Amnesia (25 page)

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Authors: G. H. Ephron

BOOK: Amnesia
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IT TURNED into a crazy morning. Four new patients had been admitted. Two keep us busy. Three is a stretch. My leaving for court that afternoon didn't help. Thank goodness Gloria was back.
Twice that morning, I noticed Maria Whitson. Once, she was pacing the hall. When she saw me, she ducked into her room. A second time, she was standing in front of the nurses' station. I'd meant to ask her why she wasn't participating in any of the morning activities, but Mr. Kootz picked just that moment to start head banging — his own this time — so I got distracted.
Later that day, Kwan dropped me at the subway so I could get to the courthouse. I arrived just after the lunch break. I got myself a large cup of coffee and rode up in the elevator. I wrote off the waves of nausea to insufficient sleep.
I got off the elevator and sank down on a bench in the hall outside the courtroom. My hand shook as I folded back the coffee lid and a squirt of scalding liquid ended up on my pants. I took a sip. It tasted vile.
I peeled my shirt off my back and wiped a slick of sweat from my forehead. I stared at the wood grain of the bench, the stains
on the gray-speckled linoleum. One of the double doors to the courtroom opened and Annie slid out into the waiting area. I tried to get up and found that I couldn't.
She looked at me, concerned. “You look pooped.”
“I didn't sleep very well.”
“You need help getting pumped?”
Pumped. That was what I might have needed in the old days. Now, I needed a whole lot more than pumped. I was afraid that when I tried to walk, I'd lose traction.
“Thanks, no. I'll be fine, once I get going. How long before … ?”
“Shouldn't be long now. Fifteen minutes, max.” She turned to go and paused. “Can I get you some water?”
It was such a simple question and I didn't know the answer.
She looked at me hard. “You're not okay, are you?”
I closed my eyes and opened them. “Not at this very moment. But I will be. There's nothing you can do, Annie. This is something I have to do for myself.”
Annie went back, and I set the coffee aside. I took off my jacket and lay it on the bench. I folded my hands loosely in my lap, centered myself, closed my eyes, and focused. I imagined daybreak, the sun rising on the river. I tried to feel the coolness of the air, see the smoothness of the water's surface, feel my feet locked in place, my body pulling, pulling as the boat cut through the water. I imagined gliding by the Esplanade where a parade of willows reach down to touch the water's edge. Slowly, the river faded. Concentrating on a spot between my eyes, I breathed slowly, in through the nose and out through the mouth.
When an officer came out and called my name, I had it together. I stood, put on my jacket, and strode purposefully into the courtroom.
It was much smaller than I'd remembered. The judge was at the far end, his desk on a raised platform. I sat in the witness box to the judge's left and was sworn in. Chip and Annie conferred
briefly before Chip stood and approached me.
He took me slowly through my credentials, point by point, encouraging and coaxing me along. He drew out into minutes a procedure that normally takes about thirty seconds. I knew the kid glove treatment was a stalling tactic designed to help me relax. And it worked. Any hesitation there might have been in my voice vanished after the first few questions. I settled back and felt my adrenaline kick in. Each question and answer was like another stroke on the river.
As we went through my areas of expertise, I surveyed the room. The jurors were lined up in two rows along one wall. Facing me, Annie sat at a table. Montrose Sherman and another lawyer sat at a matching table. I was only dimly aware of the spectators sitting in two rows of pews at the back of the room.
I almost didn't notice Stuart Jackson at Annie's side. Long strands of thinning brown hair were combed artfully over the top of his head. The skin hung from his face like a deflated balloon. He sat forward in his seat, listening intently. I hoped I wouldn't let him down.
“Remember,” Chip had warned me, “you're talking to people, not shrinks. Keep it simple. Your job is to teach them about memory.” So when he asked me to describe the tests I'd administered and how Syl had performed, I stuck to the basics.
As I explained each test, a middle-aged woman with short salt-and-pepper hair in the second row of the jury box sat in rapt attention. I tried to talk to her and ignore the balding older man sitting directly in front of her. He had his arms folded, torso turned away at an angle, one leg crossed over the other. The body language spoke volumes. The more I talked, the more his face solidified into an unpleasant frown. By the time I finished, the lady in the second row was still wide-eyed while the gentleman in the first row was slack-jawed, catching flies.
The judge called for a ten-minute break.
I met Chip and Annie in the hall. Really seeing Annie for the first time that day, I did a double take. She wore a dark blue
suit and high heels. Her wild hair was done up in a knot. The short skirt confirmed something I'd suspected. She had great legs. I must have been staring because she shifted uncomfortably under my gaze.
“Sorry,” I apologized, “it's just that you look so different.”
She flushed and grinned. “You noticed. That's something. You must be feeling better.”
“Let's take a stroll,” Chip suggested. We walked in silence to the far end of the hall.
Annie's assessment was encouraging. “You did very well,” she said. “I thought the jury was with you.”
“That's a relief. I honestly wasn't sure what was coming across. It's been awhile. That guy in the front row was driving me nuts. In a minute he'd have been snoring.”
“That's our retired plumber,” Chip said. “Has two grown daughters. I don't think we're going to win any points with him.”
As we turned at the end of the hall and started to walk back, Chip commented, “Now, to face the lion.”
“I hope he had a hearty lunch,” I said.
“You're it,” Annie whispered.
MONTROSE SHERMAN was a compact, pale man with sharp gray eyes who held himself as if he had a broomstick up his ass. Everything about him was stiff and straight-arrow, from the razor creases in his dark pin-striped suit to the starch in his button-down collar. If he had any ethnicity, it had long since bleached out. If there were any laugh lines in his forty-year-old face, I couldn't find them.
While I waited on the stand, Sherman took his time. He straightened several thick file folders on the table in front of him, leaned over to whisper a comment to his colleague, took a sip from a glass of water. Then he picked up a densely scribbled pad of yellow paper, stood up, and strode to a spot directly between me and the jury. He held up the pad, creating a wall above which I could just see the deep vertical grooves that ran from the inside corner of each bushy eyebrow to his hairline. He peered at me over the top of the pad. I waited, squelching the urge to shift in my chair. He took a silver pen from his pocket and clicked it open.
It started innocuously enough. He said good afternoon. Then he asked me to describe my expertise in head injury.
“At the hospital, we're involved with a lot of head trauma cases. What I'm primarily interested in is the borderline between organic and functional illness. In other words, looking at an individual's illness and teasing apart the organic factors from the emotional factors.”
His disembodied voice floated from behind the yellow pad. “And, in this case, what were you asked to do?”
I answered carefully. “I was asked to help guide the defense in evaluating the memory difficulties that this particular individual has manifested and how they might affect the kind of testimony she might give.”
Sherman wrote several words on the yellow pad and underlined them.
“Dr. Zak,” he said, lowering the pad and crossing his arms, “you're not one of Sylvia Jackson's treating physicians, are you?”
“No, I am not,” I answered.
“You were hired by the defense specifically for this case?”
Here we go, I thought. “Yes, I was.”
“At that point, when you were hired, you weren't even asked to do an evaluation of Sylvia Jackson, were you? In fact, you were provided with certain limited information about the case and you were asked to guide the defense in certain areas.” The phrase “certain areas” took on sinister significance. “That's what you were asked to do, right?”
“That's correct,” I said, trying to keep my voice even.
“Evaluating the victim, Sylvia Jackson, putting her through — how many was it, twelve hours of tests — that was your idea, was it not?”
Obviously this still irritated the hell out of him. “Six hours,” I said. “Ms. Jackson's memory is a critical issue in this case.”
“So you asked Ms. Jackson to tell you what she remembered about how she was shot in order to help prepare the defense for this case. Is that correct?”
I could feel my hairline prickling. “No. I always ask the person
I'm evaluating to tell me how they were injured. It's standard operating procedure.”
“Standard operating procedure?” Sherman repeated slowly with mock surprise. “I take it you've been asked, for example, your opinion as to whether Sylvia Jackson could
in fact
recall what she told the police she
did
recall.”
“No, I haven't been asked that.”
“You have not?” He paused. The grooves in his forehead deepened as he stared at me straight on. “Then it's unclear to me what you mean by” — he referred to his yellow pad — “‘guiding the defense in evaluating memory deficits.' Could you explain that for me?”
“Sure,” I said agreeably. “I don't know whether she remembers what she purports to remember or not. I can't make that determination. I wasn't there. I don't know what actually happened. What I can do is make informed judgments about what her memory function is like now, following her very significant brain injury.”
Sherman looked at me stoically, tolerating my obtuseness. His eyes focused on the top of my head. I stifled the desire to smooth my hair.
“Is there some kind of acid test for whether or not a person can recall what she says she recalls?”
I stroked my chin. “Bottom line, if your question is, can you ever be certain that somebody recalls accurately an event that occurred in the past, then the answer is no. Not unless you have corroboration for that event.”
I wasn't expecting the question that followed. “Have you been provided with information about a prior encounter between Stuart Jackson, Sylvia Jackson, and Tony Ruggiero?”
“Yes,” I said cautiously.
“Okay. So you know there was a prior incident?”
“I do.”
“Is it your opinion that the details she gives about what happened
before she was shot are confused with the earlier encounter?”
“All I can say, definitively, is that she certainly has a tendency to do that now.”
“To do what now?”
“To mix together details from different events.”
“Okay. Do you have any opinion as to whether she's mixing
those
two things?”
“No.”
“And is there any way of telling whether or not she's mixing those two events?”
Sherman knew I'd say no before I said it.
He retreated behind his pad, flipped to the next page, and asked, “What have you been told about how Sylvia Jackson's memory returned to her?”
“My understanding is that several weeks after she woke up, she was interviewed by the police. And after some weeks, during the course of those interviews, she said she thought her ex-husband, Stuart Jackson, did it.”
“Okay. Based on your testing of Sylvia Jackson, would it surprise you to know that some weeks after she received her injury, she started having nightmares, saying things either in her sleep or immediately afterwards like ‘Please, don't leave me here — you can't leave me here like that'? Would that surprise you?”
Sherman was talking faster now and the volume and tone of his voice were rising. It pushed me into reverse. I answered quietly, “No.”
“After those first few weeks, instead of talking to the police, she told a nurse that Stuart Jackson shot her. Would that surprise you?”
“Would it surprise me that she'd tell a nurse?”
“Would it surprise you that she went from having nightmares to remembering who shot her?”
“No, it wouldn't surprise me.”
“And then a week or so later she was able to give the police
a more detailed account of what happened. Would that surprise you?”
“A more detailed account of what she
believed
happened.” The course correction broke his rhythm.
“Okay. Would that surprise you?”
“No.”
Then he was back on a roll, the volume rising. “And would it surprise you that four months later she couldn't remember a lot of the details she remembered earlier?”
“Is it surprising that she forgot details of what she
told
the police? No.”
A twitch beat a tattoo at the corner of his right eye. “Details of what she told the police?”
“Yes. You see, it's at least possible that what she
claims
occurred on the night she received her injury is inaccurate. I remind you, I don't know what happened that night. But it's certainly possible that she's making everything up.”
“Possible.” Sherman tasted the word. “Is it likely?”
“What do you mean, likely?”
“Is it more likely than not?”
I sighed — the poor man. His orderly mind with its sharp creases and right angles wanted to apply statistical probability. He'd choke on the glorious chaos of real human behavior. “I would say equally likely that what she's talking about happened or didn't happen. How she remembers information from before the injury is something I can't determine one way or another. Keep in mind, my evaluation has to do with her current cognitive status.”
By the time I'd finished, Montrose Sherman was looking at a crack in the ceiling, his mouth set in a grim line, his silver pen tapping rhythmically against the yellow pad. I could almost hear his little gray cells muttering, “Yadda, yadda, yadda.”
Then Sherman shifted gears. He asked a whole series of questions about the tests I'd administered. The jurors were good sports, but by the time Sherman was satisfied thirty minutes
later, even my salt-and-pepper friend's eyes were glazed over.
“And the content of these tests is as you have described them?” He cleared his throat for emphasis, bringing a few jurors to startled attention. “Houses? Cowboys? Bats and butterflies?”
“They're the standard tests,” I told him, bristling, “used by experts to evaluate cognitive functioning.”
I glanced at Chip. His raised eyebrow was telling me to stay calm.
“I understand that,” Sherman said, more to the jury than to me. “So you felt that Ms. Jackson's recollections of what happened to her weren't as important as how she remembered the pictures of houses and cowboys?”
He was baiting me. Once, I'd have been impervious. Now, I felt anger rising like bile in the back of my throat. “I had no way of validating her recollections. The only way a professional can get a sense of how someone deals with memory is by knowing exactly what the stimulus material — the test — is. I have no idea what happened to Ms. Jackson, but I
do
know that there are houses and cowboys in those test pictures.”
“I see,” Sherman said, leaning toward me. “So your findings did not rely on any information about the crime itself, is that correct?”
A yellow light flashed in my head as I answered, “Yes. That's correct.”
“Although you say you were not concerned with the details of this crime, it's true, is it not, that you were provided with some limited information about the crimes the defendant is charged with?”
“Yes.”
“You were provided with, for example, Detective MacRae's report containing Sylvia Jackson's statements last spring?”
“Yes, I was.”
“You were provided with the police reports describing the scene at Mount Auburn Cemetery?”
“Yes.”
“And you were also provided with a report of what Nurse Carolyn Lovely said Sylvia Jackson told her, correct?”
“No, I was not,” I answered.
“Were you provided with police reports stating a bloodstained pillowcase and belt were found at the scene?”
“Not that I recall. If it would be helpful to you, most of what I was provided …”
“I'll ask the questions if you don't mind.” Sherman spat the words out.
Chip rose. “I'll ask that the witness be allowed to explain his answer.”
“It wasn't an answer,” Sherman cut in.
The judge agreed and let Sherman continue with his litany of evidence to which I had not been privy.
“Were you provided with the police report indicating that a camouflage fatigue hat was recovered from the defendant's apartment?”
He'd made his point abundantly clear. I had not had access to the massive amounts of circumstantial evidence that made up the prosecution's case. I scanned the jurors and wondered how my cowboys and butterflies stacked up against bloodstained pillowcases and camouflage fatigue hats.
Finally, I responded. “As I've already said a number of times, I was doing an evaluation of her current cognitive status. All of this evidence you're referring to wasn't relevant to my testing.”
Montrose Sherman gazed at me, suddenly quite pleased. I had a sinking feeling that I'd just violated the cardinal rule of expert testimony: just answer the question, don't volunteer. The light that had been flashing yellow turned to red.
“So, if all you were concerned with was her current cognitive status,” Montrose Sherman gave a sharp cough, “then perhaps you can explain to the court why one of the first things you did when you sat down with Sylvia Jackson was to take a statement from her about the events preceding her injury?”
Now red lights were flashing like a pinball machine. It took
me a few seconds to gather a response. “I asked her to tell me what happened. Yes — I do that every —”
He cut me off. “And you wrote down everything she said?”
“Yes, that's part of the testing process —”
He cut me off again. “But you didn't write down everything else she said during the tests. Not everything she said during those twelve hours?”

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