Law of Similars

by Chris Bohjalian

  Whenever I prayed alone, I knelt. On Sundays, the congregation always prayed standing up or sitting down, and I missed the submissiveness that I felt on my knees. The sense of absolute deference. Humility. Obedience.

  Before I climbed into bed that night, I fell to the floor and prayed, “Lord, please forgive me if what I have done is wrong.” Almost instantly I opened my eyes and shook my head. Even in prayer I was hedging. And so I started again, this time trying to be clear that I knew I had made a mistake: “Lord, please forgive me. Please forgive Carissa. And please, somehow, heal Richard Emmons.”

  That, I decided, was what I really wanted: I prayed that God would open Richard’s eyes and the fellow would abruptly sit up in his hospital bed. I prayed that Richard would get better. I prayed, almost as I’d prayed for my mother, that the Lord would do for the man in the coma what mere mortals could not.

  Outside I heard the wind gusting against the sides of the house, the sound a low rumble against the clapboard walls of my home. I stood up, listened to make sure the gale had not frightened my daughter, and then turned out the light in my room.

  Once, I kept a square tube of Halls in the nightstand beside my bed, and now it was a vial of arsenic.

  In the night I awoke and I reached for the container, and I shook a tablet into my hand. Then I sucked on the minuscule pill, and within moments I had fallen back into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  Arsenicum Album

  WHITE ARSENIC

  When I have done with the wiseacre, who ridicules the small doses of Homeopathy as a nonentity, as effecting nothing, and who never consults experience, I hear on the other side the hypocritical stickler for caution…inveigh against the danger of even the small doses used in homeopathic practice.

  Dr. Samuel Hahnemann,

  The Chronic Diseases, 1839

  In the morning, before waking my daughter, I checked my computer to see if there was an E-mail from Carissa. I’d fantasized briefly there would be—I knew she was on the Internet, too—but I also feared I’d have a heart attack in my chair if this particular fantasy came true. Though Carissa and I had not specifically discussed E-mail, I assumed she was smart enough to avoid it. These days, it was almost easier to build a case with E-mail than with phone records, because the actual contents of an E-mail message remained in existence for months on a main server’s computer: Not only did you have proof of contact, you had the details of the exchange.

  And so I was relieved when I saw that the only message I had was a post-Christmas greeting from my friend the medical examiner.

  But still I was desperate to know how Carissa was doing. I shut down my computer and went to the kitchen for a banana, and stared longingly at the coffee machine as I passed it. I hadn’t had coffee in weeks, and though I’d had powerful cravings, it didn’t make sense to me that I’d be having one now: I’d certainly given myself a pretty solid arsenic booster in the last eighteen hours.

  Or maybe I hadn’t. Maybe taking them one or two at a time was worthless, and any relief I’d felt had just been that placebo effect. Maybe I needed to take them four or five—Or was it five or six?—at a time, the way I had when Carissa administered the remedy almost a month ago in her office.

  I finished my banana, washed the mushy fruit off my hands, and went back upstairs to see if Abby was starting to wake up. I thought I might also glance through the little book on homeopathy Carissa had lent me. Maybe the book would offer a clue about dosage.

  I did not actually vomit. I had been sure that I would, but I didn’t, and eventually the nausea subsided. I stood up and leaned against the side of the truck, aware that the sand and salt from the road that stuck to the pickup would wind up all over the back of my navy blue overcoat, but I didn’t care: At least I no longer felt sick.

  I took a breath and looked around. This had been a thousand times worse than the car sickness I’d felt two days ago while driving to work. This time, indeed, I’d had to pull over. I’d had to swing my truck to the side of the road—oblivious to where I was stopping—and practically jump from the driver’s seat to the pavement. I’d had to scurry around to the far side of the vehicle, where I’d leaned over and stared into a drift of brown snow the plows had created the night before, prepared to puke for the first time in years.

  And then the sensation had passed. It had taken a moment. But it had passed.

  I saw I had stopped by a Morgan horse farm just north of Hinesburg. If one had to pull over and vomit, it wasn’t a bad spot. There were no houses nearby, though I could see the peaks of the horse barns in the distance through the rows of leafless trees. With their foliage gone but their branches glazed over with ice, those trees—mostly maple and birch and ash—looked for a moment like elegant black and crystal sculptures. Each was a willowy raven-dark frame, layered with a luminous sky-blown glass.

  I stood for a few more minutes, breathing in the crisp air, and then walked in a few yards from the road to press a clean handful of snow to my mouth.

  I could use some sun, I decided, staring up at the overcast skies. I returned to the road and started the truck, and then pulled a glove off with my teeth and felt my forehead. It didn’t feel like I had a fever, but then I’d just spent five or ten minutes doubled over a snowbank in fifteen-degree weather. Of course it felt cool.

  I wanted to attribute my queasiness to a virus or bug. Perhaps even the flu. Even the flu would be better than guilt heaves. But aside from that brief bout with nausea, I hadn’t felt sick. I wasn’t coming down with something, much as I might wish that I were.

  No, it was clear to me that I’d almost retched up a banana, a muffin, and whatever remained of herb tea over guilt. Anxiety. Fear. And it wasn’t simply what I had done that was making me worry, it was the fact that I had brought Carissa along with me.

  Or, to be precise, down with me.

  Moreover, I’d begun to realize I’d been kidding myself when I’d thought our story wouldn’t unravel. What if I was wrong and someone had seen me holding hands with Carissa at the church Christmas Eve? It was certainly a packed sanctuary; it was certainly possible someone had taken his eyes off a candle for a brief moment.

  Or what if that Patsy person at the health-food store was aware that Carissa had been shopping for Leland Fowler—chief deputy state’s attorney—that very night? What if Whitney had already said something to Patsy about her aunt’s new beau before Carissa could get to her? Or what if Whitney was simply incapable of keeping a secret?

  The possibilities were endless: What if one of Carissa’s neighbors had noticed my truck at the homeopath’s house the morning after Christmas? Or near the Octagon the day after that? What if someone official—someone in my own office, perhaps, or someone with the state police—decided to speak with local day-care owner Kelly McDonough, and Kelly mentioned the names little Abby had given her new Christmas Barbies?

  What if someone checked the phone records and saw the toll calls I’d made to Carissa from my office, or the cell phone call I’d made Christmas Day?

  I felt a strange shudder in my chest—not exactly a pain, but not a pleasant sensation, either—and I realized my heart was starting to race. It wasn’t a heart attack: There were no shooting pains down my left arm, and the flutter behind my ribs certainly wasn’t the agony that I’d always heard would come with a heart attack. But my heart was definitely…palpitating. That was the word. I was giving myself heart palpitations.

  I was pretty sure one little arsenic pill would restore my confidence and calm me down—they’d certainly gotten me through the last day—but I wanted to postpone taking another pellet for as long as possible. I’d discovered that morning when I’d gone upstairs to skim the homeopathy book that I’d already gone through at least a quarter of a tube. The vial had been half-full when I’d taken it, and now there was only a quarter remaining. Yet it wasn’t how much I’d taken that mattered to me, it was how much I had left. I knew I might have to make what was there last a very long time. Days, certainly. Maybe
weeks. Perhaps even a month or more.

  And that would mean rationing the twenty-five or thirty pills that remained.

  Unfortunately, the book hadn’t said anything helpful about arsenic and dosage. The book was an introduction to homeopathy for laypeople, not a guide to treatment. I found one reference to arsenic application, but it was simply presented as an example so a patient could understand the way a homeopath might prescribe a cure: “One dose of Arsenicum album 200c, to relieve anxiety with restlessness.”

  Nevertheless, I’d immediately looked at the tube on my nightstand to see if there was a reference to the potency of the arsenic I’d swiped. There wasn’t. At least there wasn’t one I could read: Carissa had pressed a small sticker with the date she’d received the pills over a part of the manufacturer’s label, and she’d placed it right on top of the potency and warning. When I tried to peel the sticker away, I merely ripped the label. There was just no way I was going to be able to determine whether each pill was six or sixty or—for all I knew—two hundred c.

  Whatever that meant. I realized I didn’t even know what a c was.

  The one thing the book had done was reassure me that I wasn’t going to make myself sick with the arsenic. I’d reread the whole section on “potentization” and “successive dilution,” and come away with the faith that my remedy had been diluted and shaken so many times that in reality I was ingesting virtually no arsenic. Zip. Zero. Nada.

  Well, almost zip. In theory, there might be a trace left. But not enough to make me sick.

  Still, I was actually relieved it was only arsenic. I was glad Carissa hadn’t cured me with something from one of those other vials I’d spied in a little corner on the bottom shelf of her cabinet: Tuberculinum. Vipera. Syphilinum.

  I don’t even want to know where they get Syphilinum, I had thought.

  As I pulled into the parking garage by the courthouse, it dawned on me that I hadn’t thought once about work during my drive in. Real work, anyway. I hadn’t thought about the depositions, arraignments, and felony status conferences that would pepper my day. This was rare. And I hadn’t even noticed the gas station where as recently as a month ago I would stop daily for my cough drops and coffee.

  Maybe the arsenic I’d taken before leaving home was finally kicking in. Maybe I really had nothing to worry about.

  I imagine these are the thoughts Jennifer Emmons dreaded but had frequently in the days after Christmas: She could always return to work full-time at the animal hospital. Technically, they didn’t need another full-time vet. But how could they deny her the job now? Her husband was in a coma!

  Of course they would give her more work. And benefits.

  And she didn’t need to worry about Kate after school; Kate was way too old to be latchkey. But Timmy? The one day a week she was not home for him now, Thursday, he usually played at his friend Isaac’s house. Or at J.J.’s. Or Brad’s.

  The boy would do fine when she went back to work; the local parents would be sure to help out.

  And there was insurance, of course. Richard’s life insurance. She couldn’t imagine the policy wouldn’t take effect if her husband was in a coma, but she made a mental note to call their agent. You never knew.

  Perhaps she had even reached into her purse for a pen to make an actual note.

  She and the kids would stay in their house, they definitely would not move. This was the only home Timmy had ever known, and the one Kate had lived in since she was three. She would make sure her children had that stability: Same bedrooms, same schools, same friends. Same views from their windows, same spots for a toy chest, a bureau, a bookcase, a bed.

  That’s what I had done, after all, when Elizabeth died. I’d tried to keep things as stable as possible for my Abby.

  And, for two and a half years, I had succeeded.

  “You know her!” Margaret was saying when I returned from court late that morning, intercepting me as I passed her office on the way to mine. I couldn’t decide if she was raising her voice because she was angry or shocked or because she thought she had to shout to be heard as I raced by in the hallway. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she went on, following me into my office, and I wondered if she was actually hurt.

  “Yes, I know her,” I said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I wanted to tell Phil first.”

  She leaned against the radiator, and her face grew soft. “This doesn’t look good, does it? But you realize that, don’t you?”

  I nodded. “That’s why I thought I should tell Phil first. It may not look good…but it isn’t bad. That’s the thing.”

  “You’re not in trouble, are you?” she asked, and her concern surprised and depressed me at once. Sometimes I lost sight of the fact that we were friends. “You know you could tell me? Right?”

  “Everything’s fine, Margaret. Really. Fine.”

  She fiddled for a moment with one of the dials on the thermostat, turning it abstractedly. “She’s going to give a statement to the police today,” she said finally.

  I focused on the arms of my chair as I sat down, trying to ignore the sudden wobbliness in my knees, and the little surge of nausea that rippled over my stomach. This is just what we expected would happen, I reminded myself. Just what we’d planned. A statement. Carissa would inform her attorney that she wanted to clear her name, and insist on giving a statement.

  “Phil tell you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He’s not going to tell me anything about this, is he?”

  “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 impos
sible 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.