The Law of Similars

by Chris Bohjalian

"I do."

  "God, winter. It can be endless." She shook her head and then leaned into her husband and murmured, "Richard, I'm going to walk Leland back outside. I'll be right back."

  I went up to the bed for the first time and ran my fingers along Richard's pale, thin arm. "I'll see you again, Richard," I heard myself saying. "In the meantime, I'll be praying for you."

  We stood together for a moment in the hallway beside the ICU waiting room, separated by double doors from the glass chambers the hospital had built for the likely to die.

  "Do you know your way back to the elevator?" she asked me.

  "I do. It's a labyrinth, but I figured it out."

  "Thank you for coming."

  "It's nothing. You know that. It's just...it's nothing."

  "No, it was really sweet of you to visit. Will you do something else for us?"

  "Of course."

  "Pray. You said you would. But really do it. Okay?"

  "Okay."

  "But don't pray for any miracles."

  "No?"

  "No," she said, bowing her head and shaking it, and then falling forward into my chest. "There won't be any miracles, so don't pray for one. You'll only be disappointed."

  I rubbed her back with both hands. "I'll pray for whatever you want."

  "Then pray he isn't in pain," she said, a slight tremor in her voice. "They tell me he isn't, but please: Pray he isn't in pain."

  Chapter 19.

  Number 225

  There are of course a few psychic diseases that have not merely degenerated from physical ones; instead, with only slight physical illness, they arise and proceed from the psyche, from persistent grief.

  Dr. Samuel Hahnemann,

  Organon of Medicine, 1842

  .

  Abby and I were having dinner at Paul and Nora Woodson's Friday night, so before leaving Burlington I bought some gourmet coffee and chocolate truffles in a store in a strip mall near the hospital. Then when I realized how close I was to the mammoth two-story bookstore that had just gone in beside the little mall, I decided I'd take a quick peek at the books in the health section. I wasn't sure if I'd find anything about arsenic poisoning, but the fact that my feet were continuing to tingle and I'd had to rush to the men's room before leaving the hospital--the Pepto-Bismol wasn't doing a damn thing--had me worried.

  Intellectually, I knew I couldn't possibly be poisoning myself with homeopathic arsenic, but I figured I'd check the symptoms of an arsenic overdose just in case, so I could rule it out and find another life-threatening, ICU-triggering ailment to worry about instead.

  "I think I'll bring some underpants for Merlin and Addison," Abby was saying, referring to the Woodsons' two cats. Earlier in the fall, Nora Woodson had informed Abby that when she'd been a girl just a bit older than Abby, she had put underpants and a small T-shirt on her cat. For months now, Abby had been contemplating the idea of dressing up the pastor's wife's cats, and she figured tonight was her big chance.

  "Bring the ones with the trolls on the front," I said, clicking the word Search on my computer screen in the den.

  "But they don't fit me anymore!"

  "Exactly." Within seconds, a list of more than forty-seven thousand sites appeared, all of which had either the word arsenic or the word poisoning somewhere in them. The bookstore may not have had a treatise devoted to arsenic or arsenic poisoning, but the Internet was a virtual library on the subject.

  "Can I bring a shirt, too?"

  "Sure."

  Next I typed in the word arsenic alone, hoping the Internet search engine would offer a less impressive but more manageable number of entries.

  "I better bring two shirts and two pairs of underpants."

  Eleven thousand-plus possibilities came up. Smaller. But still astonishing.

  "Okay."

  "Can I bring a suitcase?"

  I turned to her. "We're only going to be there a couple hours, sweetheart. We're just going for dinner."

  "I know. But I have to bring the clothes for the cats. And then I have to bring some Barbies and some books and some stuff for me."

  I nodded. The Woodsons' children were grown, and there weren't a whole lot of toys left in the parsonage. "Sure. You go pack. But we need to leave in about fifteen minutes. Okay?"

  "Gotcha!" she shouted, and raced up the stairs to her bedroom.

  For a moment I glanced at the entries on the screen before me, but there were still way too many, and so I decided to winnow the search one more time. I linked the words arsenic and poisoning with the word AND in capital letters, signaling the search engine that I wanted only those sites that had both items somewhere within them. The result was a mere 978 entries--mere, of course, only when I thought back on the numbers I'd seen a moment before. It still wasn't a bad total. In fact, it seemed pretty damn impressive: everything I could ever want to know about arsenic, right there at my fingertips.

  The source of the sites, as always on the Web, was a melange spanning the sublime and the ridiculous. An occupational safety organization in Australia followed a group of high-school kids in Kansas who'd just performed Arsenic and Old Lace. A university professor presented his theories about Napoleon's death, and then a country inn used its home page to advertise an upcoming Murder Mystery Weekend for Lovers. There were entries from journals devoted to timber treating, hepatology, the preservation of animal skins, and nineteenth-century embalming. I learned about the 1991 investigation into President Zachary Taylor's death--they'd actually exhumed whatever remained of the fellow from the ground, and quantified the amount of arsenic in his nails and his hair--and the problems of groundwater contamination in neighborhoods near century-old cemeteries.

  It was a full and rich exploration. And if Abby and I weren't due at the Woodsons' in a little while, I thought, I might be happy hanging out with these links for hours. But since we had to leave soon, I started scrolling through the computer sites in search of a basic primer on arsenic poisoning: its symptoms and, I hoped, its antidotes. Quickly I found what I thought I was looking for, the Treatment of Arsine Toxicosis, at a site run by the Iowa Agricultural Information Retrieval System.

  It took no more than ten or fifteen seconds for the entire site to download into my computer--no filthy, time-consuming graphics here, I thought--and I started to read. And then I tried to be calm, but it wasn't easy. I could hear the sound of my breathing through my nose, whistles of air that went up and down, and every time I exhaled I could feel the warm wind on the backs of my fingers and hands, still poised atop my keyboard.

  The good news was that I didn't have any lesions on my skin. At least any that I'd noticed. And I didn't think the reflexes in my extremities were impaired, but in all honesty I wasn't sure I knew how to test such a thing. Still, I seemed perfectly able to slam on the brakes in the truck, and that had to count for something.

  I had virtually no opportunity to savor the good news, however, because underneath skin lesions and impaired reflexes was a litany of symptoms that I did have. Anxiety. Diarrhea. Tingling along the soles of my feet, numbness across the palms of my hands. Vomiting.

  No, I haven't vomited, I reminded myself, I've simply felt nauseous! And there's a big difference!

  The last paragraph of the page offered the mesmerizingly unhelpful--and inappropriately unscientific, I decided--information that arsenic had been used for centuries to poison people (including popes and politicians) because the symptoms resembled those of so many other illnesses, and the toxin was almost impossible to detect in a corpse. It wasn't until the late 1800s that forensic medicine had figured out how to grind up livers and test them for heavy metals.

  I clicked on the link in blue titled Treatment and swore out loud as I read, "The quantity of arsenic that must be absorbed by the body to cause poisoning is relatively small: Don't expect high levels in urinary excretion in even severe cases."

  Not even an exclamation point, I noticed. It seemed to me that when someone was writing about severe arsenic poisoning, one
should use an exclamation point.

  And the cure? Fresh air, if it was acute. Intravenous fluids, to keep the urine as dilute as possible. Perhaps sodium bicarbonate to keep the urine alkaline.

  Be sure, meanwhile, to watch for renal failure.

  Other treatments? Hemodialysis, whatever that was. And a drug called dimercaprol, though it only worked a small percentage of the time.

  I pulled my hands from the keyboard and rested them in my lap. I tried to remind myself that nothing on the Internet was gospel, that the Web was--in addition to everything else--the world's greatest source of misinformation. How could it not be when any eleven-year-old who was proud of his little paper on Quito could post it on the Net as a resource on Ecuador?

  Still, this looked bad. I didn't imagine I was as frightened as I'd be if a plane I was aboard was about to auger into a mountain near Denver, but this sure as hell didn't look good. I wondered if I should go to the hospital. By now Abby had her suitcase all packed with her toys, and could entertain herself on the floor of the E.R. while the doctors took care of her dad.

  Unfortunately, I didn't have the slightest idea what I'd say to those doctors. Would they think to check for arsenic poisoning if I didn't tell them I was pretty damn sure that was the problem? Probably not. This wasn't the Middle Ages, after all, and I wasn't a pope.

  And I certainly couldn't tell them what had really occurred. At least I didn't think I could. I tried making up a story that would get me to arsenic poisoning, but there just didn't seem to be any route there but the truth.

  So you see, I swiped a bottle of her arsenic while we were doctoring her notes so she wouldn't be charged with a crime or lose her whole world in a civil suit. And I figured the stuff was completely harmless--well, I guess I knew it wasn't completely harmless, because it sure as shit gave me a rush the first time I took it, but I guess I assumed it wasn't toxic. Just a really good drug--but not exactly a drug, of course. I'm not like the little shits I prosecute, you know: creepy little turds like Teddy Paquette. I'm not like him. Oh, no.

  I wished I were friends with a doctor. Really good friends. Close enough that my friend the physician would swipe a hemodialysis machine for me. Or that dimercaprol stuff. But I wasn't. The only doctors I knew were the doctors who actually treated me, or the doctors I'd met as a prosecutor: the physicians who'd testify on behalf of the State, explaining what the wounds meant in the photos of battered women, beaten children, bruised and hammered junkies and dealers and whores.

  Probably my only real friend who'd gone to medical school was the State Medical Examiner, Steve Wagner, and Steve made it clear whenever we talked about good health and well-being that he spent most of his time with bodies sadly lacking in vitality. "I don't even play a doctor on TV," he'd said once when I asked his advice.

  Besides, I didn't want to bother Steve at his home on a Friday night. Usually I only did that when someone had died, and I sure as hell hoped we weren't about to reach that point.

  No, the closest thing I had to a good friend who happened to be a healer was my homeopath. Former homeopath. Current co-conspirator. I had no idea if she'd have any suggestions or antidotes, but here was clearly one more reason why I had to see her: Perhaps she could undo what I had done.

  It was really only a week of my life. Six days, arguably.

  I suppose I should be grateful. I've prosecuted criminals whose sprees lasted far longer. I've certainly prosecuted criminals whose crimes were far worse.

  Afterward, for a time I played a game in my mind that was briefly made famous by a substance abuse counselor from Oklahoma. The game, "What if, then what?," makes some people feel better. It opens some people's eyes to life's possibilities. Usually I'd play it when I was alone in my truck, or when I was alone in my bed and unable to sleep. For me, it would go something like this:

  What if I'd told Carissa the night after Christmas when she'd come to my house that I absolutely could not help her? Then what?

  Then she would have left.

  And we would not have doctored her notes.

  And she would not have felt even worse than she did. She would not have felt like a criminal.

  And I would not have swiped a vial of arsenic.

  And she would have gotten a good lawyer.

  And, after an investigation, the case would--at the very least--have gone to a grand jury.

  And the grand jury might or might not have recommended prosecution.

  And, either way, there would have been a civil suit.

  And either Carissa would have settled. Or not.

  And so there might have been as many as two trials. Or as few as none.

  And Richard Emmons would still have been posturing in his bed in the ICU in those days before New Year's.

  Would I have lost Carissa?

  I could never decide. But when I think back on that Tuesday night in my house, I see Carissa standing to leave not because I will not help her, but because she fears that I doubt her. The difference is a chasm.

  And so if I would have lost Carissa, I would have lost her for other reasons. Because she could not invest emotional capital in a new relationship when the State was about to begin prosecuting her. Because one of her patients had misunderstood what she had said and was now in a coma. Because, perhaps, she simply didn't love me, and we were no longer linked by a crime.

  Sometimes I would tell myself that I did what I did--the notes, the arsenic, the lies--because my wife had died. Because my wife had died and I was raising a little girl on my own. Because, after two and a half years, I was simply exhausted.

  But this is a pretty tawdry justification, a pretty slippery bit of rationalization. It excuses nothing.

  And so the game never once made me feel better.

  Nora Woodson answered the front door and gave Abby and me each a huge hug. Nora was somewhere in her mid-sixties, but I thought she still had more energy than I'd ever had in my life. She was the choir director, she ran the church women's circle, and she volunteered three or four days a month in Burlington, helping the state resettle the steady stream of Bosnian and Croatian refugees who made their way first to the United States and then to Vermont. Sometimes the deep lines in her face made her look even older than sixty-five or sixty-six, but the wrinkles hadn't diminished her stam-ina. She was relentless, a deceptively tiny woman with eyeglasses that covered half her face and a fine soprano voice that was only now starting to show its age.

  Once Abby had climbed out of her coat and her boots, she started unpacking her tiny red suitcase. She showed Nora the T-shirts and troll underpants she had brought, and Nora pointed upstairs.

  "They're asleep on our bed," she said, referring to the cats. "First bedroom on the left."

  Abby looked at me to make sure it was okay to disappear, and then ran up the steps with her handful of clothes.

  "Leland, you look like you've got quite a...I don't know, something," Nora said to me when Abby was out of sight. "I'd say a cold, but you don't look coldy."

  I smiled and shrugged. "Maybe I have a bug. But I feel pretty good," I lied.

  "I got my flu shot in the fall. So do your worst."

  I handed her the coffee and chocolates as she led me into the living room, and there I saw Paul, as well as my friends Howard and Anne Lansing. The group was standing before the woodstove.

  "I hear I just missed you at the hospital," Paul said.

  "You were there?" I wasn't sure why, but the fact that Paul had just been there unnerved me. It shouldn't have. Paul was, after all, a minister, and hospital visits were a part of the job description. Still, it seemed to be further proof that events were linked in ways I did not comprehend, that people knew far more than I realized.

  "I was. Maybe if you'd gotten there a little later or I'd gotten there a little sooner, we might have bumped into each other in the ICU."

  "Could have happened," I murmured.

  "I didn't know you knew them," Anne said to me.

  I tried to smile. Howard and An
ne were both schoolteachers. They had two boys in elementary school, one who I thought might be as old as ten. "Only a bit," I said.

  "Oh, I get it, you were there professionally. You're going to prosecute," Howard said. "There's a case against our local homeopath."

  "Now, that would be tricky. Aren't you and Carissa friends?" Paul asked me, and then took a sip from the mug of hot cider in his hands.

  "I know her," I said.

  "If I remember correctly, you introduced us Christmas Eve," he said.

  "I did."

  "So your visit wasn't professional," Howard observed.

  I shook my head. "Nope. Just moral support."