Adverse Effects

by Joel Shulkin

  “Ay, chica, I know you’re afraid of another accident, but I worry. A totally hot woman like you, dressed to the nines, riding a bus? Draws out all the crazies.” Andrea leaned forward and placed her hand on Cristina’s knee. “I don’t want anything happening to my best friend, okay?”

  “I know.” Cristina slumped against the seat cushion. “Riding the bus never scared me before, but then I’ve never been held at gunpoint before either.”

  “How do you know?”

  “That I was scared?”

  “No. How do you know he had a gun? Because he told you?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Sweetie, working as a paralegal, I get threats all the time. Most are full of crap. He probably just said that to scare you.”

  “Then it worked.” Cristina shivered. “Everything Sebastian dos Santos said was so creepy. He knew my name and where I work. And the way he kept saying that he knows who I really am . . .”

  “If any of that were true, why all the riddles and threats?”

  “He said we were being watched.”

  Andrea took a swig from her class and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Nobody in real life talks like that. This guy sounds like a total crackpot.”

  Cristina’s cheeks burned. “Didn’t you just tell me I need to be more careful?”

  “Careful, yes. Take another self-defense class with me or at least carry pepper spray.” Andrea narrowed her gaze. “But I know that look from you. What this jerk said is making you doubt yourself—am I right?”

  Cristina’s irritation faded to embarrassment. Andrea knew her all too well. Shortly after the car crash, they’d met in the laundry room of their apartment building. Cristina couldn’t figure out what wash settings to use for her delicates and Andrea rushed to the rescue. That led to dinners together, drinks and late-night talks about everything.

  It hadn’t been long since the car crash and Andrea had made Cristina feel safe during a time when she was most vulnerable, when she didn’t know who to trust. Since then, Cristina felt a need to do everything she could to earn Andrea’s trust in return. That meant being honest with her—or at least, mostly honest.

  “Sebastian dos Santos said my memory was stolen. Not lost. Stolen. What if the hit and run that killed my parents wasn’t an accident?”

  “Sweetie, you’re a shrink, so you know some people are sadists. People like this Santos creep enjoy seeing others suffer. You’ve come so far since we first met, but you still question everything good in your life. Don’t you deserve to be happy?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But nothing. You’ve worked hard to recover those memories. They’re not fake. You’re a good person and deserve the life you’ve created. Your parents’ death wasn’t your fault. And neither was Mitchell’s.”

  Cristina flinched. She remembered waking up in a hospital bed two years ago—an IV stuck in her arm, monitors beeping. A man in his midforties wearing a snug charcoal suit and designer shoes sat in a chair beside the bed. He had wavy dark hair and inquisitive blue eyes. Deep facial lines made him look distinguished.

  Detective Mitchell Parker from the Framingham PD was investigating the car crash that had killed her parents, Jorge and Claudia Silva. But Cristina recalled nothing about that night, or about her life before. She couldn’t even remember her own name. Her memory was blank.

  During that awful time, Mitchell had insisted on acting as her personal protector, even blocking intrusions from reporters while the police searched for the other driver that had run them off the road. Some information crept back in, including an understanding of and passion for neuroscience and medicine, but nothing about her personal life.

  When she was discharged from the hospital, Mitchell had escorted her back to her apartment, making sure she had everything she needed. Over the next four months, he checked in on her regularly. Cristina found herself drawn by his self-confidence, his determination to get her life back on track. During visits, he’d even helped her with the paperwork to collect every penny from her parents’ life insurance policy, enabling her to reopen the private practice she’d started before the crash. By then, she’d managed to reboot her knowledge of psychiatry using the textbooks she found in her apartment, and Mitchell helped her figure out initial logistics until she hired an office manager to handle the rest. But she still felt nothing when she looked at the picture of her parents, and even her own name felt unfamiliar to her.

  “I wish I could help more,” he’d told her. “I want to help you reclaim the life you lost.”

  It was Mitchell who’d heard about a memory drug trial. He insisted it would help her recover personal memories and make her whole.

  Too risky, she’d decided at the time. How could Cristina effectively treat her patients if she was taking an experimental drug? At that time, she decided that she could get by without it.

  Although Mitchell and Cristina didn’t find any more clues about the hit-and-run driver, they found something else: each other. With no memory of her old life, he became the most important part of her new one. When despair over the collision threatened to drown Cristina, Mitchell gave her air to breathe.

  Until—with no warning—he withdrew from her. He disappeared for hours, then days. On Labor Day, she found a note slipped under her door. It was long and handwritten. In it, Mitchell apologized for leading her on. He asked for her forgiveness. He regretted not being able to do more to help her. As she read the note, Cristina recognized what it was: a suicide note. Frantic, she phoned him.

  No answer.

  She tried the police station. He’d failed to report in for the past two weeks.

  A few days later, an officer phoned her. Mitchell Parker had been found in a ditch in Callahan State Park, dead of a self-­inflicted gunshot wound.

  Andrea waved her hand in front of Cristina’s face. “Where’d you go?”

  Cristina forced away her self-doubt. Mitchell’s death had triggered her desperate call to ReMind. With him gone, the need to recover her own memories outweighed any theoretical ethical concerns. And the gamble had paid off. Cristina Silva knew who she was. And Andrea was her rock throughout all of it.

  Cristina smiled at her friend. “Are you totally sure you don’t want to work for me as a counselor?”

  Hooting, Andrea threw herself backward, sloshing wine onto her leopard print pants.

  “Shit!” She tried to blot the stain with her hand. After making it worse, she shrugged and set the empty glass onto the table. “Whatever—I got them on clearance. Anyway, no offense, honey, but if I won’t let anyone poke around in my head, I’m not going to poke around in someone else’s.”

  “I could sure use the help. My wait list is up to five months now. Which is probably why I’m so stressed. Then add the anniversary of my parents’ death to that . . . ” Cristina sighed and took a swig of her mojito. “Let’s look at it logically. If Sebastian dos Santos was stalking me, he might know my name and that I’m a doctor and he possibly might have even somehow learned that I suffer from amnesia.”

  “Exactly!” Andrea scooted closer to Cristina and pulled her in for a hug. “He wants you to run an insurance scam for him or some other dirty scheme, but he’s not worth the worry.”

  “What if he’s mentally ill? I’m a psychiatrist. I should’ve offered to help him.”

  “Mami, you may think you’re Mother Teresa and Dr. Phil’s love child, but you can’t save everyone—especially if it puts you in danger. I don’t want you taking that bus tomorrow. Why don’t you take the T?”

  “It’s so far out of the way.”

  “A little exercise never hurt anyone. And on that note, you’re coming to my gym tomorrow after work for a session. It’s been weeks since we sparred.”

  “I know. I’ve been—”

  “So busy, yada yada. No arguments.” Andrea gave her a pointed look. “Cle
ar?”

  Cristina rolled her eyes and laughed. “Clear. I’ll give you a call after work.”

  After another mojito, Cristina left Andrea’s apartment. Walking upstairs to her one-bedroom unit, Cristina glanced over her shoulder to ensure no one was watching before pulling from her bag the folder that Sebastian dos Santos had left behind on the bus seat.

  As tempted as she had been to tell Andrea about the folder, her friend’s fiery skepticism had made Cristina decide to view its contents alone first.

  Once inside her apartment with the door locked, Cristina sat on her suede couch. No fancy paintings or elegant potpourri here. Her place was sparer and less colorful than Andrea’s. Maybe Cristina needed to decorate, to try harder, but her office always felt more like home to her than this bare-bones apartment.

  Grizabella leaped onto Cristina’s lap and curled into a ball. As she stroked the tabby’s scruffy neck, the stress seeped from Cristina’s bones. She’d rescued the cat from a shelter a few months after she started taking Recognate. Some studies had suggested pet therapy was helpful in restoring memory in Alzheimer’s patients. As Cristina had been trying to cope with Mitchell’s death, she considered that a feline companion might prove useful. But the moment she saw the little furball at the animal shelter, her motivations were suddenly less utilitarian. It was love at first sight.

  Cristina nuzzled Grizabella’s back, drinking in her earthy smell before opening the folder and emptying its contents onto her coffee table. A stack of newspaper articles printed from the internet stared back at her. Her heart beat faster as she recognized the headline on the first: “Local Couple Dies in Hit-and-Run.”

  She’d already read that piece and wasn’t about to read it again. Setting it aside, Cristina studied the second article. A middle-aged banker in Spokane missing for three days had been found dead in his apartment, his hand gripping the knife he’d used to stab his own eye. Cristina fought the urge to vomit. She tossed the article aside.

  Her stomach knotted as she flipped through four more articles. All of them described violent suicides in cities across the country. But for the article on her parents, none of the others had anything to do with her. Had Sebastian dos Santos killed those people? And could he have been the hit and run driver responsible for her parents’ deaths?

  The last article was dated five years ago and from O Globo, a paper out of Rio de Janeiro. In Portuguese, the headline announced a project to study a new treatment for mental health factors causing gang violence in the Rio slums called favelas. Alongside the article was a black-and-white photo of a research team standing next to a Brazilian flag.

  Cristina shook her head. What could her parents’ death, a handful of suicides and a Brazilian research team possibly have in common?

  She sifted through the articles, then checked in vain to see if there was anything else inside the envelope. Chewing her lip, Cristina nudged Grizabella off her lap and opened her MacBook. After it powered up, she typed the name “Sebastian dos Santos” into the search engine.

  Several Facebook profiles popped up with that name. But none of their pictures resembled the man in the fisherman’s cap. There was a long-dead French explorer with the same name.

  She entered Sebastian dos Santos’s name again, but this time added her parents’ names. The search engine seemed to work a little harder but produced nothing of substance. She was about to try “Spokane banker”—the first article’s suicide—when her phone vibrated. It was a local number, but not one she recognized. Hesitantly, she answered.

  “Dr. Silva?”

  She relaxed at the soft southwestern twang, nothing like the rough Latin accent of the man on the bus. “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry for calling so late. My name is Dr. Lucas Morgan from the Medical Examiner’s office. I was wondering if you could come downtown.”

  “Medical examiner?” She sat up straight. “Why?”

  “I’m afraid we need you to identify a body. One of your patients, Carl Franklin, killed himself.”

  Chapter Four

  Light bluegrass music bounced from overhead speakers, in sharp contrast to the bleak windowless waiting room. A pot of wilted calla lilies rested on a table near the reception desk, their aroma drowned out by the tang of chlorine. Cristina sat alone on a leather bench, staring at the black-and-white photographs of downtown Boston displayed on the walls. She’d never been in a medical examiner’s office before—at least, not that she remembered. Mitchell had spared her from identifying her parents since she wouldn’t have recognized them anyway.

  And she had never seen Mitchell’s body. The heartbreak had been intense. There were even more shocks following his death. He’d led her to believe he was divorced, but the police officer who informed her over the phone about Mitchell’s death said he was married. It had been hard enough to accept his suicide, but the fact that he’d lied to Cristina all along left her angry and confused.

  Part of her wanted to call his wife for confirmation. Cristina’s stomach churned as she recalled how many times she’d nearly picked up the phone, then decided against it. As hurt as Cristina was, she couldn’t imagine what Mitchell’s wife was suffering. Cristina had only known Mitchell for six months. This woman was married to him. Cristina had stayed away, grieving alone and in silence.

  That feeling of loss—more familiar than even the memories of her parents—crept back into her chest. She massaged her chest, trying to relieve the pressure. Carl Franklin couldn’t be dead. He would not have killed himself. This had to be a bad dream.

  She clenched her fists. Stay strong.

  The door to the autopsy room opened. A bald, muscular African American man wearing blue scrubs stepped out.

  When he spotted her, Lucas Morgan’s face lit up with a wide smile radiating warmth. He approached with his hand out. “Thanks again for coming out so late, Dr. Silva. I tried calling your office earlier, but you’d already left.”

  His handshake was firm. As she noted his square jaw and perfect white teeth set against his dark skin, she found herself at a loss for casual pleasantries “Dr. Morgan, please tell me what happened to Carl.”

  Morgan led her to the autopsy room, talking as they walked. “The building caretaker was clearing ice off the sidewalk when she heard the window smash overhead. She barely had enough time to get out of the way before Mr. Franklin hit the pavement. He died instantly.”

  Bitter smells of cleaning fluid and blood assaulted Cristina’s nostrils as they entered the autopsy room. The metal tables and overhead floodlights reminded her of a terrifying scene from an alien abduction movie Andrea had made her watch. Cristina’s stomach wrenched.

  “Here.” Morgan offered her a small tube of camphor rub and a surgical mask. “Dab some in each nostril.”

  She did as instructed and donned the mask. Menthol drifted along her nasal passages. The smell of death was still present but not as strong. “Thanks.”

  “Follow me.” He led her to a table on the far side of the room. A white sheet covered the body. Although Morgan’s mask concealed his mouth, his eyes radiated concern for her well-being. “Sure you’re ready?”

  Cristina bit her lip. Few things troubled a psychiatrist more than a patient threatening suicide. Even worse was when they acted, especially without warning. A thousand questions bounced in her head. Maybe seeing Carl Franklin’s body would answer a few of them. She nodded. “Ready.”

  Morgan pulled back the sheet. A gasp escaped her lips.

  Carl’s naked body lay on the exam table, his neck twisted to the left. The right side of his head was caved in, right arm bent in an L-shape. What had made Cristina gasp, however, was the smile frozen on his lips.

  “That’s Carl,” she said. “Believe it or not, he looks peaceful.”

  “I noticed that too. Doesn’t match the police report of how he died.”

  “What do you mean?”

  �
�Neighbors said they heard him ranting and raving. One of the detectives believed Mr. Franklin was having a psychotic break before he ran through the window.”

  Cristina studied Morgan’s face for a sign he was joking. Finding none, she said, “Carl wasn’t psychotic.”

  “The police found a bottle of an antipsychotics he was taking—Recogno or something? It had your name on the script. That’s how I knew to call you.”

  Cristina swallowed hard. Carl had never showed signs of depression or instability. Could Recognate have made him psychotic?

  She dismissed the idea. The Phase Three trial reports from ReMind had identified no major adverse effects. Surely, something as significant as psychosis or suicidality would have been reported. There had to be another explanation.

  “I prescribed Carl medication, but not for psychosis. This is completely unexpected. Did you find anything in his system?”

  “I’ve only got the preliminary tox back so far. Nothing except a zero point one blood alcohol.”

  “Carl said he didn’t drink.”

  “That’s what they all say.” Morgan laughed at his own joke, then grew serious when Cristina didn’t laugh with him. “I may be out of line, but it seems Mr. Franklin wasn’t exactly forthcoming. Maybe he was trying to manage depression alone and failed.”

  The idea that Carl had been suffering, and she’d had no idea, was deeply troubling. If Carl were drinking heavily, it would explain his erratic behavior. “I guess you’re right. I just feel horrible.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up.” Morgan covered the body. “I couldn’t find any next of kin—which is why I called you. Did he mention any family I should contact?”

  “No, Carl suffered from amnesia. He was an only child and his parents were dead. He never could remember the names of other family members.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Well, he didn’t have many personal effects, but you’re welcome to look at them.”

  “Thank you, no. Although, may I take a look at the medicine bottle? Do you know how many pills he took?”