None of this Ever Really Happened (24 page)

"Okay."

"So here I am. Seeking counseling."

"All right. How are you feeling about all of this now?"

"What do you mean?"

"I presume since you came 'seeking resolution,' that you
are not finished with it quite yet."

"No, no. They did make me step back and take a closer,
more realistic look at myself and my motives and the whole
situation. I mean, why was I doing this? What did it really matter
to me?" I told him that I no longer saw the woman as a
purely innocent victim; she was too complex for that. For that
matter, I no longer saw the man as completely evil. I didn't
like what he did, but I began to understand it at least a little;
I could at least imagine his desperation. I mentioned for the
first time that the man was a doctor, that the woman was his
patient, that they were having an affair, and that I was quite
certain now that at least on some level—if only the emotional
one—she was blackmailing him. She was getting to him somehow,
that he was an essentially good man who made one
mistake and was in danger of being destroyed by it. He was a
modest, intelligent, circumspect man about to become a tabloid
headline, a man who had devoted his life to helping others
undone by the most human of desires, a man trapped perhaps
(who knows?) in a loveless marriage, a cold, difficult wife, a
lonely man empty, aging, and then this woman—this young
woman—this beautiful, vital, exciting, sexy, daring, tempting,
willing, able, very able, very willing, and very vulnerable
girl came along, and of course it went sour, and she turned
into a viper, and he was faced with utter ruin. I told him that
I thought a lot about the despair, desperation, and panic the
doctor must have felt, about the scandal, the shame and disgrace
that he knew lay ahead of him, about that Noah Cross
line in
Chinatown:
"Most people never have to face the fact
that at the right time, at the right place, they're capable of anything."
I even told him that I thought of some of the things I'd
been capable of and some of the things I'd done that I regret. I
told him I'd done things I wished I hadn't. I looked at him.

"Do you want to tell me about those things?" he asked.

"No, not really. Not now, anyway. See, I needed to resolve
this thing about the doctor. I came to realize my fallacy was
my starting point; he's not an essentially good man; he just
looks like one. Look closer and you see a physician who betrayed
his most essential trust, who hurt a patient who came
to him for help, who hurt her premeditatedly, repeatedly, perhaps
as an act of passion originally, but later dispassionately,
and when he feared getting caught, he abandoned her. Abandoned
her as a lover, as a human being, as a patient. And
when she struck back, he killed her."

"Hm."

"There's more. There's the man in the camel coat and the
woman who might have been his wife. See, we met at the
wreck. They were driving north as I was driving south. Had
the young woman swerved left rather than going straight
into the tree, she might have hit them. Of course, the woman
who might have been his wife might
not
have been his wife,
and for all I know, he was about to hit her over the head or
dump her in the lake or she him, all of which is to say that I'm
really not much of a sentimentalist myself, but you'd have to
consider who else you might be endangering, wouldn't you?"
I looked at him carefully and closely.

"So where does that leave you?" he finally asked.

"You mean in the 'is the doctor good or is the doctor evil'
thing?"

"If you wish." And I thought for an instant that he was
genuinely interested in my answer.

"My guess used to be neither," I said. "My guess used to
be that he was more amoral than immoral, that he was something
of a sociopath. That he really had no feelings. That he
could probably have sat right here and discussed this thing
coolly and objectively without raising his blood pressure or
breaking a sweat. He could probably have even passed a polygraph
test if it was in his own interest to do so. That's what I
used to feel. Now I'm not so sure."

"Do you think it would make you feel better if you were
able to punish him?" he asked.

"That's not it, you see. I don't want to punish him, I just
want to stop him."

"Then you feel you have a moral purpose?"

"I came to feel that he was a man without one." I looked
him in the eyes as I explained that the doctor had crossed
a line a doctor just can't cross, not once or ever. And if he
ever did, he'd misunderstood the basic relationship between
doctor and patient, that there isn't any margin for error. This
wasn't an error. This wasn't a slipup or mistake. It was fundamental
betrayal. And if a doctor does it once, he's probably
done it before, and he'll probably do it again.

"So you felt you needed to stop him. . . ."

"No. Not without more evidence. So, you know what I
did?" I had run an ad in the
Evanston Review,
the
Wilmette
Life,
all the little papers on the North Shore headed "Ph.
D. Study of Clinical Abuse." It read: "I am writing my dissertation
on clinical psychiatrists, psychologists, and social
workers who take sexual, psychological, or emotional advantage
of their patients. If you would like to be part of the
study, please contact me through P.O. box such-and-such,
confidentiality guaranteed." When I told Decarre this, he
uncrossed and recrossed his legs. He worked hard not to
take his eyes off mine, and succeeded. "Got some very interesting
replies," I said. "Fewer than you'd think, or fewer
than a layman might think, I guess. Funny how we are suspicious
of head doctors like we are of lawyers. Maybe not.
Anyway, I interviewed them all. Most you could dismiss almost
immediately: sour grapes, fantasy, delusion. Interesting
to listen to; these things are so obvious. But two weren't,
and they both had to do with the doctor. These two had the
ring of truth to them, and they were similar to each other
in some interesting details—some physical things about
the doctor—and similar in substance to the dead woman's
story as I had been able to piece it together. Quite similar.
One of these stories interested me particularly. It was
told to me by a beautiful, nervous young woman who was
having trouble sustaining relationships. She said that she'd
had 'about a thousand of them'—these are her words—and
they all ended in about the same way at about the same
stage in the development of things. She was getting desperate.
She had unresolved issues with a father who had disappeared
early in her life, and the doctor offered to help
her with this—he, by the way, was just the father's age
and, as she herself said, 'talk about missing a red flag.' But
anyway, the doctor offered to help her with this in what he
called a 'surrogate, therapeutic relationship.' He was candid
with her. He said that it was experimental, that he'd never
tried it before, but that he was willing to try it with her.
And in her words, 'What the heck; what did I have to lose?
It was therapy for God's sake.' No anxiety, no guilt, no expectations
except that she would get healthy, or healthier.
No entanglements. The woman threw herself into it. In
fact, she couldn't wait for each session. And she says that
for a while it worked; for a while it was—her words—'quite
wonderful.'

"Even the sexual part was good. The doctor was a very
caring, generous lover. Very gentle. He taught her things
about sex. He coached her. He would talk to her as they made
love; she would ask questions. Afterward they would analyze
what they had done. It was quite clinical and that allowed
her to confront her father through him. And that, too, was
working; she was just about ready to go see her father for the
first time in three years and get some of her feelings out into
the open when the unexpected happened. Her father died.
Dropped dead out of the blue, and just like that, any chance
of dealing with anything was gone.

"She 'came apart,' to use her words again. She immediately
called the doctor but—here's the funny part—he didn't return
her calls. For three days she called him, paged him, called
his emergency number, left messages. No response. Nothing.
Nada. She thought it strange. She came to believe that it was
the father thing. Somehow the doctor was undone by it, as
if it were a message from God or something. In the meantime,
she was in distress, so finally, just before Thanksgiving,
she went to his office. It was 8:30 in the evening, and his car
was still there, although his last appointment was always at
7:00. She waited and waited, and when he didn't come out,
she figured he was doing paperwork, so she went in. He had
one of those double doors in his waiting room. She knocked,
she pushed; it was open. And there he was with a woman, in
flagrante delicto. They froze. The doctor was sprawled, the
woman was kneeling, our woman was gaping. I asked if there
was any chance this might be some kind of therapy. She said
that the only therapy going on there was oral therapy, and
the patient was administrating it. Our woman screamed. She
screamed, 'Paul, you cocksucking, motherfucking sonofabitch!'
and then she ran. She slammed the door and ran. That
was a long time ago now, and she's never seen or heard from
the doctor again. Of course she wouldn't have been easy to
find. She disappeared. As she says, she 'left no forwarding
address.' She was hospitalized for quite a while. She lost her
job and gave up her apartment, got a new cell phone, made
everyone she knew swear not to reveal her whereabouts.
Still, there's no evidence at all that the doctor ever tried to
find her.

"Now here's the interesting thing and the pertinent thing,
too, as far as that goes. That night in the doctor's office, our
woman not only found out about the other woman, but the
other woman found out about her. Our woman has only
an impression of the other woman, but I think it is impression
enough. She was young, taller than average, thin, had
medium-length straight dark hair and dark eyes, and she was
Asian.

"The dead woman was a five-foot-six-inch one-hundred-seventeen-pound
twenty-eight-year-old Korean. I thought
it must have been she, so I was able to check with her insurance
company, and sure enough, they were billed for an appointment
on that very day, which happened to be sixteen
days prior to her death. Can you imagine the doctor actually
billing her? Of course, maybe it was just a computer thing
that went out automatically, or maybe he realized that to not
bill her would be some kind of admission or something.
Still . . ." Now the doctor and I sat for some time looking at
each other. His breathing was regular. Twice he pursed his
lips, probably without realizing he was doing so; once he
nearly smiled, and I thought that was intentional.

"Unfortunately," I said, "neither person was willing or felt
able to withstand the rigors or publicity of an investigation or
trial. I mean, we started the process, we really did. We went
to the state licensing board, and they were very interested,
but ultimately you have to come forth, you have to testify.
And they couldn't do it. So . . ." I left off and looked at him
again.

"So . . . ," he said. "So, you didn't really have anything at
all, did you? If the doctor killed this woman—and that is a
very big if—you don't even know how he did it."

"Oh, yes I do. He injected her with morphine. That much
I know. And he did it in one of two places, and in one of two
ways. That much I also know. He either did it in his office,
where she had come drunk and out of control, or he did it in
her car. There is an eyewitness who places him in her car on
Green Bay Road minutes before her death.
How
is a little less
certain. He may have simply jabbed her with a hypodermic
needle; she may have been inebriated enough not to notice.
Also, we know that he had been giving her large doses of
vitamins by injection, and when she came to him drunk, he
may have talked her into one of these for some reason or
another (to help her sober up?)—it wouldn't have been the
first time, and we know she liked these—and then given her
morphine instead. Or he could even have done this in the
car just before he got out."

Decarre smiled wearily. He looked as if he'd like to go
somewhere and take a nap. "So as I said, you didn't really
have anything at all, did you?" he said.

"Well, I had all this knowledge, you see, and if no one
else was going to do anything with it, clearly it was up to me,"
I said.

"All right, let's talk about you, then. Where did that leave
you?" he asked, carefully minding his tenses.

"Me? Well, I guess at that point I realized I had to kill
the doctor." We looked right into each other's eyes then, for
a long time. It was a staring match. I won. Finally his eyes
flickered, and just for the briefest moment, they located my
backpack on the floor beside me.

Finally he asked, "What do you think would have happened
to you had you done so?"

"Okay," I said, "I think I see a pattern to your questions.
Let me see how close I am. 'The patient shows a tendency to
act or react in the extreme suggesting possible bipolar dysfunction.
At the same time he is unrealistic about the consequences
of his actions or reactions and seems to be out of
touch with reality. To the extent that he feels an inflated sense
of moral importance and responsibility, he is somewhat delusional.'
How's that? How did I do?"

He smiled at me with those sad eyes of his. "I'm not prepared
to make a diagnosis at this time."

I smiled at him. "Actually, I was keenly aware of the possible
consequences of my actions. I knew I might get caught.
I knew I might spend my life in prison. I knew that there
was even a chance my actions would create sympathy
for
the doctor, overshadow his own sins, maybe even turn him
into some kind of martyr. Trouble was, I was even more
keenly aware of the consequences of my inaction; he'd continue
to practice, he'd probably continue to hurt people, and
he might very well kill someone else. I didn't want to spend
the rest of my life in prison, of course, but neither did I
want to lie awake in bed at night the rest of my life. I didn't
want to become one of those sheepish little men you see in
the post office or the hardware store who can't look you in
the eye. I decided I would have to take the chance. I mean,
there are only a few times in life you have to step forward,
and this seemed like one of them."