Critical Judgment (1996) (8 page)

“Bill’s a friend,” he said. “He writes the health insurance for a lot of our folks.”

“Well, I’m glad I was there when he came in.”

“So are a lot of people.”

They reached the tree-lined lake. Several brightly colored pedal boats were already out on the water. The laughter of children echoed through the sparkling morning. For a time neither of them spoke. Abby sensed that Quinn had more of an agenda than he had presented so far, but she could wait to find out what it was. She just hoped it had nothing to do with Josh.

“Nice place to live,” Quinn said finally.

He motioned that he had seen enough and turned back toward the path.

“Very nice,” Abby replied. “Do you have children?”

“Two. Grown and gone.”

“But you like it here?”

“I do. And I like working for a company that takes its responsibility to the community seriously.”

The agenda
, Abby thought.

“It certainly seems like Patience wouldn’t be much without Colstar,” she said.

“Correction, Doctor. Without Colstar, Patience wouldn’t
be
. That’s why we’re all very concerned when people with an antibusiness mentality try to impugn our company in any way.”

“And are there such people?”

“A few. Very few. They’re harmless because no one takes them very seriously. But anyone new to Patience is fair game to them, especially physicians, who often tend to be swayed by so-called liberal causes. I don’t know
your politics, or anything about you that wasn’t in your application for staff privileges. But I’m sure that sooner or later they’ll be approaching you to join them.”

Abby had to control a knee-jerk flare-up of outrage. An application for staff privileges was, in most hospitals, personal and confidential—even from members of the board of trustees. She was quite sure Quinn knew that and had brought the matter up on purpose. He was displaying his resourcefulness and issuing a tacit warning at the same time. No doubt her undergraduate degree from Cal Berkeley and M.D. from Stanford had labeled her a leftist in his mind.

“Who are these people?” she asked.

“I’d rather not say. What I will say is that they are misguided and selfish individuals who are willing to put their own interests ahead of the community’s.”

They had arrived back at the field, where Josh was still helping to set up the barbecue. The crowd had grown considerably, and several organized games and sports had begun. Abby felt an urge to grab her glove and play some softball, and an even stronger one to get away from Lyle Quinn.

“Well, Mr. Quinn,” she said, leading him to the backpack where she had stored her medical bag and makeshift first-aid kit, and Josh had packed their other gear, “thanks for the walk and the information.”

Another unsettling smile. His eyes were locked on hers.

“A great many people are very pleased you’re here, Dr. Dolan. Good doctors are a critical part of this community.”

“Just like Colstar.”

Her retort brought a flicker of reaction. No more.

“Exactly,” he said. “Just like Colstar. Well, it’s been very pleasant getting to know you. My wife and I look forward to entertaining you and Josh sometime in the near future. Perhaps you will allow us to propose you for
membership in the Patience Country Club. I’m on the board there, too.”

He shook her hand and turned to go.

At that moment, from across the field, a woman began shrieking hysterically, again and again.

The commotion was coming from the west end of the field, just in front of a dense pine grove. At the first shriek Quinn whirled catlike and sprinted across toward the gathering crowd. Abby, still clutching her baseball glove, trotted behind him. By the time she arrived at the grove, a hundred or more people were there. Others, especially those with children, were trying to move away quickly.

“It’s just Angela,” Abby heard someone say.

The terrible wailing continued.

“Get back,” the woman screamed. “Get back or I’ll cut you, too! I swear I will!”

“One side, please,” Quinn ordered. “Step aside.”

Abby caught sight of Josh to one edge of the crowd and headed toward him.

“Somebody do something!” a woman exclaimed. “Help her.”

I
t wasn’t until Abby was almost at Josh’s side that she saw the problem. A markedly overweight young woman was backed up against a tree, brandishing a ten-inch hunting knife and bleeding from a dozen or more shallow cuts that she had inflicted on her arms and thighs. Abby’s first impression was that none of the wounds was dangerous. But the woman’s beige shorts and white blouse were rapidly becoming soaked in crimson.

Quinn, at the front of the crowd, was about thirty feet from her.

“Angela, put the knife down,” he said with the firmness of a parent confronting a recalcitrant child.

“Stay away from me!” she screamed. “Come any closer and I’ll kill myself! You know I will.”

She pulled up her blouse and ran the blade across flesh that she had already sliced several times. People gasped.

Abby could not see through the blood, but she strongly suspected that the woman’s body would be covered with scars from previous episodes such as this. A self-mutilator—the ultimate form of self-loathing and masochism. Angela was hardly the first case Abby had
seen. Such patients tended to be well-known to emergency wards and ER docs. The psychopathology was complicated and not always consistent from one patient to another. And all too often, despite intensive therapy, the end result was self-inflicted death.

“Oh, God,” Abby said, moving past Josh.

“Stay back here,” Josh ordered in a harsh whisper. “That woman worked on one of the production lines at the company. She still comes up to Colstar and does stuff like this all the time. Quinn and the police will know how to handle her.”

Abby glared at him.

“I can’t believe you just said that to me.”

“Angela,” Quinn ordered, taking another slight step forward, “you’ve got to stop this right now and put the knife down. We’ll take care of you.”

“Stay back!” she screamed. “Do you all see now what can happen when you make fun of people just because they’re fat? Always snickering. Always pointing. I can’t stand it anymore!”

Moaning piteously, she made a series of puncture wounds along the underside of her arm. From one of them Abby saw the scarlet spray from a small artery.

“Josh, please get the backpack,” Abby said over her shoulder. “My medical bag is in there.”

“No! You stay out of this. Quinn can handle it. There’s no need for you to rush all over the valley playing hero wherever you go.”

“Jesus.” Abby turned to a husky man with tattooed deltoids, standing to her right. “Excuse me,” she said. “I’m Dr. Dolan from the emergency ward. There’s a big gray backpack over there near the picnic table. My medical supplies and bandages are in it. Could you bring it here for me, please?”

“Sure thing, Doc,” the man said, sprinting off.

Abby half expected her lover to chase the man down and tackle him. Josh was entering the irrational, nasty phase of whatever was eating away at him. The pressure
cooker was boiling and the safety valve was stuck. Sometime between now and late afternoon he would blow. Well, she was near boiling point herself.

“All right, everyone,” Quinn was saying. “You all know that Angela has this problem. It doesn’t help to stand around gawking at her. Go on. Get your kids out of here and get back to the picnic.”

Immediately, the crowd dispersed. It was as if the onlookers had wanted to go but had needed someone to break the stranglehold of lurid fascination. In seconds there were only fifteen or so remaining, mostly men, who seemed ready for action.

Pointedly ignoring Josh, Abby moved next to Quinn.

“I have first-aid supplies in my backpack,” she said softly. “A man’s bringing it over.”

“Oh, Angela’s okay,” Quinn replied, clearly annoyed with the woman and frustrated that he could not simply end the matter with a frontal assault. “Just nuts. She’s been doing things like this for months—smashing her head against the wall until she’s a bloody mess, cutting herself. We’re all getting a little sick of it. I just want to make sure no one but her gets hurt.”

“She’s cut an artery in her arm. I think we should be trying to stop the bleeding soon.”

“Someone went to call the police and rescue.” Quinn risked another step forward. “She’ll be all right. People get arms and legs cut off and survive.”

“Not always,” Abby said sharply. Could anyone really be that callous?

She moved up next to him. They were now about ten feet away.

“Stop it!” Angela screamed, slashing the air in their direction, cutlass style. “Stop it! Let me die! I deserve to die!”

Her eyes were wild. Tears washed through the blood smeared across her cheeks. The ground at her feet was becoming sodden.

“Damn her,” Quinn muttered.

A woman hurried up to Quinn on the side opposite from where Abby stood. She had short graying hair, tortoiseshell glasses, and a Save the Planet T-shirt.

“Lyle, I’ve called rescue and the police,” she said breathlessly. “They’re at an accident at Five Corners. It’ll be another ten or fifteen minutes.”

“Jesus.”

“Poor Angela. This is worse than I’ve ever seen her. After I spoke to Sergeant Brewster, I called her mother. She’ll be right over, but she lives in Green Gables.”

“Oh, great, Kelly,” Quinn snapped. “The last thing we need is another hysterical member of the Cristoforo clan.”

“Sorry.”

“Look, call Brewster back. Tell him I want a cruiser and two men here in five minutes or less.”

The woman nodded quickly and left.

Panting, the large man arrived with the backpack and set it beside Abby. Without taking her eyes off Angela Cristoforo, Abby withdrew her medical case and the plastic bag with the bandages and dressings she had leftover from treating Ives. There were at least two sets of rubber gloves inside. She was relieved that she didn’t have to deal with the healer’s dilemma of whether to treat someone in the field if it meant touching her blood without protection.

“Angela, I’m Dr. Dolan from the hospital,” she said. “I want to help you. I want to stop the bleeding and fix those cuts.”

At that moment Abby caught a flicker of movement—a man—through the trees behind Angela. She could tell that Quinn saw him, too.

“The doctors at the hospital hate me,” Angela sobbed. “They hate the sight of me. The nurses laugh at me.”

Abby was careful not to dispute what the woman believed, and what might very well be true.

“I’ll make sure nobody ever does that again, Angela. I can do that. I promise.”

Angela began singing a children’s song, jabbing the point of the huge knife in rhythm against her chest. From somewhere out in the valley, Abby could hear sirens. She hoped that the commotion that was about to descend didn’t push Angela Cristoforo the final inch. Nobody wanted to believe that a woman could bleed to death in plain sight of dozens of people. Abby knew better.

The man in the trees was now no more than five feet from Angela. Abby tried not to give his presence away with her eyes. He was tall and dark, wearing light jeans and a tan work shirt.

“Who is that?” she whispered, struggling to keep her eyes focused on the woman.

“A maintenance man from the plant. Willie Cardoza. He’s kind of a flake, big practical joker. I don’t know what in the hell he thinks he’s doing.”

“Too late to stop him now,” Abby whispered.

She took a pair of rubber gloves and pulled them on. Then she held up a roll of gauze bandage.

“What are you trying to pull?” Angela shrieked. “Stop right there! I mean it! I mean it!”

She raised the hunting knife to her throat.

“Angela,
please
—don’t!”

Willie Cardoza took one step out from the cover of the trees. If Angela whirled now, there was no way he could escape being slashed. To Abby the seconds that followed were slow motion. Willie made his move at the instant Angela began to turn. He was taller than she was by six inches or more, but she was considerably bulkier.

“Angela!” Quinn shouted.

The distraction was just enough. Willie grabbed her right wrist from behind and brought his left arm around her neck. She struggled ineffectually as he braced his legs behind hers and pulled her down backward on top of him.

“Angie, it’s me, Willie,” he said, holding fast to her wrist, his lips next to her ear. “It’s Willie. Angie, you’ve got to stop. It’s over.”

For one frozen moment, Angela Cristoforo’s body went rigid. Then, with a final, pathetic wail, she released the knife. Lyle Quinn quickly moved forward and kicked it aside.

Willie Cardoza gently rolled her off him and onto her side.

“Angie, you let them take care of you now,” he said. “You just rest and let them take care of you.”

The sirens approached, then were cut off as the first police cruiser pulled onto the ball field.

As Abby knelt beside the wounded woman, her gaze met Cardoza’s. His long, narrow face, weathered and creased, had the look of having seen hard times. But his eyes were kind.

“That was a very good thing you just did,” she said.

Cardoza’s smile was self-effacing.

“She would have done the same for me,” he replied. “We company grunts have to stick together.”

He pushed himself to his feet, turned, and left without a word to Quinn.

Abby assured herself that Angela’s pulses were intact and strong, and that none of her wounds was immediately life threatening. Then she began to tend to the individual cuts. She had two of them bandaged when the rescue squad arrived. After a brief report she turned matters over to them. When it came to first aid, nobody did it better than an EMT.

“How long has this been going on?” she asked Quinn.

“I don’t know. Six months, maybe. She’s spent a lot of time in mental hospitals over that period.”

“And before?”

Quinn shrugged.

“She was—what was the word Cardoza used?—a grunt.”

Abby packed up the knapsack and watched as the EMTs finished inserting an IV and prepared Angie for transfer to the hospital.