Fortunes of the Dead (42 page)

Clayton and Emma exchanged looks.

The faint music of “La Bamba” drifted into the room from somewhere, the hallway maybe.

“How old was your son when he died?”

“Right at two and a half.”

A toddler, I thought. “What did he die of?”

Emma Marsden looked at her feet, and Clayton ran a finger along the edge of his desk. Their silence interested me.

“His liver failed,” Clayton said.

Neither of them met my eyes, but pain seeped like acid through their self-containment. They weren't looking for sympathy, they were looking for help. They were looking for somebody to be on their side.

I wondered why they wanted me.

Marsden leaned back in his chair and placed his fingertips along the edge of his desk. He seemed absorbed in placing those fingertips in some kind of preordained and essential alignment, and to manage this he wasn't able to look at me while he talked.

“I don't know if you know this, Ms.… Lena. But in this day and age, if you give permission to have an autopsy performed on a family member who dies in a hospital, or if, as in the case of our son, an autopsy is required, that's pretty much license to plunder.”

He looked at me.

I looked back. “What exactly do you mean by that? Plunder?”

Emma Marsden faced me. “What it means is that they stole my son's internal organs; kept some of them for research, and donated others for profit.”

“Technically, it's not for profit,” Clayton said.

Emma looked at him the way I had looked at the urine-scented carpet on my screened-in porch. “Their ‘fee,' my dear ex-husband, is simply a
non-profit
way of saying
profit
. Creative accounting. The not-for-profit medical profession makes the
corporate
profiteers look like small-timers. You know this, Clayton, and she's not going to sue us, she's not wearing a wire. Stop dancing around and say what it is.”

“My dear ex-wife is right,” Clayton said.

I slid forward in my chair, feet on the floor. Their habit of calling each other “dear ex-whatever” was annoying; also, I didn't like being called “she” when I was actually in the room.

“Are you telling me the hospital took your son's organs without permission?” I asked. I found it hard to believe.

“Not the hospital,” Clayton said. “Dr. Tundridge's clinic. They treated our son when he first got sick, and Dr. Tundridge was in charge when Ned was admitted to the hospital.”

“Tundridge was head of the
committee
of doctors who treated my son,” Emma said. “It's an assembly line these days, don't you know? Each specialist looks at one small part, and nobody's really looking at the whole.”

“But … you're saying they did all of this without your permission?”

“That's what we're saying,” Emma said.

Clayton made a tepee of his fingertips, which I was ready to cut off, every single one, since he paid them so much attention and refused to meet my eyes. Odd, for a courtroom litigator. Why was he so uncomfortable with me? It made me think he was up to something. Of course, Joel says I always think people are up to something.

“It's a fuzzy area,” Clayton said. “There's a blanket permission form you have to sign when someone is admitted to a hospital. On the other hand, it is so broad and vague that it really doesn't stand up. In addition, because there is very little choice about signing—which means, sign, or forget having your child treated—it could definitely be argued that it amounts to duress.”

“We shouldn't have signed it,” Emma said.

“We didn't have a choice.”

Clayton Roubideaux looked at Emma, and it was such a look that I was embarrassed to be in the room. He wasn't up to anything other than trying to distance himself from the pain of losing a child. I felt ashamed, because I was so judgmental. Just because I was happy these days did not give me an excuse for forgetting what it was like for people who were going through the dark times.

It's strange that happiness does that to you—makes you just a little less compassionate, a little less willing to listen, because you don't want it to intrude, that darkness, you don't want it spilling over into your life and shadowing your relief and peace of heart. I think it is an instinctual and primitive reaction—like a fear of infection. Sometimes it's easier to be effective in my line of work if you're depressed before you interview the client.

“How do you know?” I asked. “Or is that what you want me to do—to find out?”

Emma Marsden shook her head. “We know already, believe me. We know because someone from the clinic
called
us and notified us that our son's heart was not buried with him, and what did we want them to do with it. It was like a … a
storage
issue. They let us know they were going to be billing us. And then we called back—”

“I called back,” Clayton said.

“Does it really matter who called back, Clayton?” Emma said.

“It might.”

She looked at me. I shrugged. It might or it might not, but I wasn't getting in the middle until I was ready. I was planning to take sides, I just wasn't sure how many there were. We had started with two, but watching the both of them made me wonder if there weren't going to be three. Of the two of them, Clayton Roubideaux probably had the money to pay my fee, which meant his was the most practical side to take, but that fingertip thing was putting me off.

“Okay, so you're telling me that the clinic actually informed you that they had your son's, Ned's, heart. That they'd … kept it? How did they explain that?”

“Research,” Clayton said. “They explain everything with that one word. It's the medical-legal version of diminished capacity. It means they think they can do anything and everything they want, and so far, since the eighties anyway, the courts have concurred.”

“So what happened when you called? Did they back down? Tell you it was all a big mistake?”

Clayton shook his head. “Not at all. They did say there was a mistake, but it wasn't that they didn't have the heart, but that they had … other things too.”

Silence settled while I thought this through. I looked at Emma Marsden. “What other things?”

“Spleen. Liver. Both corneas. His … tongue.”

I took a breath. “You know this for sure, or that's what they told you?”

“I went there. After they called. I went there to pick them up. I didn't know what to put them in. I just took some bags that were in the drawer in my kitchen. Sloane's bags, Sloane's Grocery? I probably should have taken a cooler, but I didn't know what the hell to do.”

I nodded, chewing my bottom lip.

She looked at me, and her eyes were tight, her voice hard, but her hand, of which she seemed unaware, was clutching the neckline of her sweater and squeezing it in her fist.

“When I got there, they showed them to me. The girl who worked there … she was new, and she showed me where they were kept. Down in the clinic basement. It was very clean, very well lit, lots of fluorescent lighting. Bright white floors. Did I tell you how clean it was, Clayton? It made my shoes squeak. I was embarrassed because it … my shoes looked so worn out and dirty on that floor. And I'm standing there with my plastic grocery bags, wondering if I ought to have brought a cooler, thinking about
Tupperware
, for God's sake, wondering why the parts weren't being released to some … undertaker or something. And then she changed her mind. That girl. She'd left me there for twenty minutes, and she came back, and obviously she was in a lot of trouble, because she was just red in the face, like she was embarrassed or something, and she said I would have to leave and they would call me later. And so I … I asked to talk to her supervisor, some man named Mr. French, and while she went away to go get him, I put everything marked
MARSDEN AGED TWENTY-NINE MONTHS
in my grocery bags and ran out of the building and into the parking lot and got in my car and drove away.”

She looked at Clayton, who reached across the desk and squeezed her hand. He was still in love with her, and she knew it, but she didn't care. But she felt sorry for him, and it was his eyes that filled with tears, and it was he who could not speak and finish the story.

“Forty-eight hours later I was called by Child Protective Services and informed that I was being accused of Munchausen by proxy in the death of my son Ned. They refused to give me any further information, except that the complaint had just been filed by the physician who treated my son—Dr. Theodore Tundridge. They said they were investigating, and wanted to
offer me the option
of voluntarily releasing custody of my daughter, Blaine, to the state. That if I did so, and that if I admitted that I was guilty of the charges, of making my own son sick enough to die, they would let me have custody of my daughter back after I had taken a prescribed list of parenting classes. But that my daughter would have to be examined periodically by Dr. Tundridge, who would oversee her health care and make sure she was not suffering from any form of abuse or induced illness.”

I felt it rising within me, the anger that fueled my job. Like a helium balloon in my chest. And I got that feeling that I usually get when I go to work—I really wanted to help, meaning I was ready to take sides. Their side.

Clayton looked at me, eyes shrewd. “Can you imagine it? The
power
this doctor and this state organization have when they work together?”

“Sounds like they've done it before.”

He nodded. “I thought of that. But there's legal precedent in several other states, not just here. It happens everywhere.”

“You mean this kind of deal making? Pressuring mothers to back down off of medical complaints, or they lose their kids and face criminal prosecution? It goes that far?”

“Yes, it does.”

“And did you agree?” I looked over at Emma Marsden.

She stared at me, hard. “No, I did not.”

“Good for you,” I said. Wondering how she'd found the strength to be so brave, so smart, and so wise.

Emma Marsden wiped tears out of her eyes, making them go red. “I need a minute,” she said, and left the room.

Clayton Roubideaux opened his handkerchief, blew his nose, folded the handkerchief over one more time, and blew again. “This is hard,” he said.

I nodded. “Clayton, do they have any reason to suspect Emma had anything to do with your son's death? You said liver failure. That's … broad.”

“They don't know what killed him,” Clayton said. There was no anger in his voice, just something that sounded bereft. “He was so sick. He would have these attacks, they were so … they were horrible. Pain in his stomach, high up, and vomiting, violent vomiting that went on and on and on, he just couldn't stop. We'd take him to the emergency room. They'd do blood work, and his liver enzymes would be sky high, nine hundred when they were supposed to be forty. And then they'd come back down. And they'd do all kinds of tests, and nothing made any sense. And then he'd be okay. And then it would start back up again. They'd rerun every medical test, Emma kept food diaries, we had the paint in the house analyzed, my God, we tried everything. There just didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it.”

“What did the autopsy say?”

“You know, they never actually gave us all that much information. Just that the liver had lesions, but was in better shape than they thought it would be.”

“That's it?”

He nodded. “I should have asked. Asked more questions. But he was gone, and Emma and I were falling apart. Ned was my son, my only child. And Blaine—she was Emma's daughter from her first marriage. I said … something I said made Blaine think that I loved Ned more than her and that the wrong kid died, and Emma asked me about it. And I told her the truth. That I'd never said anything like that to Blaine, but that Ned was my real son and … and Emma asked me to leave that day and filed divorce papers that week.”

He looked at me. “I did love Blaine. I still do. Very much. And maybe I did love Ned more, but so what? It's hard to be straight about that kind of thing when you go through something like this. And Blaine—she's a good kid, but she likes to play victim. Kind of an aggressive martyrdom, which is a scary thing, let me tell you.

“You know, we had a good marriage. Emma's first husband was a piece of shit. And I was good to both of them, to Emma and Blaine, and all I did was try to be the best husband and stepfather and father I could possibly be.”

I wondered if he was aware that he'd separated out his role to Blaine and Ned right there.
Stepfather
and
father
. If that was his worst sin, he was probably a pretty good guy. Of course, there were two sides to every story. Two sides at least.

“Okay, then. I'm interested. But what exactly do you want me to do?”

Roubideaux's voice went crisp. “Information gathering. Take a look at this doctor. See if he has a record of any other unusual deaths on his watch. Anything that takes the blame off Emma and puts it somewhere else. Look into his clinic. See if any other parents have had him keep back, you know, parts.”

“So what you're looking for is proof that Dr. Tundridge, and maybe others in the clinic, or that he associates with professionally, have accused your ex-wife of Munchausen by proxy in retaliation because she objected to, and is causing trouble over, their use of … their retention of your son's … organs.”

“Yes, that's it exactly. You'll help me build a case for Emma, and against them, if it goes to court. I'm not sure it will. I honestly think our best bet is to work with them. Emma says hell no, but Child Protective Services has enormous power in this kind of case. They can take Blaine into protective custody just on the word of the doctor alone, and I think the only reason they haven't is because of how old she is.”