The Law of Similars

by Chris Bohjalian

"Doubt it."

  But while it may have been exactly what we had planned, it was still happening awfully quickly. There was no way I'd thought Becky McNeil would move this fast. Unless, of course, Carissa wasn't with Becky. Maybe she hadn't liked Becky, and she'd wound up with someone like Oren Candon instead.

  "Is she with Becky McNeil?" I asked, aware that a sizable part of the woman's name had remained caught in my throat.

  "How did you know that?"

  I started to answer, but I discovered my mouth had gone dry. Bone dry. I had to have water. "They're both women," I croaked.

  "Have you talked to her?"

  "Who?"

  "Leland, I'm your friend. Tell me."

  "Who? Carissa or Becky?"

  "Well, I meant to Carissa. But have you talked to Becky?"

  I coughed into my hand to try clearing my throat, then answered, "I haven't talked to Carissa. And I don't think I've spoken to Becky since we argued about Charles Aiken before Thanksgiving."

  "Assault and robbery?"

  "And I caved to simple assault," I said, trying to find even a tiny oasis of saliva in my mouth with my tongue.

  "Seriously: How did you know she hooked up with Becky?"

  I shrugged my shoulders. "I told you, it was just a guess. They're both strong women. It seemed natural they'd wind up together."

  "That's all?"

  "That's all," I said. "Now, I need some water. Feel free to wait here if you want to continue this conversation."

  "She's in the paper today, you know. Your friend."

  "Quoted?"

  "Nope. Unavailable for comment. But Garrick is."

  "Quoted..."

  "Right."

  "Do you have a copy?" I tried to sound casual, as if I was interested only because my friend's husband and an acquaintance both happened to appear in the same story. Nothing more.

  "There's one in reception."

  I nodded and walked past her into the hallway, and took a long drink at the water fountain. A few minutes later, when she was behind closed doors with a twelve-year-old and a social worker, I went straight to Gerianne for the newspaper the office kept in the waiting room.

  Other than a criminal prosecutor, no one likes a creative murder weapon more than a journalist. A few years earlier when one Vermonter had murdered another with a ski pole, it was impossible to read a newspaper article that didn't refer to the homicide as the "Ski Pole Slaying," and one even created a small graphic of crossed ski poles to accompany the stories that followed the investigation and trial.

  And though no one thought Richard's plight had anything at all to do with murder, I saw the press would have a field day with the singularly unusual cause of his coma, and with the opportunities for alliteration his situation offered a headline writer. The banner above the article Margaret had mentioned read, CHRISTMAS EVE COMA CAUSED BY CASHEWS.

  Emmons's story had not yet been reduced to the "cashew coma," but it was only a matter of time.

  And while there was nothing in the article itself that was particularly surprising, I was alarmed by the byline. Actually, it wasn't even the byline: It was the three words underneath the byline. The Associated Press. The article had been written by Deborah Fairchild, the AP writer in Montpelier. The story had gone out on the wires.

  I sat down in my office and read it a second time.

  BURLINGTON, VT.--Investigators are continuing to explore the life-threatening decision of a Bartlett, Vermont, man Christmas Eve to eat a nut that he may have known he was allergic to.

  Richard Emmons, 43, remains in a coma at Burlington's Fletcher Allen Hospital after eating a cashew.

  Authorities are focusing on the possibility that Emmons may have been a victim of a misguided attempt to heal his own asthma.

  "We're exploring a variety of reasons for Mr. Emmons's behavior Christmas Eve," said Chittenden County State's Attorney Philip Hood. "Right now we have no evidence that a crime has been committed or any laws have been broken."

  At 3 A.M. Christmas morning, Jennifer Emmons, 41, found her husband on the kitchen floor of their Bartlett home, unable to breathe after eating cashews. Richard Emmons apparently knew he was allergic to the nuts and may have been aware that he was risking anaphylactic shock and death by eating them.

  He has been in a coma since he was rushed to the hospital by ambulance early Christmas morning.

  At the time, Emmons was being treated for his asthma by Bartlett homeopath and psychologist Carissa Lake, in addition to seeing a conventional physician and allergist.

  Sources close to the investigation believe that Emmons may have been told that cashews were a homeopathic cure for asthma.

  According to Burlington homeopath Jerome Walsh, M.D., homeopathy is a 200-year-old medical system founded on the exact opposite premise of conventional medicine. Walsh, who is a licensed physician, says he uses homeopathy as a part of his practice, as well as herbs and conventional drugs.

  "Whereas modern medicine focuses upon remedies that counteract a symptom, homeopathy operates on the principle that 'like cures like,'" Walsh said.

  A homeopath will therefore treat a patient with a substance that would actually cause a "symptom" in a healthy person.

  The substance, often made from a common plant or mineral, is applied in infinitesimal doses. Homeopaths like Walsh, however, believe there's just enough there to help the body to heal itself.

  The investigation is complicated by the fact that Vermont does not regulate, certify, or license homeopaths.

  "Homeopathic remedies aren't medicine," explained Rosemary Haig, a director of Professional Regulation with the Vermont Secretary of State's Office.

  Psychologists are regulated, however, and it is here where a criminal investigation may wind up focused.

  "If a homeopath tells someone to eat a cashew even though she knows it will make him sick, and that person does, it may not be a crime," said Garrick Turnbull, a psychologist and the director of the Vermont Board of Psychological Examiners. "But if a psychologist says to a patient to eat that cashew, there may be a clear breach of duty. Possibly criminal negligence."

  Emmons has now been in a coma for three days.

  Dr. Jan Dubuisson, one of the neurologists treating him, said the longer he remains in a coma, the less likely it becomes he'll ever awake.

  Lake did not return calls to her home or office.

  The story could have been a lot worse, I decided. The AP had been careful not to libel Carissa.

  And I wasn't in it. Jennifer hadn't told a reporter that the first person she spoke with in the State's Attorneys Office was some sleazy lawyer who allowed her to babble for half an hour without mentioning that he knew Carissa Lake.

  After all, surely AP reporter Deborah Fairchild would have called me if she had. And Fairchild hadn't phoned.

  No, the only thing that should concern me, I decided, was the statement Carissa was going to give to the police later that day. And even that shouldn't concern me. It was just that it was all happening so fast. It was just that I hadn't spoken to Carissa since I'd left her office on Wednesday. It was just that I no longer knew what the fuck was going on.

  I wondered if it was worth trying to connect with Carissa through Whitney. See how she was doing.

  No, I shouldn't do that. I couldn't do that.

  And so I wouldn't.

  But, of course, I did. Whitney was at lunch when I called, but the young man who answered the phone volunteered the information that she'd be back about one and done for the day about five. He never even asked who I was. Naturally, I was waiting outside for her when she emerged from the shop for the night.

  When she saw me, she pulled her scarf up further around her neck and pulled her wool hat down to her eyes. Already it was covering her ears. Her long coat looked a bit like a giant cape of Mexican or Central American origin: There was a giant bird on the back that seemed to belong on the front of a Cancun travel brochure.

  "You shouldn't be here," she said.

&n
bsp; "I know."

  "My aunt said you two need to keep your distance."

  "She tell you why?"

  "Not really. She said it wouldn't look good with her being investigated and all. But I know there's more to it than that. Like, I'm not supposed to tell anyone she had a really nice time at your place Christmas Eve. Or she was up there again the other night."

  "How does that make you feel?"

  She started to walk down the residential street around the corner from the health-food store, and it was clear I was supposed to walk with her. "Slimy," she said. "And I'll feel even worse if I have to lie to somebody."

  "Like an investigator?"

  "Is that who's going to interrogate me?"

  "No one is going to interrogate you. Maybe someone will interview you. But I promise, there won't be any gorillas with cigarettes, or any harsh lights in your face."

  "I mean, what if someone sees us right now?" she went on. "Isn't even that a problem?"

  "It's five degrees outside. Have you seen anyone but us on the street?"

  "Any minute now, Reed Pecor will be out walking his dog. Or Ginny Mayo with hers. They always walk them right before dinner."

  "Let's talk fast, then."

  "We'll have to talk real fast. I live at the end of the block."

  "Fine."

  The sidewalk had small ridges of rock-hard ice, and I found myself moving gingerly in wingtips, the stupidest shoe a man can wear in the winter. I noticed Whitney was wearing big heavy boots over those small feet that I imagined always naked in sandals.

  "So you're mad at us because we've made you feel slimy," I said.

  "Us? I'm not pissed at Carissa. I'm pissed at you!"

  "Me?"

  "Duh. I don't know what you two did, but I'm sure you're behind it."

  "Now, why is that?"

  "I know my aunt!"

  "Does your aunt feel slimy, too?"

  "God, of course! Come on! I don't know exactly what's going on, I don't know what you did. But whatever it was, it was exactly the wrong thing to do. I have never in my life seen Carissa the way she was today."

  A little geyser of defensiveness spouted inside me. There were a variety of reasons why Carissa might have seemed out of sorts that day, including her own conversation with Richard Emmons Christmas Eve. But I kept that thought to myself.

  "She was depressed?" I asked.

  "Like catatonic."

  "She say anything?"

  "Not really. She stopped in to get some stuff a little while ago. And she must have spent ten minutes just staring at bulgur."

  "Could her depression have something to do with her statement this afternoon?"

  "What do you mean, 'her statement'?"

  "She met with the police. She and her lawyer. Didn't she?"

  "I'd think you'd know."

  "I don't. I only said about five words today to the attorney who's handling the case."

  "Well, her meeting went fine. At least I think it did. She was a zombie this morning, and that was before she'd said word one to you lawyers."

  "You saw her this morning, too?"

  "She had breakfast with my mom and dad."

  I nodded. Of course Carissa's family would rally around her right now. Of course they would circle the wagons.

  Whitney motioned with her face toward a gray clapboard Victorian on the corner. "This is where I get off," she said. "That's my family's house."

  "Is there anything I can do for your aunt?"

  "Doubt it."

  "Would you give her a message for me?"

  "Why don't you just go and throw some pebbles against her window?" I remained silent, and her anger abated a bit--just enough that she rolled her eyes and asked, "All right: What?"

  "Tell her, please, that I'm thinking of her. Every minute."

  She tilted her head and raised a single eyebrow. "Now, that," she said, "is one very sickening thought."

  I had just about run out of patience with Whitney and her barely post-adolescent self-righteousness. But the last thing I wanted to do at the moment was alienate her any more than I already had, and so I tucked away my courtroom scowl--a combination of contempt and disgust--and said in the most sincere voice I could muster, "I have no idea what you mean by that. Care to translate?"

  She took a deep breath, shuddering, it seemed, somewhere underneath that wool coat. Or cape. Or shawl. Then she turned away from me and started up the steps of her home. I thought she was done, and I was about to walk back up the street to get Abby when I saw her look back at me from the porch. Her eyes were tearing and I hoped it was due to the cold, but something told me it wasn't. Holding the glass storm door open in one hand, the fingers of her other one wrapped around the brass knob of the main door, she hissed, "My aunt didn't do anything wrong, but you made her think she did! Don't you get it? You're the one who's making her feel like a criminal!"

  And then she was inside the house and the doors--both glass and wood--were shut tight against the cold and the night and the prosecutor in the street.

  Had I not gone straight home after getting my daughter, I might have run into Carissa in Bartlett. She went to the Octagon that night, where she dozed and read and for a time surfed the Web. She was searching for examples of homeopathic malpractice. She was trying to find homeopaths who'd been charged with manslaughter or criminal negligence.

  She was doing, essentially, the sort of thing the lawyers around her might be doing very soon. And while she did not find everything a lawyer in my office would have discovered because she did not know exactly where to look, she found enough. Once when she felt a spiky pain in her lower back, she looked down and saw that she had curled her legs up against her chest and was sitting in her seat like an egg.

  At one site, she read about a California homeopath who was being sued by the family of a young man who'd died of AIDS. When the chemical regimen that had kept the virus in check for five years started to fail, he turned to homeopathy to bolster his vital force. He stopped taking the drugs that had kept him alive half a decade, replacing them first with Gelsemium, or the Carolina jasmine: a beautiful climbing flower with yellow petals and long green leaves that remind me of phlox. Then, when that didn't work, he tried aconite, a European plant known also as wolfsbane because its juice is so deadly that hunters once dipped the tips of their arrows into it before hunting wolves. Aconite, the word, is actually derived from the Latin word meaning dart.

  Then he died.

  In their suit, the family was alleging that the homeopath had encouraged his patient to stop trying to manage the disease with the accepted, customary treatments.

  On another site, she discovered a baby who had died of a ruptured appendix. The infant's parents had assumed her howling was due simply to colic, and treated her with Chamomilla--the homeopathic version of an herb that in one form or another has been a medicinal standby for centuries. By the time the parents concluded the crying was due to something more acute than colic and taken their baby to the pediatrician, it was too late.

  She found a psychiatrist who'd treated a patient's depression with Ignatia and then had to cope with the fact that the patient would take his own life. She discovered a naturopath who'd offered an elderly cold sufferer Pulsatilla, only to learn later that the cold had become pneumonia and the patient had died alone in her bedroom.

  Arguably, homeopathy was blameless in every single death. The remedies themselves did no one any harm.

  But isn't that usually the case with conventional medicine, too? At least modern conventional medicine?

  Most of the time, it isn't that a physician has given a patient a medicine that has made him sicker. Usually, the physician has simply failed to see something someone else will believe he should have seen. Or done something someone else will believe he should have done. Or done that something differently.

  Most of the time, medicine itself is blameless. It's the doctor who has made a mistake.

  And while Carissa reminded herself that physicians
were sued for their mistakes--real or imagined--all the time, the realization did not make her feel any better. Nor did the fact that physicians had patients die all the time.

  That night in her mind there was really only one reality: She had told Richard Emmons that his conventional drugs might be acting as an antidote to his cure. And she had told him to eat a cashew.

  Granted, she did not believe she had ever said he should give up the drugs he'd been taking for years. Nor did she believe she could have sounded serious when she'd said in the store that he should pretend he was Hahnemann and try a nut they both knew he was allergic to.