Dr. Death (9 page)

In a feminist resource site I found an article in a journal called
S(Hero)
entitled "Mercy or Misogyny: Does Dr. Mate Have a Problem with Women?" The author wondered why 80 percent of Mate's "travelers" had been female. Mate, she claimed, had never been known to have a relationship with a woman and had refused to answer questions about his personal life. Freudian speculation followed.

Milo hadn't mentioned any family. I made a note to follow up on that.

The final item: four years ago, in San Francisco, a group calling itself the Secular Humanist Infantry had granted Mate its highest award, the Heretic. Prior to the ceremony, a syringe Mate had used on a recent "travel venture" had been auctioned off for two hundred dollars, only to be confiscated immediately by an undercover police officer citing violation of state health regulations. Commotion and protest as the cop dropped the needle into an evidence bag and exited. During his acceptance speech, Mate donated his windbreaker as a consolation prize and termed the officer a "mental gnat with all the morals of a rotavirus."

The name of the winning bidder caught my eye.

Alice Zoghbie. Treasurer of the Secular Humanist Infantry, now president of the Socrates Club. The same woman who'd leased the death van and left that day for Amsterdam.

I ran a search on the club, found the home page, topped by a logo of the Greek philosopher's sculpted head surrounded by a wreath that I assumed was hemlock. As Milo'd said, headquarters on Glenmont Circle in Glendale, California.

The Socrates mission statement emphasized the "personal ownership of life, unfettered by the outmoded and barbaric conventions foisted upon society by organized religion." Signed, Alice Zoghbie, MPA. A hundred-dollar fee entitled the fortunate to notification of events and all other benefits of membership. AMEX, VISA, MC, and DISC accepted.

Zoghbie's master's in public administration didn't tell me much about her professional background. Searching her name produced a long article in
The San Jose Mercury News
that filled in the blanks.

Entitled "Right-to-Die Group's Leader's Comments Cause Controversy," the piece described Zoghbie as

fiftyish, pencil-thin and tall. The former hospital personnel director is now engaged full-time running the Socrates Club, an organization devoted to legalizing assisted suicide. Until recently, members have maintained a low profile, concentrating upon filing friend-of-court briefs in right-to-die cases. However, recent remarks by Zoghbie at last Sunday's brunch at the Western Sun Inn here in San Jose have cast the club into the limelight and raised questions about its true goals.

During the meeting, attended by an estimated fifty people, Zoghbie delivered a speech calling for the "humane dispatch of patients with Alzheimer's disease and other types of 'thought impairment,' " as well as disabled children and others who are legally incapable of making "the decision they'd clearly form if they were in their right minds."

"I worked at a hospital for twenty years," the tan, white-haired woman said, "and I witnessed firsthand the abuses that took place in the name of treatment. Real compassion isn't creating vegetables. Real compassion is scientists putting their heads together to create a measurement scale that would quantify suffering. Those who score above a predetermined criterion could then be helped in a timely manner even if they lacked the capacity to liberate themselves."

Reaction to Zoghbie's proposal by local religious leaders was swift and negative. Catholic Bishop Armand Rodriguez termed the plan "a call to genocide," and Dr. Archie Van Sandt of the Mount Zion Baptist Church accused Zoghbie of being "an instrument of cancerous secularism." Rabbi Eugene Brandner of Temple Emanu-El said that Zoghbie's ideas were "certainly not in line with Jewish thought at any point along the spectrum."

An unattributed statement by the Socrates Club issued two days later attempted to qualify Zoghbie's remarks, terming them "an impetus to discussion rather than a policy statement."

Dr. J. Randolph Smith, director of the Western Medical Association's Committee on Medical Ethics, viewed the disavowal with some skepticism. "A simple reading of the transcript shows this was a perfectly clear expression of philosophy and intent. The slippery slope yawns before us, and groups such as the Socrates Club seem intent on shoving us down into the abyss of amorality. Given further acceptance of views such as Ms. Zoghbie's, it's only a matter of time before the legalization of murder of those who say they want to die gives way to the murder of those who have never asked to die, as is now the case in the Netherlands."

I logged off, called Milo at the station. A young man answered his phone, asked me who I was with some suspicion and put me on hold.

A few seconds later, Milo said, "Hi."

"New secretary?"

"Detective Stephen Korn. One of my little helpers. What's up?"

"Got some stuff for you, but nothing profound." Got a resolved ethical issue, too, but I'll save that for later.

"What kind of stuff?" he said.

"Mostly biography and the expected controversy, but Alice Zoghbie's name came up—"

"Alice Zoghbie just called me," he said. "Back in L.A. and willing to talk."

"Thought she wasn't due for two days."

"She cut her trip short. Distraught about Mate."

"Delayed grief reaction?" I said. "Mate's been dead for a week."

"She claims she didn't hear about it till yesterday. Was up in Nepal somewhere— climbing mountains, the Amsterdam thing was the tail end of her trip, big confab of death freaks from all over the world. Not the place to choke on your chicken salad, huh? Anyway, Zoghbie says she had no access to news in Nepal, got to Amsterdam three days ago, her hosts met her at the airport and gave her the news. She slept over one day, booked a return flight."

"So she arrived two days ago," I said. "Still a bit of delay before she called you. Giving herself time to think?"

"Composing herself. Her quote."

"When are you meeting her?"

"Three hours at her place." He recited the Glenmont address.

"Socrates Club headquarters," I said. "Found their website. Hundred bucks to join, credit-card friendly. Wonder how many of her bills that pays."

"You don't trust this lady's intentions?"

"Her views don't inspire trust. She thinks senile old folks and handicapped kids should be put out of their misery, whether they want to be or not. Got the quotes for you— part of today's work product. Along with assorted other goodies, including some other death-freak stuff and more weirdness."

I told him about Roger Sharveneau and the other hospital ghouls, finished with Zero Tollrance's exhibition.

"Cute," he said. "The art world's always been a warm and fuzzy place."

"One thing about Tollrance I found particularly interesting: he posed Mate in
The Anatomy Lesson
as wielding the scalpel
and
getting flayed."

"So?"

"It implies a certain ambivalence— wanting to play doctor
on
the doctor."

"You're saying I should take this guy seriously?"

"Might be interesting to talk to him."

"Tollrance, like that's a real name . . . Denver . . . I'll see what I can find."

"How far down the family list have your little helpers gotten?" I said.

"All the way down in terms of locating phone numbers and first attempts at contact," he said. "They've talked to about half the sample. Everyone loves Mate."

Not everyone. "Want me to come along to meet Alice in Deathland?"

"Sure," he said. "Look how cruel life can be. Climbing mountains in Nepal one day, enduring the police the next . . . She's probably one of those fit types, body image
über alles.
"

"Depends on whose body you're talking about."

7

WE AGREED TO meet at the station in two hours and I hung up. I'd intended to bring up the Doss family but hadn't. My excuse: some topics didn't lend themselves to phone chat.

I wanted to know more about Eldon Mate the physician, so I drove over to the Bio-Med library at the U., found myself a terminal. The periodicals index gave me a few more magazine articles but nothing new. I scanned scientific databases for any technical articles Mate might have published, not expecting anything in view of his lackluster career, but I found two citations: a Chemical Abstracts reference that led me to a thirty-year-old letter to the editor Mate had written in response to an article about polymerization— something about small molecules combining to create large molecules and the potential for better gasoline. Mate disagreed crankily. The author of the article, a professor at MIT, had dismissed Mate's comments as irrelevant. Mate's title, back then, had been assistant research chemist, ITEG Petroleum.

The second reference appeared in MEDLINE, sixteen years old, also a letter, this time in a Swedish pathology journal. Mate had his MD by then, cited his affiliation at Oxford Hill Hospital in Oakland, California. No title. No mention that he was a lowly intern.

The second letter didn't argue with anyone. Titled "Precise Measurement of Time of Death: A Social Boon," it began with a quote by Sir Thomas Browne:

"We all labour against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases."

Mate went on to bemoan the

stigma associated with cellular cessation, and subsequent moral cowardice exhibited by physicians when dealing with parathanatological phenomena. As the ultimate caretakers of body and that fiction known as "soul," we must do everything in our power to demystify the process of life termination, utilizing the scientific tools at our disposal to avoid needless prolongation of "life" that is the fruit of theology-based myths.

In this regard, quantification of precise time of death will be useful in robbing the myth mongers of their fictions and save costs that accrue from the needless employment of so-called heroic measures that create nothing more than respirating corpses.

Along these lines, I have attempted to discern which outward physical manifestations advertise the precise shutoff of vital systems. The central nervous system often continues to fire synaptically well after the heart stops beating and vice versa. Even a high-school biology student can keep a pithed frog's heart beating for a substantial "postmortem" period through the use of stimulant drugs. Furthermore, brain death is not a discrete event, and this fact leads to confusion and uncertainty.

I have thus looked for other changes, specifically ocular and muscular alterations, that correlate with our best judgment of thanatological progress. I have sat at the bedside of numerous premortem patients, gazing into their eyes and studying minute movements of their faces. Though this research is in the formative stage, I am encouraged by what appears to be a dual manifestation of cardiac and neurological shutoff typified by simultaneous twitchlike movement of the eyes combined with a measurable slackening of the lips. In some patients, I have also discerned an audible noise that appears to manifest sublaryngitically— perhaps the "death rattle" commonly cited in popular fiction. However, this does not occur in all patients and is best dispensed with in favor of the aforementioned ocular-muscular phenomenon I label the "lights-out" syndrome. I suggest that this event be studied in great detail for its potential in serving as a simple yet precise indicator of cellular surrender.

Interns back then worked hundred-hour weeks. This intern had found the time to indulge his extracurricular interest.

Sitting and staring into the eyes of the dying, trying to capture the precise moment.

My hunch about his intentions, confirmed. Early in the game, Mate's obsession had been with the minutiae of death, not the quality of life.

No comments from the Swedish journal editor. I wondered how Mate's side activities had been received at Oxford Hill Hospital.

Leaving the reading room, I found a pay phone in the hallway, got Oakland Information and asked for the number. No listing.

Returning to the computers, I looked up the call number of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations rosters, found the bound volumes in the stacks, and beginning with the year of Mate's internship looked up Oxford Hill. In business and accredited fully. Same for the following five years, then nothing.

The place had been legitimate, but it had closed down. Good luck finding someone who remembered the middle-aged intern with the ghoulish hobby.

What use was there excavating Mate's past, anyway? He'd become the victim, and it was the butcher I needed to understand, not the slab of meat in the back of the rented van.

I left the library and drove to the West L.A. station.

• • •

When I pulled up, Milo was standing in front with two men in their late twenties. Both wore gray sport coats and dark slacks and held notepads against their thighs. Both were tall as Milo, each was forty pounds lighter. Neither looked happy.

The man to the left had a puffy face, squashed features and wheat-colored blow-dried hair. The other D-I was dark, balding, bespectacled.

Milo said something to them and they returned inside.

"Your little elves?" I said, when he came over.