Everything She Ever Wanted (50 page)

potent antipsychotic drug, was prescribed for Pat.
 
For a tirrie,

things got somewhat better.

Tom and Pat argued in late September; she was interfering in his case,

overriding his attorneys again, and it worried him.
 
She had attempted

to see police records of the Athens and Atlanta police departments

hoping to find some record on Little Carolyn.

It was illegal for Pat to do that.
 
When Tom told her that, she flew at

him.

As always, he was contrite when he phoned the next evening.

"Sometimes you do the wrong thing, darling," he tried to explain.

"Do you really expect me to go along with you when I know it's wrong?

Can't I correct you some?
 
Don't you understand it doesn't affect our

love?
 
.
 
. . I'm trying to keep you from making a mistake.
 
It's not

got a thing to do with our love."

. . . The other day, you said you were so proud of me," she sulked.

"You can't be when you call me things like you did yesterday.

Pat told her husband she was going into the hospital but she would send

him a picture first.
 
"I'm standing [in the picture] without the

crutches," she said.
 
"I have a painful look on my face.
 
. . . Did you

stay up long enough to hear all the songs I asked for last night?
 
'I

Want You in My Dreams' and 'Blue Eyes'?
 
I did it special because of

the way you felt about me yesterday.

To make him even more ashamed of questioning her actions, Pat confided

that he had upset her so much that she had had her first blood clot in

a long time after their argument, and that she had lost the use of one

arm.
 
Neither was true.

'Tom, if I was dead, do you think you would ever be able to find out

what's going on?
 
.
 
. . I don't have much longer, Tom."

"I just don't understand," he groaned.
 
just wash their hands?"

"I'm fighting like crazy when the doctors tell me it's hopeless."

I don't believe that," he said desperately.

"I told you you weren't ready for the truth.... I told you what the

doctor said.
 
They say there is nothing they can do."

"How long do they give you to live?"

"It depends on how fast it eats up the tissues."

"Nothing can stop it?"

"Nothing.
 
They can't do any blood transfers 'cause they've got an open

place that won't close, and it never will close because Did the doctors

it gets deeper and deeper.
 
. . . Now you can understand the pressure

I've been under.
 
You are the only thing that gave my life real

meaning.
 
If I do something that hurts you, it tears me up.
 
I been

laying here torn up all afternoon," she said softly.

"I come up there smiling, Shug, even though I hurt."

Pat's abscess was, indeed, growing deeper and deeper and deeper.
 
Back

in the hospital on October 1, she went through myriad medical tests.

Cultures of Pat's wound grew out both Proteus mirabilis and Staph

aureus bacteria.
 
She required blood transfusions, and she vomited

continually.
 
Given gamma globulin, she had a severe anaphylactic

reaction, accompanied by hysteria.

Since anaphylactic shock-often experienced by those allergic to bee

stings or penicillin-can kill quickly by suffocation as the breathing

passages and throat swell, Pat's panic was not abnormal.

Pat had been admitted to Bolton Road Hospital on an emergency basis,

and it became evident that the surgery had to be done soon.

On October 17, when she was strong enough to withstand an operation,

she was given nitrous oxide and a local anesthetic and the huge abscess

was excised, along with the granular tissue and the scar tissue

surrounding it, leaving a massive permanent indentation in her right

buttock.
 
During and after the procedure, the wound was flooded with

antibacterial materials.

Judge Wofford signed a judicial order that allowed Tom to go to the

Bolton Road Hospital under guard and donate blood; Pat's surgery had

required many transfusions and she would be hospitalized for a month or

more.

"Patient had extreme pain and required large doses of narcotics and

sedatives, and was very difficult to control under these circumstances,

but gradually through the team effort of her mother, Dr. P Dr. G and

Dr. R.-all working together-we convinced her of the benefits of

sticking to one regimen and she gradually got better," her hospital

records noted.

Pat was finally released from Bolton Road Hospital on November 21.
 
She

would have to return every week to have her progress monitored and her

dressings changed.
 
At her request, her doctor wrote a letter to the

Fulton County jail authorities.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN.
 
This patient ... has a deep (3-4 inch)

ulcerating lesion of the right buttock zvhich renders her bedfast ...

and, as such, she is in critical condition, and likely to remain so for

some time.

Her husband is in the Fulton Count jail nearby where she can at least

talk to him by telephone and knozv he is in proximity.

It would be extremely beneficial to this patient ifhe could remain

there and possibly if it could be arranged at some point for her to

visit him, zvhereas if he is farther away, she certainly would not be

able to.
 
The emotional upset which has accompanied the t?ials and

tribulations of her husband have materially affected her health and

continue to.... She requires sedation and pain medications.... If the

problem was compounded by his being removed, it could conceivably have

a very detrimental effect on her general physical health, as well as

her emotional stability.

I believe that this could have a life and death bearing on Mrs.

Allanson's case in terms of her mental and physical well being.... The

circumstances are most unusual.
 
Her illness is also most unusual....

All of Pat's physicians were bewitched by the beautiful greeneyed woman

who bore such terrible pain.
 
Not one of them ever isolated just what

had caused her intractable infection.
 
In lieu of a definitive

diagnosis, they marked their records: "Chronic nonhealing abscess,

secondary to penicillin injection."

At home, with her physicians' approval, Margureitte tried to cut Pat's

use of narcotics.
 
She gave her pain shots several times a day as she

had for weeks now, but she gradually diluted the Demerol injections

with water.
 
Pat noticed the difference almost at once and was

furious.

Pat hired a private detective, without consulting Ed Garland, and had

him follow Tom's ex-wife.
 
She suggested that the detective seduce

Carolyn to gain more information.
 
"Just pull the'old suave'on her,"

Pat urged.
 
The planned seduction of Little Carolyn never came off.

Pat was still operating on Perry Mason plot lines, and the private

investigator only humored her.
 
When she told Ed Garland what she was

up to, he shook his head.
 
He explained to Pat that the only issues

left that might help Tom were: if they could discover new evidence, if

they could prove Carolyn had perjured herself, or if they could prove

that Tom's lineu had been contaminated by the presence of the two fire

-P fighters whom "everyone knew."

Despite all the letters saying that Tom's departure for Jackson ]Prison

would kill his wife, he was definitely headed in that direction-and

soon.
 
For the first time, Pat wondered if she might have called the

shots wrong in Tom's defense plan.
 
It was humbling for her to bring

up, because she had never apologized for anything.
 
"Let me ask you

something," she finally said to Ed Garland.
 
"Would we have been better

off to drag the cat along Vid [if we had] told that Tom went there

without any weapons and talked to his father?"

"Want my honest opinion?"

"Yes."

"Yes.
 
He would have been better off.
 
. . . It's been my opinion the

whole time, based on all my information.
 
. . . We could have got a

manslaughter and ten years out of this case to begin with-if only we'd

approached it along those lines," Garland said firmly.

With time off for good behavior, that ten years would have come down to

only a few.
 
Tom could have been out of prison and back with her long

before the seventies moved into the eighties.

Pat had truly messed up her husband's defense, and Garland was at a

loss to know why.
 
She wasn't stupid-far from it-and she wasn't crazy

either.
 
Willful, yes, and strangely secretive.
 
Whatever her reasons

had been, it was far too late now to change things.

Tom was going up for a very long time.

Pat beseeched Garland to find a way to have Tom incarcerated in

Atlanta.
 
"I will never be able to travel the distance to see him .

.

. that's just like taking a candle and putting out the light.
 
. . .

Now, once every four or five days I'm going to be talking to him for

ten minutes.
 
That keeps me alive for another four days.

Paw Allanson had a heart attack on January 15, 1976.
 
Pat told Tom when

he called her from jail.
 
"Yesterday morning, Paw had a heart attack,"

she said.
 
"He's in South Fulton [Hospital] .
 
. . the doctor is not

expecting him to die from it, you knowhe's not paralyzed or it's not a

stroke or anything.
 
It did some damage to the heart walls; when he

comes out, he is not going to be able to do heavy lifting.
 
. . . Ma