated down the hall. “One-twelve.”
Drew rushed ahead of me. He pushed open the door to the room and took a step inside before freezing. A nurse and two doctors already filled the small space. Olivia was on the bed. Her forearms were bandaged and her eyes were half closed. The nurse was taking blood while the younger of the two doctors was listening to her chest.
“She's been sedated,” I told Drew.
“For God's sake,” Drew sputtered, “she's just a kid.”
“She tried to harm herself,” the older doctor said as he wrote in her chart. He looked at Drew. “You're the young lady's father?”
Drew swallowed. “Yes.”
“We have her stabilized. Rapid pulse rate, dilated pupils, high blood pressure, cold sweat.” He tilted his head to one side and squinted at Drew. “Do you know if your daughter is taking any drugs or prescription medication? Diet pills?”
Drew looked dazed. “Nothing that I know of. Beyond the occasional No-Doz. You know kids.”
The doctor sniffed, waited a beat before saying “Mr. Temple, we found about a half-dozen Ritalin tablets loose in her pocket.”
“Ritalin?” Drew seemed genuinely astonished. “I thought that was for hyperactive kids.”
“Drew, perhaps her psychiatrist was prescribing it?” I suggested.
“If she was, then I knew nothing about it. And I don't think my wife did either.”
The doctor added, “She also had about a half-dozen physician's sample packs. Ritalin, Ativan, Prozac.” He made some notes on his clipboard. “We haven't got her blood work back yet, but it looks like she should be admitted to the Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Unit.”
I tried not to explode. I'd explained the circumstances when I'd checked her in. Couldn't they communicate one thing from the front desk to back here? I swallowed my irritation. “We can't do that,” I said. “Her mother ran that unit. And her mother just died. Can you admit her to the Neuropsychiatric Unit?”
“Neuropsychiatric?” Drew asked.
“We were going to evaluate her anyway”—I paused—“to rule out Asperger's.” I was improvising. She didn't need to be admitted to rule out Asperger's, but that was the kind of verbiage we needed. “Now, she's made a serious suicide attempt and needs to be in a safe place where she can get the help she needs. She should be admitted under the care of Dr. Kwan Liu.”
“Suicidal depression. Rule out Asperger's.” The doc wrote as he said the words. Then he shot me a questioning look. “I suppose. If that's what the family wants, given the circumstances.”
Drew seemed at a loss for words. Finally, he said to me, “Whatever you think is best … .” His voice faded out. “Can I talk to her?”
“You can try,” the doctor replied. “She's heavily sedated.”
Drew pulled a chair up to the bed. He ran his hand gently across Olivia's face, sweeping back a few strands of hair stuck to her forehead. He leaned close and whispered, “Olivia? Can you hear me?”
There was no response.
He bowed his head. “Oh, Livvy. I'm so sorry all this is happening.
I'm so—” His voice broke. He put his hands to his face and shuddered. “It's going to be okay, baby.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. “Everything is going to be okay,” he said into the handkerchief.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “Do you need anything?” I asked him. “Want me to call anyone?”
He shook his head. I left him sitting there with her.
I WALKED back across the hospital grounds, unaware of anyone or anything except the anger and disbelief roiling inside of me. Why was this happening? I couldn't help wondering, if Channing hadn't shown up at our lecture at the Medical School last week, who would have found her?
When I got to my building, I took a look back across the rolling lawns to the Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Unit. The lights atop the emergency vehicles were flashing—police blue, ambulance red and white. I winced as two white-suited men emerged from the building, carrying what looked like a body bag. That's how they'd taken Kate out of our house. Ralston Bridges had gone out on a stretcher, and Kate in black plastic. I'd nearly killed him when I rushed upstairs belatedly to find her already gone, her throat slit. I struck him with an iron rod from Kate's work table. Then I kicked him, over and over. If it hadn't been for my mother, I'd have still been kicking him, long after he was dead.
I turned and pushed my way through the crowd of gawkers standing on the steps. “Do you know what happened?” a woman in a dark coat asked as I squeezed past.
I didn't trust myself to speak, so I just shook my head. They'd all find out, soon enough.
I went upstairs. I wanted to go into my office, close the door, and be alone. But Daphne was in the hall waiting for me, pacing up and down. She was ashen-faced, her eyes rimmed with red. “How's Livvy?” she asked.
I found my voice. “Stabilized. Drew is with her.”
I opened my office door and followed her inside. Even though the room was overheated, Daphne shivered as she took a seat and pulled her sweater around her. “It's too awful,” she said. “Too bloody awful.”
She reached into her skirt pocket and came up with a package of cigarettes. “Do you mind?”
With a trembling hand, she edged a cigarette from the pack. I went around behind my desk to sit, ducking so I wouldn't hit my head on the sloping ceiling. I opened the little window an inch.
Daphne held the cigarette between her lips, took out a lighter and lit up. The tip of the cigarette quivered, then it glowed red as she inhaled. She held her breath and closed her eyes, then exhaled gently. It had the same effect as the shot had for Olivia. Instant calm.
“Olivia didn't do it,” Daphne said.
“She was holding the gun,” I said.
“Codswallop.” The word exploded in a puff of smoke. “There's got to be another explanation.” She took a long drag and coughed.
I pushed over an empty mug. “Such as?”
“It seems perfectly obvious. Channing killed herself. Olivia came in, found her. For some reason, she took the gun. We found her holding it by the barrel.”
I wanted to scream at her, “Channing would never commit suicide.” It wasn't possible. But shoddy research methods and improper behavior were equally impossible. Daphne's explanation did account for the scene I'd stumbled into. “You really think Channing committed suicide?” I asked, keeping my expression bland.
Daphne looked past me.
“Has she seemed distraught?” I asked.
“We talked yesterday.” Daphne stared at the cigarette. “I was all wrapped up in my own problems. Nattering on about moving from my house into a flat, now that …” She waved the cigarette in the air, leaving behind a scribble of smoke in the air. “It's just the sort of thing Robert used to manage … .” She hardened her face, but a tear trickled down her cheek. “Of course, if Robert were still with us, I wouldn't be having to move.” She stopped suddenly, as if embarrassed by the stridency in her own voice.
“I'm sorry,” I said, feeling as if there should be something more I could say but not knowing what.
“When Robert died, I felt like I'd lost one of my arms,” Daphne said. “Now I've lost the other.” Smoke pooled at the ceiling. “I should have seen it coming. If only I'd been paying attention.”
“Seen what coming?”
“You haven't spent much time with her lately, have you, Peter?” It wasn't an accusation. “Channing was very good at making the world think she'd got everything battened down. But underneath it all … she was in crisis. The pressure of her work. The hatchet job they did on her research in
JAMA
—that was a profound shock to her. Olivia possibly headed for a psychological break. Drew …” Daphne left the name hanging. “She asked me to prescribe some Ativan to quiet her nerves.”
It was typical Channing. She could easily have prescribed it for herself, but consulting another doc was more aboveboard. “Lots of people need help once in a while,” I said.
“But for Channing? To ask for a sedative?”
I agreed. “She'd have to be pretty upset.”
Daphne said, “She clearly was. And perhaps she was taking more than she should have.”
We sometimes talk about Ativan as “dehydrated booze” because it affects the same areas of the brain as alcohol. It disinhibits. Throwing a glass of cognac at a colleague seemed very out of character. A sedative turning Channing Temple suicidal? A week earlier, I'd have dismissed the possibility outright. Now I wasn't so sure.
She was under tremendous pressure. Her daughter was troubled. Add to the mix the rumors of impropriety. I realized that the hesitancy I sensed in her when we met after the lecture probably had nothing to do with me and my loss.
“Channing.” Daphne breathed the name. She loosened her hold on her sweater and leaned back. “She was remarkable, even as a resident. Bright. Insightful. Honest to a fault.” Daphne laughed. “She'd smite me for saying those words. ‘Can't be honest to a fault, Daphne. Contradiction in terms,'” Daphne said, her voice flattened out into an American accent. “She's always been an excellent psychiatrist, and I don't see why anyone would say otherwise. Her patients will be devastated. Particularly … oh, my.” Daphne took a last puff, and then stubbed out the butt against the inside of the cup. “I wonder—”
“What?”
“Channing was working with a young woman. Suicidal. She came to me about it, afraid she was losing her perspective.” Daphne focused on a spot somewhere in the air between us. “She felt a strong kinship with this woman. But it dredged up a lot of issues for her. Issues I thought we'd put to rest years ago.”
This did make suicide seem a bit more plausible. “You're suggesting Channing was getting too close to this patient?” I asked.
Daphne's eyebrows raised. “Was I?”
“She discussed the case with you?”
Daphne picked at her sweater sleeve, pulling away brown pills. “Well, only in general terms.” Maybe Daphne didn't want to add another boundary violation to the pile of true and untrue transgressions Channing could no longer defend herself against. “Peter, I've always had a supervisory relationship with Channing. She was scrupulously discreet, and I have no idea who the patient is. But I can't help wondering if she wasn't experiencing the effects of projective identification.”
Projective identification. It was a concept I'd once dismissed as far-fetched—until it happened to me. I was working with a patient who was obsessive about germs. He wore rubber gloves all the time,
couldn't stand to be touched. Every night, he boiled all the doorknobs in his apartment. I was seeing him twice a week when I found myself rubbing my own hands together, wiping them over and over against my trousers, unable to shake the feeling that they were dirty. I'm sure the stress I was under made me more susceptible—Kate had been dead only four months.
It's something therapists refer to as feeling “lost in familiar places,” when you become enmeshed in your patient's feelings, even though you know they have nothing to do with you. If I'd been my own therapist, I could have explained it—something about his need to wash his hands connected to my feelings of guilt, which, like the blood on Kate's studio floor, I couldn't wash away. Sounds so logical, now that I can hold it out at a distance and examine it. At the time, there was nothing logical about it.
Channing was at about the age when her own mother committed suicide, if I remembered correctly. If she was identifying with a suicidal patient, then perhaps stress, combined with the sedating effects of the drug, altered her judgment, reducing her resistance to suggestion even further. I wondered if the autopsy would find more than therapeutic levels of Ativan.
Everything pointed to suicide. I could chew on the possibility, appreciate all the contributing factors, but I couldn't make myself swallow.
“Let's say she was suicidal,” I said. “Why pick that particular time to kill herself, when she knew Olivia was about to meet her at her office?”
“I can't explain it, I confess.” Daphne rolled a bit of brown sweater fuzz between her thumb and forefinger.
I couldn't explain it either. I couldn't accept it. She'd never have left her daughter to find her, the way she'd found her mother.
“As much experience as I have with human behavior,” Daphne said, “there are still moments like this when I find myself at a loss to explain.”
We sat there in silence. I was missing a budget meeting that I'd spent an hour yesterday preparing for. Today that seemed unimportant.
I turned on the desk lamp. The little pool of light only intensified the surrounding gloom.
“Has Olivia been admitted?” Daphne asked.
“To the Neuropsychiatric Unit.”
“Neuropsychiatric?” Daphne exclaimed. “Why on earth—”
She was right. There were better choices—the Adolescent Unit or Affective Disorders Unit would have made more sense. I didn't want to admit that I hadn't considered any of them. Channing had asked me to take care of Olivia, and that was what I was going to do. “We couldn't admit her to the Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Unit,” I said.
“Still … .”
Channing's voice came back to me.
I want another opinion.
She'd been adamant. In the midst of a crisis, Olivia had pulled away from Daphne. I was convinced I'd done the right thing. I just couldn't defend it.
“I know you've been working with her,” I said gently. “Channing told me that when she asked me to evaluate Olivia.”
“She never mentioned she'd asked you for an opinion.” Daphne sounded surprised, hurt.
“To rule out Asperger's syndrome.”
Daphne snorted. “Asperger's, my ass.”
“I doubt if she's Asperger's,” I agreed. “But I suspect she may have some less serious but related difficulty.” There were plenty of indications that Olivia was having problems relating emotionally. The mood swings. The flat demeanor. The way she used her flamboyant appearance to keep people away. The friendships that were mediated by computer. “Judging from her actions, she is suicidal and needs to be watched. She had drugs in her pocket when she was admitted. Were you prescribing anything?”
“We were trying her on Ritalin,” Daphne said.
“Drew said he didn't know she was taking Ritalin.”
“Channing may not have told him. We just started trying it.”
“Was it helping?”
“Yes. I think it helped her keep focused. That's one of Olivia's
problems, you know. She's easily overwhelmed. She needs structure.”
“I noticed she makes lists,” I said.
Daphne smiled. “That's one of my interventions, a coping strategy to help her keep track of what she needs to do.”
I wondered if Daphne had seen Olivia's long lists of items, where large and small activities, important and unimportant, daily and onetime tasks, were thrown together. It was a structure, yes. A linear structure. And if I were Olivia, even one of those lists would have made getting through the day seem even more daunting. I wondered if Daphne had the measure of her patient. Already I suspected she was trying to force-fit Olivia into a preconceived mold. But I didn't have enough information about Olivia yet to know for sure.
I said, “Of course, we'll consult you on her treatment—as soon as Olivia is conscious and I have permission to discuss her case with you.”
Daphne's jaw dropped. Then her look hardened. “You'll let me know what I can do to help.”
The last thing I wanted was to get into a tug-of-war over Olivia's treatment. “Of course. Right now, we're stabilizing her.”
“And the police?” Daphne asked.
“We'll try to keep them away from her as long as we can.”
“They think it's suicide. I told them the gun was on the floor by the chair when I got there. You'll say the same, won't you?” I didn't answer. “For Olivia's sake.”
It made me uneasy. Given a choice between whether Olivia killed her own mother or Channing killed herself, I'd pick neither. But what did that leave?
After Daphne left, my phone rang. It was the hospital CFO, Arnold Destler. That wasn't so unusual. What surprised me was that he placed the call himself—usually his assistant called you and then left you hanging while Destler took his good, sweet time picking
up. “Peter, I wanted to remind you of the protocol in these situations.” These situations? He made it sound like the violent death of a psychiatrist was a routine event. “If the press contacts you, you're to redirect the call to Public Affairs.”

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