Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell (23 page)

DOC'

Arden thought, You've been listening to that little geek's stories about the women he threw out, haven't you?

"I have nothing to say to you, Joe Brown," she snapped. "I've talked to you for the last time. You didn't want information, you wanted ammunition. Well, you'll get no more from us."

29

MARILYN STOR/

"In them days you had so much love for your husband that anything he does, he could never do no wrong. I know that my own husband, nothing he could do would be no sin to me because I worship the ground he walks on."

—quoted by Peter Matthiessen,
Men's Lives

It was supposed to be a high point in their married life, but Marilyn felt uneasy through the dinner. The affair was Joe Brown's idea, a way to quiet some of the rumors, and he'd made lavish preparations in just a few days. The Senior Citizens Center was jammed with John's admirers—Mayor Herman Fink, State Senator Cal Taggart, Reverend Kenneth Buttermore of the Lovell Bible Church and three or four other preachers, plus loyal patients of all denominations. Fresh flowers graced every table. Six courses were beautifully catered, including nonalcoholic drinks for the Mormons. A big "25" rode the ten-layer cake.

The hospital's chief of staff, Dr. John Welch, told the crowd that Lovell was lucky to have a physician with John's skills and dedication. Joe Brown seconded the motion. One of John's nurses drew laughs when she noted that Dr. Story had delivered both her and her baby "and we'd do it all over again." John accepted a watch, a doctor doll complete with glasses, a hospital smock with his name on it, and a book of appreciation signed by his admirers. He mumbled his thanks and sat down. Marilyn thought, He can sew up a chain-saw wound without a trace of nerves, but if you put him in front of an audience, he turns puce.

She wished she were enjoying herself. As she looked from face to face, she wondered, Do you know what's going on? Do
you
? She was afraid they all knew. That was why so many were here—to show support. She was properly appreciative, but she wondered if their support would influence the bullheads in Cheyenne. Why, they could void a license with a nod of their heads. Bureaucrats hated mavericks—that had always been one of John's favorite themes—and they'd been after him for years. He opposed Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, all the giveaway state and federal medical plans. He returned the free immunization drugs like MMRs and oral polio that the Wyoming Medical Board had tried to shove on doctors. He refused to take part in any of their programs and plans, even the ones he approved, because he considered them a form of creeping socialism. He was an old-fashioned independent physician, responsible only to God and his patients, and no state could abide such individualists.

As she looked around the party room, Marilyn's eyes fell on Inez Lewis Story, John's sturdy little eighty-three-year-old mother. She'd driven up from Maxwell with Uncle Howard Story, an octogenarian bachelor with the cutting voice and brisk manner of Dwight D. Eisenhower. The two of them looked so happy and proud. Marilyn said to herself, If you only knew. . . .

Neither Marilyn nor John had mentioned the charges. There was always the possibility that the clouds would pass as they'd passed before, and the Nebraska folks would never need to know. Still, it felt disloyal to withhold information from two of the people who loved John most.

That night, Marilyn sat up late as her chatty mother-in-law recounted the sagas of the Storys and the Lewises, the Merricks and the Huntingtons, John's illustrious forebears. With her precise command of language and her colorful locutions, the good-natured Inez ushered the wraiths of John's ancestors into the living room one by one. As usual, she brooked few interruptions and throughly dominated the conversation.

With the passing years, Marilyn had noticed an almost ethereal peacefulness in the woman she called Mom. After a stern and difficult childhood, Inez had seemed to bypass the usual vicissitudes. Until she was in her seventies, she would challenge anyone to a footrace—and usually win. She still broke into lighthearted old songs while doing the dishes:

Every fish and worm began to twist and squirm

And the captain and the ship does a corkscrew turn . . .

Inez had taught Scripture for forty years and still attended Bible Study class in Maxwell. For years she'd exchanged verses with John by mail. As a teen, he'd personally converted his family from Christians to
Christians,
and she still sought his counsel on spiritual matters. "He gives me verses to look up, like the ones in First Peter where it talks about the fiery trials we're all gonna go through," Inez told her daughter-in-law. "John seems to like those verses."

The sweet old lady avoided any mention of sex; the subject was forbidden in her home. She'd had a female operation but never mentioned it to her doctor son or her other two children. Years later, when she'd needed John's expert opinion, she asked Marilyn, "Do you think it would be proper to tell John?"

Inez never said much about her late husband William. Marilyn had always admired the old man and found him interesting. "Dad Story was a wonderful man," she told a friend. "Good-looking, with white wavy hair, a marvelously intelligent man. So
neat.
When he died in 1971, we looked at his desk in the Story general store and it was perfect, everything ready for his death.

"Dad Story was a godlike figure to his children. He flew in the Army Signal Corps in World War I and he liked to take the kids to the sandbars in the river and march them up and down like soldiers. On rainy days they drilled in the house with broomsticks for rifles. Dad Story could be stern, and they really snapped to.

"For a while, he made his own kids speak German around the house. No one knew why; it was just an interest of his. John ended up taking German in school, and his brother Jerod taught it in college. Somehow John ended up disliking German
and
Germans. Isn't that natural for Englishmen? Germans have certain personalities that John doesn't like—he says they're too much followers; they don't stand on their own feet. I always have to remind him that I'm a kraut myself. I'm the only German he likes!

"Maybe it's his rebellion against his dad. I don't know; I'm not a psychiatrist. Dad Story didn't hug his kids or act affectionate toward them. You never heard the word 'love' on that side of the family. Dad Story was a fine man, but he seemed a little overcon-trolled, distant. The family would go to visit friends and he'd sit outside in his car reading the market reports. Everybody said, 'Oh, that's just Bill's way.'

"We saw him kiss 'Mom' once. My daughters and I were getting ready to leave Maxwell after a visit and we all lined up so Dad Story could come down the row and give us a kiss one by one, and Inez slipped into line behind us and he kissed her by mistake. She said 'I fooled you!' It's a family joke."

The first issue of the Lovell
Chronicle
after the twenty-fifth-anniversary dinner pictured John in his polyester suit and his brushed-down graying hair, making his shy thank-you speech. "The present was traditional," the caption read, "but the package wrapping was not when Dr. John Story was honored for twenty-five years with the local hospital Friday. The gold pocket watch he is holding came wrapped in bandages."

Several friends called to say how good he looked in the picture, but John said he would be perfectly happy if he never saw his name in the paper again.

As the uncertain days passed, Marilyn couldn't shake her fears. John kept assuring her that every doctor had the same problem and he'd handled it well. A few weeks after the anniversary celebration, she wrote in her journal: "Dreamed several times in one night of being on a high bluff and realizing at the last moment that it had only a crest—the rest being entirely undermined. This morning the verse: Ps 94:18 'When I said, my foot slippeth; thy mercy, O Lord, held me up.' "

She was relieved when it came time to fly to Jamaica. They landed at Montego Bay and enjoyed a week's vacation in Ocho Rios with their good friends from Lovell, the Shumways. Then they were driven to Black River to begin John's second mission for the Christian Medical Society. En route, Marilyn tried not to think of his first. It had been to Honduras, and while he'd been gone, Annette had slipped from their hands.

This time he was the only surgeon on the trip and it seemed as though he never took off his blood-spotted smock and latex gloves. The locals streamed toward the camp for herniorrhaphies, C-sec-tions, appendectomies, tonsillectomies, tumor excisions, wart removals, ingrown nails, even counseling. John was a one-man "MASH." For once in his life, he couldn't spend three hours with his nose in the manuals before every operation. On a sightseeing drive in the mountains, he wound up sewing an auto victim's gashed arm.

She told herself, This is how I always thought of medicine. She felt a soaring pride. Even on the most hectic days, John never forgot his Christianity, dispensing Scripture along with prescriptions, and Bibles along with drug samples. She thought, How can anyone accuse this man? What kind of satanic fiends would mount a poison-tongue campaign against a man whose only purpose in life is to praise God and help his fellow man?

They returned to Lovell to find his name on everyone's lips. The
Chronicle
had run a long article under a six-column headline:

LOCAL DOCTOR CALLED BEFORE STATE MEDICAL BOARD

The paper reported that investigators were looking into the case and "a dozen letters against Story were received . . . [and] about 30 letters supporting the doctor." A formal hearing was scheduled for mid-November but would probably be postponed.

Marilyn wrote in her journal: "Back from Jamaica to be met with more of our troubles—even more serious and public than before. Brothers and sisters here have been fasting and praying for us. Our hearts are warmed and blessed. But Lord, suddenly I am

"DOC"

angry—angry at the so-called professional people in Cheyenne who have become judge and jury and obviously decided on a guilty verdict at the very first (and only) informal visit. Help me to believe the verse you gave me yesterday—(Ps 50:15 + 23) and claim it as your promise to us, Father. Jesus, you were falsely accused. May we model our lives after you?"

30

MINDA BRINKERHOFF

Minda and Scott decided to settle the question of Amber Dawn's parentage. They'd been assuring each other that it didn't matter, but it did.

The little Brinkerhoff family had switched to Douglas Wrung, M.D., another member of the Lovell Bible Church. Story had been instrumental in bringing him to Lovell, but the new man had an excellent reputation and the children seemed to like his style.

Minda asked him for a lab slip authorizing blood tests. When she got back home she told Scott what happened next.

"Dr. Wrung said, 'What's this all about?' I said, 'We really don't know if my daughter is Scott's or Dr. Story's.' He told me that was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard. How could I take a perfectly fine doctor and run him through the wringer like this? I told him I wasn't leaving the office till I got the form. Then on my way home I ran into one of my cousins and she said, 'What are you doing to Dr. Story? This is crazy, this is stupid! I can't believe you're doing this.' "

Scott slowly shook his head. She could see that he was sick of the whole affair.

The lab reported that the tests couldn't be 100 percent conclusive without a blood sample from Dr. Story, but it appeared almost certain that Scott was the father.

The news was welcomed, but it didn't solve the other problems. Lovell, the town of Minda's birth and life, was becoming enemy territory. After Story's anniversary party, people crossed the street when they saw her coming. A grocer cracked smart. Her children were bullied at school.

As long as they stayed in Lovell, she never knew when she might drag her arthritic bones home from the dry cleaners to find her husband being led away in handcuffs for taking after Story with his deer rifle. Scott was still working in the oil fields, but the job was petering out now that winter was coming. She persuaded him to send out some resumes, and he was offered a junior computer programmer's job in Gillette, 100 miles to the east.

Her mother agreed to take over the dry cleaners, and a week later, the Brinkerhoffs moved. As they drove into Gillette, they were tempted to turn around and go home. The coal-mining boom-town was dreary and dispiriting. But it had one charm: its citizens knew nothing about Minda Brinkerhoff or a weird sick doctor in Lovell. Gillette would be a perfect place for licking wounds.

A few weeks later, Minda underwent her first session of gestalt therapy. The counselor told her to pretend that she was talking to Story. "You're real angry at him, Minda," the therapist instructed her. "Now what do you have to tell him?"

Minda thought, I came to this town to get away from Dr. Story —and now he's in this room? "Huh?" she asked.

"You're angry, Minda! This man raped you! You're—
mad\
Now tell him how you feel!"

Minda thought, I'm
not
angry. At least right now. Sometimes I want to wring his neck, but most of the time I just feel sad.

She took a deep breath and addressed the empty chair. "Gosh, Dr. Story, I'm disappointed in you." She felt stupid. "I mean, I
really
am. Gol, we trusted you all those years." She thought, How embarrassing! "We
loved
you, Dr. Story."