Thirty Rooms To Hide In (31 page)

Report filed by the Medical Examiner of Augusta, Georgia

Report of Examination of Body. Investigation revealed that this 45-year-old medical doctor, who lived in Rochester, Minnesota, had arrived in Augusta on June 30th relative to securing a position at the Medical College of Georgia. He had conferences with the Chief of Orthopedic Service at the college. On the day he arrived he said that he had had the “flu,” and was so hoarse that he could not talk. It was known that he had been depressed and had difficulties at home, and with drinking. He was given penicillin tablets by a local doctor, all of which he had taken. He had finished his business and had purchased an airplane ticket to return home on July 3rd. About 12:30 a.m. that morning, July 3rd, he had called Rochester and while talking he dropped the phone.

To learn what happened to my family in that hot July of 1966, my archeology has taken me to some odd corners where the artifacts have come to rest: the dusty boxes of letters in my mother’s attic, the quiet stacks in Mayo’s Medical Library, and the wet char of my brother’s ruined house. Today it has taken me to Georgia, where I’m watching the young medical students file out of a modern five-story building into the Augusta heat. I am standing across the street, Laney-Walker Boulevard, looking at a building that’s part of the Medical College of Georgia. On that spot, back in July of 1966, was the University Motel and it was there my father died; in room 50.

I’ve come a long way to see a motel that no longer exists; but I can see all I need to see from here. I see a sad little building, what you’d describe as the kind of place you wouldn’t want to be caught dead in if the irony wasn’t so thick. Yet, after Roger pushed the last person who cared about him out of his life, the University Motel had everything any alcoholic wants – a place to be left alone, a room to hide in with his disease. Arguing with all who try to save him, the alcoholic is like a drowning swimmer who mutters insults into the ear of the lifeguard trying to keep him afloat.
(“Fuck you and your little
whistle.
”)

Room 50 is a sad little room. It is where all drunks go to die. Rich drunks, poor ones, pill poppers, coke heads, it doesn’t matter; they all end up on the floor of Room 50. In the
Addict’s
Merriam-Webster
, Room 50 should be defined as “Any dinky shithole miles from the things that actually matter: wives, husbands, children, love, forgiveness, redemption. Room 50 is place where the addict is free to concentrate on himself; to get a little ‘
Me
Time.’”

According to weather records, July 2nd, 1966, was in fact a “Rainy Night in Georgia.” So if we were to open the door to Room 50, it’s seems fitting to have Brook Benton’s sad song playing somewhere, perhaps through the thin walls from a radio in the room next door.

It’s a rainy night in Georgia.

Baby, it’s such a rainy night in Georgia.

I feel like it’s rainin’

all over the world.

Any song of self-pity will do really, as long as the singer’s state of woe can be blamed on something: lost love, the weight of the world, or perhaps the classic “I’m too good for this world.” Also acceptable is “I’m too bad for this world.” In the end it doesn’t matter, as long as “Me, Me, Me” is worked into the refrain.

Outside the window we might see the classic abbreviated “MOT” of “MOTEL” humming neon protest to the drizzle and, inside, a room art-directed to scream self-pity: faded wood paneling, avocado-colored drapes in a shiny fabric, and in the bathroom a cracked mirror into which Narcissus can stare at the fracture running through his broken youth.

Jim Morrison may have expired in the bathtub of a hotel in Paris but he died in Room 50 same as my dad. Ernest Hemingway ate his shotgun in Room 50 and fell on the floor next to Curt Cobain. John Belushi is over on the bed and Elvis is face-down in the bathroom. Room 50 is crowded with the bodies of people who have been thinking mainly about themselves for years.

Medical Examiner’s report, continued

About 12:30 a.m. on July 3rd, he had called Rochester and while talking dropped the phone. The Motel manager was aware of this but thought that he had just “passed out” because of his drinking.

The door of his room was opened at 9:30 a.m. and Dr. Sullivan was found dead, crouched by his bed with the telephone receiver off the hook. He was on his knees with his head down on the floor supported in this position by the left side of his body resting against the bed. Examination reveals there was a broken ashtray under the body.

There was vomitus on the floor and in his mouth and nostrils; it had a strong odor of alcohol. There was a 1/4 inch laceration above his left eyebrow from which there had been a slight amount of bleeding. It is thought that this laceration was caused by striking his head when he fell on one of the fragments of glass [ashtray] on the floor. There was no other marks of violence.

There was definite flatness to percussion over the upper half of the left lung posteriorly. There were no other abnormal findings.

On his dresser there was a half empty fifth of whiskey and three bottles that had been dispensed at Mayo Clinic [pharmacy] on June the 8th. Two of these bottles had contained 100 capsules each of Placidyl, 200 milligrams. These two bottles were empty. The third bottle had contained 500 capsules of Librium, 10 milligrams. Only 442 of these remained in the bottle.

* * *

Finally, 40 years after he died, I know conclusively what happened. For the first time I see what the maid and the police saw when they opened the door to Room 50. I finally know what happened in there.

And yet the report ends with the same startling non sequitur:

Cause of death: Pneumonia involving the left lung; type undetermined.

On the dresser of the room where my father died were three pharmacy-sized bottles of Placidyl and Librium, a total of 700 pills in a prescription filled, according to the labels, just 26 days earlier. 442 of the pills remained, leaving 258 unaccounted for. And the cause of death on my father’s autopsy is “pneumonia of the left lung, type undetermined.”

Placidyl is the trade name for a depressant called ethchlorvynol, prescribed hesitantly by doctors as a short-term solution to insomnia; it’s no longer even available in the United States. Librium is a sedative used for symptomatic relief of mild anxiety or tension. Neither should be taken with alcohol and both, say one medical text, “should be administered with caution to addiction-prone individuals or to those whose history suggests possible abuse.”

On a medical website, I find this warning: “Taking an overdose of ethchlorvynol or taking alcohol or other CNS depressants
with
ethchlorvynol may lead to unconsciousness and possibly death. Some signs of an overdose are continuing confusion, severe weakness, shortness of breath or slow troubled breathing, slurred speech, staggering, and slow heartbeat.”

So, 258 pills missing.

And two bottles entirely empty.

Even on the wild chance my father had limited himself to an steady number of pills per day since “prescribing” them, 258 missing pills means he averaged 9.9 pills a day – a lot, especially if you’re chasing them with booze. That there are two empty bottles is also curious. Even in the unlikely event he was taking a measured dose of 10 pills a day, why were
both
bottles empty and on the dresser? Did he dispense pills first from one bottle then move on to the next? If so, would he really have packed an empty bottle back in Norfolk and taken it on to Augusta?

Now that I had read the police report, I wondered how the medical examiner could conclude the culprit was “pneumonia involving the left lung.” How could any rational person walk into Room 50, look around, see a dead guy on the floor, the half-empty bottle of booze, and three pharmacy-sized jugs of depressants with 258 pills missing, and go, “Mmmm, this looks like the work of a virus.” I never believed it was pneumonia and for years suspected my father simply took a fistful of pills and caused his own death. I also assumed somebody – probably a friend of Dad’s – had called in a favor and requested my father’s cause of death be listed as “pneumonia.”

My mother isn’t sure.

“During the autopsy, there was no evidence of pills in his stomach,” she says. “How can you suggest an overdose caused his death?”

Since I’m out of my depth here, I telephone an expert, Dr. Elizabeth Peacock, the Deputy Medical Examiner of Travis County, Texas. A few days later I find myself in her comfortable suburban-Austin home watching her read the ancient police report.

“Well,” she says looking over the top of her glasses, “first of all, with overdose deaths you typically do not find pill residue. In order to work, the pills need to be absorbed and to do that most drugs need to get to the small intestine.”

“So, you think maybe it wasn’t suicide?” I ask.

“Well, I see that they didn’t take blood or run toxicology tests. So we’re basically left here – as we often are in this business – with just the paperwork, from which we can only guess at ‘intent.’ Several things make me lean away from suicide here. There were lots of pills left in that bottle of Librium and suicide victims typically take the whole bottle.”

I wrinkle my brow; it’s not what I expected to hear. Maybe I actually prefer a cover-up theory, or I’m holding onto some of that Tortured Arteest crap; maybe I want my father to have purposely yanked his wheel to the left and crashed through the guardrails into the sea.

“It just seems like such a giant leap,” I suggest, bringing her attention to the last paragraph before the cause of Death. “Here you’ve got all these pill bottles, the booze. And a guy who’s recently remade his will. And the medical examiner licks his pencil and writes down ‘pneumonia of the left lung.’ Doesn’t that just seem…strange?”

“Well, it is odd and it’s certainly not where I’d end up.” She straightens her back and I picture her on the stand at one of the many trials where she’s given testimony.

“I’d probably would rule this as ‘accidental aspiration of gastric contents due to multi-drug toxicity.’ But here’s the thing. You have to understand forensic medicine was a fledgling science in 1966; there weren’t even written standards for this business until the 1990s.

“The most you can say about this report is, maybe it was a little …‘lazy.’ It was probably easier for the M.E. to write ‘pneumonia’ and move on to the next one. No one was going to dispute a claim like that.”

Perhaps my mother is right. Perhaps the final answer is banal – my father got into the booze and pills and they killed him. A story no different than one of those articles in back of the newspaper: “Area Toddler Chokes to Death on Toy.” The toy was on the floor, the toddler put it in his mouth – the booze and pills were on the dresser, the doctor took them. He simply screwed up the dosage and died.

In the end, whatever made the medical examiner list pneumonia as the cause of my father’s death – a phone call from Mayo, a lack of facilities to run toxicology tests, or bureaucratic laziness – it put an acceptable face on an unpleasant story. The “accidental” death’s double indemnity clause in the insurance helped send six of Dr. Sullivan’s sons through school.

Interview with Dad’s boss, Dr. Mark Coventry, August 1st, 1992

Later, the [insurance company’s] lawyer called me and asked “Could you confirm that this was an accident?” Well, I thought a long time about that. I said I really don’t know legally the implications of that, but the drinking was not an accident. But if you can prove that vomiting was an accident incidental to drinking, that’s fine. I would then agree that it was an accident. That made a great difference, as you have probably heard from your mother, because you got double indemnity on the insurance.