Addiction (26 page)

Read Addiction Online

Authors: G. H. Ephron

BOOK: Addiction
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“Good question,” Annie said.
I considered the alternatives. Desperate to increase the number of participants in her trial, Channing “borrowed” a record from Jensen's work without realizing the person was too old for her study. I doodled on the envelope's return address, turning an A into a pyramid and drawing a little flag on top. No, she was too ethical. And even if she were tempted, with her head for detail, I couldn't imagine Channing overlooking something as obvious as a patient's age. Maybe someone had inserted the patient record in among hers, a cuckoo's egg that could be used to discredit her work. Would Jensen stoop to that? Wouldn't anyone be willing to slip a few pieces of paper into a file if the alternative was watching a patent worth millions of dollars turn to dust? After all, what doctor would prescribe DX-200 when an effective treatment at a fraction of the cost was available with Kutril? But if it had been Jensen, was he in this alone?
I stopped doodling, my attention snagged by the text printed on the envelope: Notice: Stockholders' Meeting. The envelope was addressed to a Francine Bentsen in Weston. Destler's wife's name was Fran, and he lived in Weston.
My scalp prickled as I realized the implications. Of course. Destler wouldn't have dared purchase Acu-Med stock in his own name, or have stockholder material addressed to the Pearce.
“You still there?” Annie said.
“You know that piece of paper I scrounged out of Destler's trash? It's a notice of an Acu-Med stockholders' meeting.”
“And?”
“I think it's addressed to Destler's wife. He must have brought his mail in from home and then discarded the envelope, never dreaming I'd be rummaging around in his trash.”
“So? Am I missing something?”
“The ethics of medical research are pretty clear. If what you do as part of your job could affect the value of a stock, then you can't own it. A promising new drug, especially with no competition,
could make a company's stock price go through the roof. It's almost certainly not okay for Destler, as a senior administrator, to own Acu-Med stock. Just for example, he might be tempted to sabotage competing research.”
“Or at the very least,” Annie said, “turn a blind eye.”
“At the very least.”
“Well, that certainly is food for thought,” Annie. “Speaking of which, about tonight. Weren't we going to have dinner together?”
“Why, you trying to wriggle out of it?”
“Hardly. But here's the thing. I'll be in your neighborhood in about an hour anyway. And I didn't have any lunch. Can I talk you into early?”
“You can probably talk me into just about anything. But early sounds great.”
After I hung up, I tried to start on the mountain of paperwork that was threatening to take over my desk, but I couldn't focus. I needed to think. At least those competing images of Channing Temple were starting to converge. Someone was trying to discredit her, to paint her capable of all kinds of professional and personal improprieties. And suddenly I was a few steps closer to figuring out who.
I checked my watch. It was thirty minutes since Jess had said she'd be up in five. I called down to the nurses' station and asked Gloria where Jess was.
“I'd like to know that myself,” Gloria said. “She's scheduled to be at neuro rounds starting five minutes ago. And she's not there.”
“She was in the dining room …” I started.
“With a patient. I know. Then she makes a call and takes off. I just beeped her.”
“Have you checked on Olivia lately?” I asked.
“Joe is outside the quiet room sitting there cool as a cucumber, if that's any indication.”
“I'm coming down,” I said.
I left my office and hurried to the elevator, punched the button, waited a couple of seconds, and heard it creak into action. It felt as if someone was poking me in the back with a stick—probably Channing. I took the stairs. The metal bars enclosing the inside of the staircase clanged as I ran down.
I was past Joe and in the quiet room when Joe looked up from his paper and issued an automatic “No visitors” command. “Oh, it's you,” he said, and went back to reading.
Olivia was sleeping soundly. She stirred when I touched her forehead and then sank back into a deep sleep.
I found Gloria. “Did Jess return the page?” I asked.
“Not yet.”
“Any idea who she was talking to on the phone?”
Gloria looked insulted. “Now how would I know that?”
“Beats me. But you do seem to know most everything that goes on around here.”
Now Gloria smiled. “Usually, I guess I do.”
“She didn't say anything when she left?”
“I didn't even realize she'd gone,” Gloria said. I glanced past Gloria into the dining room. Jess's things were still on the table. The kitchen staff had set the table around them. Gloria followed my look. “Like I said, she thought she'd be right back.”
I went in to gather up Jess's things and set them aside for her. I opened the backpack to shove her books and papers inside. Vibrating in the bag was her beeper. What the hell good was a beeper if you were going to leave it behind? Jess needed more than a little centering. She needed a healthy dose of common sense.
Something else caught my eye. One of the books was a fabric-covered journal, the kind that contains blank or lined pages. Of course. Countertransference analysis. Jess probably was following in the footsteps of her mentor, keeping a journal of her thoughts and feelings. I'd have to warn her against the dangers of carrying
it around with her. It wasn't the kind of thing you wanted someone else to read and misinterpret.
As I shoved the journal into the backpack, I took in the words written neatly on the cover: Feelings
and Fantasies—Volume 11
. Eleven? Jess had hardly been at this long enough to fill that many notebooks. My stomach turned over. The handwriting was Channing's.
Was that what Jess was doing in Channing's study during the party? Taking, or maybe as she said, trying to put back Channing's journal? Was she the one who'd shown it to Destler, giving him more ammunition? Rumors of inappropriate behavior, questionable research methods—all of that could have been orchestrated to make suicide believable.
I opened the journal. The first pages were dated June, the last ones December. I couldn't remember the dates on the pages Destler had, but she'd written something about the Indian summer. I flipped to September and turned the pages, scanning. Near the end of the month, there was the entry
: Indian summer today
.
Hot and close
… . I didn't need to read it again. I remembered it well enough.
I took the backpack to the nurses' station and left it on a shelf under the counter. I kept the journal. It felt hot in my hand as I waited for the elevator up to my office. I didn't like having it. It had never been meant for anyone's eyes but Channing's own. But she was dead. Meanwhile, her murderer was getting off while her reputation was getting destroyed. I realized I probably should be giving the journal to MacRae to examine. But I couldn't do it. That would have compounded the insult, violated her privacy even further.
I let myself into my office and started to leaf through the notebook. Channing's real and fantasy life seemed to mingle on the pages. Daphne's husband's obituary was tucked into an early page. Robert Smythe-Gooding's illness dominated July. It seemed as if Channing had been a constant visitor. She'd been very fond of
him, and she'd agonized over him, watching him fade from his own body.
After Robert's death, Channing seemed to turn inward.
I can intellectualize-I know she felt it was the only choice. Still, “suicide,” re-writes the past. Afterwards, it's as if that's all there was. No laughter. No day-to-day. No life.
Was she meditating on her mother's suicide? I wasn't so sure. Her point was certainly valid. Suicide. Murder. The effect was the same. Now it was happening to Channing herself. The way she died was swamping all other memories of how she lived.
I flipped through October. The entries turned to feelings about her patients, her work. It was as if Channing took her own darkness—her lust, envy, greed—siphoned it away like some bitter poison and spread it across the pages of her journal.
Then, in November, an entry caught my eye.
subtle changes
-more rigid and inflexible
-forgetful
-insecure
-more distant
-blows hot and cold
Overwhelmed?
Benzos?
Guilt?
Olivia ok?
I puzzled over the list. Were these observations about Olivia? About Channing herself? I paged ahead. There was another list, six weeks later. Before I had a chance to read it, the phone rang.
It was Gloria. “Jess just called in.”
“Where the hell is she?”
“She's over at Drug and Alcohol. Said she'll be back in an hour.”
“Did she say what the hell she's doing over there?”
“She said Dr. Smythe-Gooding asked her to help go through what's left in Dr. Temple's office, to be sure they don't throw out anything important. Administration wants that office cleaned out by morning.”
I WAS determined that, in an hour, I'd be somewhere quiet, having a glass of wine, and ordering a meal with Annie. But Olivia's arrest loomed. I couldn't wait a day to find out how pages from Channing's notebook had found their way to Destler. I had to talk to Jess.
I called Channing's office. The phone went immediately to voice mail. It was unnerving to hear Channing's voice, telling me to leave a message and she'd get right back to me. It was pointless to beep Jess. I called Daphne's office, but no answer there either. I'd have to go over myself if I wanted an answer.
I checked my watch. “I've got Annie meeting me here at five,” I told Gloria. I started to leave. “If she gets here before I'm back, tell her I'm sorry and make her wait.”
Gloria grinned. “
Make
her wait?”
“You may need to let the air out of her tires.”
“By the way, Admitting called,” Gloria said. “They've been contacted by the police to arrange for Olivia's transfer to the Bechtel. Day after tomorrow.”
I didn't need to be reminded.
Halfway to the Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Unit, I ran into
Destler returning to his office. He was red-faced from the uphill walk. I seized the moment.
“I've been meaning to ask your advice on something,” I said, trying to sound ingenuous.
“My advice.” His face turned wary, and he checked his watch.
“Won't take a minute. You see, I've been offered an opportunity. One of the reps from Pharmacom was telling me about some promising new drug therapies they're investigating. It's not secret information or anything—there have been news stories and all, I just hadn't read them. Anyway, I'd like to invest in the company. And then I thought, I'd better run that by somebody, just to be sure it's kosher.”
He tilted his head and gave me an appraising look. “Pharmacom. Isn't that the company that's sponsoring Dr. Liu's research?”
I tried to look surprised. “Why, yes, I guess so.”
He sniffed. “Both the institute and the med school have clear guidelines. The research is going on, on your unit. Under your watch, as it were. Not kosher.”
“That's a shame,” I said, checking into my pocket to be sure I had Destler's envelope announcing an Acu-Med stockholders meeting. “I hate to pass up such a good opportunity. Well … I guess that answers that.” I paused. “Unless, of course, you'd consider investing for me?”
He looked surprised. Then wary. “Surely you're not serious. It would be as much a violation of ethical standards for me as it would be for you. If not more so.”
“If … not … more so,” I repeated the words. “And here I thought you owned stock in Acu-Med.”
“I …” Destler turned pink and stammered. “Well that's different.”
“How is that different?”
He narrowed his eyes, checked his watch again. “I really have to be somewhere,” he said, turning to go. “Why don't you call Virginia and make an appointment so we can discuss this when I have more time.”
I pulled the Acu-Med envelope out of my pocket and unfolded it. “I believe you have to own stock in order for them to send you one of these. Stockholders' meeting. Addressed to your wife.”
“How the hell … ?” Destler snarled. He snatched the envelope out of my hand and crumpled it in his fist. “Son of a—”
“Isn't owning stock in these companies discouraged, prohibited even, because it can cloud clinical judgment?” I asked. “For example, just suppose two physicians at the institute are working on therapies to treat the same condition. And suppose an administrator has a stake in the company sponsoring one of the studies. Mightn't that person be tempted to behave in a way that encourages one line of research and discourages the other. After all, there could be a considerable amount of money at stake.”
Destler stuffed the envelope in his coat pocket, rocked back on his heels, and gave me an appraising look.
“Of course,” I continued, “the bias might be subtle. More resources made available to one researcher. When there were efforts to discredit the other researcher, the administrator might suddenly develop tunnel vision. When a little investigation would have shown the evidence was suspect”—my voice rose—“trumped up.”
He laced his fingers over his midsection and pulsed them against one another. “You're improvising,” he said.
“You showed me Dr. Temple's research because you wanted me to see that she included subjects that were too old for the Kutril protocol. Did you know that those overage patients weren't even in her study?”
“That's absurd,” Destler barked.
“Someone took patient records that belong in Dr. Jensen's DX-200 trial and planted them in Channing's Kutril trial data.”
He gawped at me. It was possible that he was hearing this for the first time. “What are you saying? That Dr. Temple poached patient records from Dr. Jensen's research and put them into her own, to make her numbers look better?”
“Even you can't seriously think that. Dr. Temple was meticulous, and she was smart. If she were going to cheat, why not pick
patients that fit her protocol? No. I think someone doctored those records and inserted them into her research.”
Destler had turned ashen.
“And the diary. Evidence of a psychiatrist gone around the bend, having a sexual relationship with her patient? The only thing it demonstrates, for sure, is that Dr. Temple had sexual thoughts. We
all
have sexual thoughts. It comes with the turf. What matters is what we do with them. Dr. Temple wrote hers down. There's no evidence here, no evidence at all that she acted on them. Did you check? Or did it just suit your purposes to set the rumor mill in motion? So much neater and tidier when pesky radicals resign. Or kill themselves.”
“Now hold on a minute,” he blustered. A pair of nurses walked by. Destler lowered his voice and glanced behind him. “Surely you're not suggesting that I had anything to do with Dr. Temple's death.”
“I'm not suggesting anything. Yet. But I would like to know how you got the journal pages. Did you steal them? Or did you get someone to steal them for you? I'm quite certain Channing didn't offer them up as a birthday gift.”
“Of course I didn't steal …” Destler sputtered. “I've had quite enough of this … this inquisition,” he said, his voice stony with rage. “How dare you suggest that I've been tampering with research, sneaking around in a colleague's office.” He felt in his pocket. “Though I can see why you'd think so, since you seem quite capable of doing so yourself.
“And now, I have a meeting to go to.” He turned on his heel and left.
I hurried over to the Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Unit, convinced that I'd blown it with Destler. I still didn't know who'd tampered with Channing's research or how Destler had gotten his hands on her diary. All I'd managed to do was piss him off, and warn him so he could engage in his favorite activity—damage control. I rode the elevator up to the fourth floor.
The doors to Channing's office were open. As I approached, I got a wave of fresh-paint smell. I looked in. Spattered drop cloths covered a formless mound of furniture, pushed to the center of the room.
The door to the rest room at the end of the hall swung open. Daphne came out. She was carrying a glass coffeepot filled with water.
“Peter!” She sounded surprised, guarded. “What brings you up here?”
One side of her sweater was hanging lower than the other—she'd mismatched the buttons and the buttonholes.
“I was looking for Dr. Dyer,” I said. “Is she up here somewhere?”
“She's about,” Daphne said vaguely. “Popped over to sort through what's left in Channing's office.” Daphne peered into the empty office. “You checked under the shroud?” She backtracked to her own office, leaving a wake of flowery perfume.
I stared after her. The comment was bizarre. Out of character and out of place. And she appeared a bit disheveled. I followed her, intending to ask if she was feeling all right. But she went into her office and closed her door behind her. I took it as clear indication that she wasn't interested in my solicitude.
I returned to Channing's office. The painters could have at least left a window open a crack to dissipate the smell. I went around to the double-hung window and opened the latch. The woodwork was still tacky. I tried to raise the window, but it was painted shut. I took my keys out of my pocket and ran a key tip up the window edge on one side and down the other, slicing through the paint. Then I set my palms under the top edge of the bottom window and pushed. At first it wouldn't budge. I pressed as hard as I could, feeling the strain first in my arms and shoulders and then down into my torso and legs. The window gave way and flew up, letting cool air into the room and sending me ricocheting back into the pile of furniture.
I tried to regain my balance, expecting to feel the hard edges of a desk or bookcases or file cabinets beneath the drop cloth. Instead,
I felt something firm but softer. I jerked away. I pictured Jess, crumpled beneath what now had taken on the sinister aspect of a shroud. It was absurd—the power of suggestion. I took hold of the edge of the cloth. It was heavy with stiffened paint spatters. I started to raise it.
“Dr. Zak?” The sound of Jess's voice wasn't coming from under the tarp.
Jess peered into the room. She was carrying a stack of file folders. “You all right? You look like you've seen a ghost,” she said.
“Aren't you supposed to be at neuro rounds?” I snapped.
“Am I? What's today? Oh, my gosh, you're right. I completely forgot about it.”
“It might help if you had your beeper with you.”
She touched her jacket pocket. “I don't?”
“No. It's back on the unit, in your backpack, which you left sitting open on the table.” I paused to let that sink in. “And you said you were going to come up and see me in five minutes.”
She blinked at me. One of the file folders slid from the top of the stack. I retrieved it for her.
“I'm not usually like this,” she said.
“I can believe that. If you were half as unreliable as you've been lately, Dr. Temple never would have trusted you to coordinate her research. You wouldn't have lasted five minutes.”
“She did trust me. That's why Dr. Smythe-Gooding asked me to come over and help archive her research.”
“I hope that trust wasn't misplaced,” I said.
Jess put the pile of folders down on a chair. There was a skim of perspiration on her upper lip.
“Are you ready to tell me what you were you doing in Dr. Temple's study during her party?”
“I was putting back her journal.”
“Putting it back? Did she know you'd taken it?”
“No. I … I borrowed it.” She hurried on. “And I was trying to put it back. Only I wanted to be sure I put it in the right place.
And then I heard you, outside on the landing, so I ran out. And then …” Her voice trailed off.
“And then Channing got murdered,” I said, “and you couldn't return it.”
Jess's face convulsed, and a tear started down one cheek.
“Why on earth did you take it in the first place?”
“I know I shouldn't have”—her words came out in a rush—“I guess I was just curious. Wondering what kind of things she wrote in it. When I read what she wrote about me, I wished I hadn't. She wrote about things …”
I wanted to shake her, but I kept my voice calm. “Things that you knew had never happened.” Jess nodded miserably. “Didn't you understand what she was doing?”
“I know. Countertransference analysis. It's fine in the abstract. Or when it's me writing about my own patient. But this was
about
me. It was so”—she searched for the words—“raw. Sexually explicit. Even though I knew it was pure fantasy, I felt like I'd been violated.”
“Haven't you had sexual thoughts about a patient? About your own therapist even.”
Jess blushed. “Everyone does.”
“Of course. It's what transference is founded on—it's libidinal. You can't avoid it. And as therapists, it's necessary to fully understand the transference so that it doesn't affect the relationship. Channing used CTA to push those thoughts and feelings to their logical conclusion, to the extreme. By writing them down, she was robbing them of their power to distract her. That's all.”
Jess twisted her hands together. “I know, I know. But when I read them …”
“So let me get this straight. You steal Dr. Temple's private journal.” I was trying not to yell, but I could hear my voice rising. “Then you show so little regard for her privacy that this afternoon you leave it lying in your open backpack.”

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