The Hour I First Believed

by Wally Lamb

  As far as I was concerned, Sally stole the show at Rivercrest’s 2003 “December Holidays” party, which I attended. Wearing sweatpants, canvas Keds, and a sequined top, she upstaged the high school carolers and a somewhat inharmonious barbershop quartet by standing and singing, a cappella, “Jeepers Creepers” and “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” A trouper, Sally had ignored the fact that half of her audience was asleep in their wheelchairs and was unfazed when a sourpuss in a flowered housecoat asked loudly, in the middle of Sally’s second song, “What makes her think she’s such a big chunk of cheese? Damn kike. If you ask me, her singing stinks!”

  But if Sally’s attitude that evening was “the show must go on,” later that night, Mo reported, she was uncharacteristically depressed. She had invited her family to come to the party, but none of them had shown, not even Ari, who, out of all of them, was the most special to her because he had inherited her zest for life. Mo had gotten no paperwork done that night, she told me. Instead, she’d sat with Sally. Mo told her she’d never really known either of her grandmothers. “So we decided to adopt each other,” Mo said. “I now have a Jewish grandmother.”

  “And that would make you the shiksa granddaughter,” I noted.

  Mo laughed at that. “That’s just what Sally said!”

  Maureen worked Christmas Eve and Christmas night so that Claire, the other third-shift south wing R.N., could stay home and be with her kids. In gratitude, Claire had given Mo a two-decker box of Russell Stover chocolates and Rivercrest had given her a three-night midweek hiatus. She returned to work on December thirty-first and, having grown close to her staff, had prepared a New Year’s Eve spread for them—shrimp, cheese and crackers, veggies and dip, and that big box of chocolates from Claire. She’d bought two bottles of sparkling cider, too. If it was quiet on the floor, she’d call the girls into the staff lounge maybe ten minutes before midnight. They could watch the ball drop on TV, drink a cider toast, have some snacks, and then get back to work. Esmerelda, her best aide, had told her New Year’s Eve wasn’t that big a deal to her, anyway, as long as she could get Three Kings Day off, and Maureen had seen to it.

  Seeing Maureen struggling down the hall with her platters and plastic bags, Esmerelda had hurried down to help her. They’d inquired about each other’s Christmases—yes, yes, very nice—and then Esmerelda had said, “Too bad about your little friend, huh?”

  “My little friend?” Mo asked.

  “Sally. She went quick, though. She was a nice lady, huh?”

  Death was ever-possible at Rivercrest, but this one walloped Maureen. When she got to the nurse’s station, she put down the party stuff and began to cry. Essie embraced her. “Aw, it’s all right,” she cooed. “She didn’t suffer long, right? That’s the good part. We all gotta go some time, right?”

  Mo called me, she said later, to tell me the news and maybe get a little sympathy. But I was in a New Year’s Eve slump myself, getting buzzed on red wine, watching Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, and feeling sorry for myself. I figured it was Mo when the phone rang, but I didn’t answer.

  At midnight, Mo was in room 16 with Mrs. Civitello, who had spiked a fever and begun thrashing. Hallucinating, too, from what Mo could make of her paranoid mumblings about “those evil balloons.” She could hear her staff down there in the break room, laughing and chattering, counting backwards. “Happy New Year!” “Happy two thousand four!” Qui’shonna, the newest aide, should remember where she was, and what time of night it was, and stop that loud whooping. Maureen liked Qui’shonna and was rooting for her success, but she wasn’t convinced the woman was cut out for nurse’s-aide work. She could get pouty when you pointed out something she’d done incorrectly. And she overwhelmed the patients—this oversized, overly effusive woman, with her cornrows and her on-the-lips kisses that Mo had spoken to her about twice. Most of the elderly white patients at Rivercrest had reservations about blacks. Okay, she’d say it: prejudices. Maureen was one of the few people who knew Qui’shonna had come to the nursing home by way of Bride Lake Prison. Sally had known this, too. An open-minded New Yorker, she’d befriended Qui’shonna, and assured her that Qui’shonna’s Latina counterparts would become less aloof once they got to know her. Sally had been such a gift, and now she was gone. And no one had even thought to call her….

  According to her chart, Mrs. Civitello had been running a low-grade fever for the past forty-eight hours. Urinary tract infection, Mo suspected; she’d leave a note for the day shift, recommending she be tested, but she knew nothing would get done on New Year’s Day. She’d better page Dr. Smiley—ask him if he wanted her to give Mrs. Civitello something to calm her down. She dreaded calling, though; Smiley was the worst of the walks-on-water docs—famously snotty if you disturbed him after hours with a question or a concern. One time, Mo’s friend Jackie had had the audacity to question one of his med orders, and the next day he’d called Gillespie, the director, to complain. Mo just wanted to come home, she told me later, where she could sit with me, watch all the people in Times Square, and grieve for Sally Weiss. They knew how close she and Sally had become; that was the thing. Hectic holiday week or not, someone could have picked up the phone. Essie said none of Sally’s family had been with her when she passed. If she’d known, Mo could have gotten over there, held her hand, made sure she was comfortable. She imagined herself kissing Sally’s forehead, leaning close to her ear and thanking her for all her stories. On her way down the hall to page Smiley, she stopped at room 5 and stared at the sheetless bed, the empty, shiny floor. She opened Sally’s closet door. Empty, except for the clothes hangers and, on the top shelf, flopped on its side way in back, that silly Easter bonnet.

  Dr. Smiley sounded impatient. A little drunk, too, maybe. “Give her Xanax, one milligram now, and another in four hours.” She didn’t dare question the order, but she didn’t agree with it, either. Two milligrams in a four-hour span? For a woman who didn’t weigh eighty-five pounds? Mo wanted to calm her down a little, not knock her out for the next day and a half.

  “Tablet or injection?” she had asked, and Smiley’d answered sarcastically. Hadn’t she ever learned in nursing school that if you wanted quick results for a suffering patient, you used the stick? When she hung up the phone, she said it out loud. “Asshole!”

  She went to the drug closet and prepared the IV. On her way back to Mrs. Civitello’s room, she went to the break room door and told her girls to finish up and get back on the floor. She injected Mrs. Civitello slowly and carefully, giving her half the dose the doctor had ordered. The old woman calmed quickly; she didn’t need more. Mo withdrew the syringe. She was about to walk down the hall to the north wing so that Jackie’s sub, Louise, could witness the discard and sign off on it. Then she heard the crash.

  They arrived at room 19 together: Mo, Essie, Olga, and Qui’shonna. Mr. Anderson had had diarrhea earlier, and had had to be washed, rediapered, and rolled so that Olga and Qui’shonna could change his soiled bed linens. One of the two had forgotten to lock Mr. Anderson’s bedrails back into position. Qui’shonna, most likely, although now she stood there denying it, even though no one had accused her. Mr. Anderson must have gotten out of bed, gone to the bathroom, and passed out. And now, oh God, here he was, slumped on the bathroom floor, blocking the door so that they couldn’t get in to help him. Through the three-inch opening, she called his name but got no response. She could see the gash in his forehead, the dent in the wall where he’d crashed, blood all over his face and undershirt. She had to get in there and stop the bleeding—get him off the floor. She’d better call the EMTs, and notify his doc. Oh, shit! Smiley was Mr. Anderson’s physician, too.

  “What the hell’s going on over there?” Smiley wanted to know. “What are you, all drinking on the job?”

  “I don’t drink, Dr. Smiley,” she said, verging on tears. “Nobody’s drinking.” She saw one of the EMTs at the back door. Thank God they’d gotten here quickly. She told Smiley she had to get off the
phone and let them in.

  She ran to the door and turned the lock. Even as she swung the door open, she realized her mistake. There was only one man standing there. No gurney, no ambulance. Whoever she had just let enter was unshaven, unbathed, and reeling drunk. And then, just like that, she was back there, at the doorway to the library break room, watching them enter, armed. Get up! Are you guys scared? Well, don’t be, because you’re all going to die anyway….

  The drunk—balding, in his thirties, maybe—grabbed her right wrist. When he tried to kiss her, she jerked her head away. He pulled her, teetering, toward the row of chairs against the wall facing the nurse’s desk. In daytime, some of the residents liked to sit there and watch the comings and goings. The drunk fell into one of the chairs and pulled Maureen down on his lap. He kissed her on the nape of her neck. She flinched, but she was too terrified to protest, to fight or beg. He told her she had nice breasts—small ones, the kind he liked—and with his free hand, began stroking them.

  In her peripheral vision, she was suddenly aware of Qui’shonna, at the far end of the hall, staring. She saw Qui’shonna move slowly and deliberately toward the hallway phone. Please, she thought. Please be calling the police.

  Five minutes later, the crisis was over. The EMTs arrived before the cops did. Ignoring his shouted orders to “stay away from that fucking door, you fucking spook!” Qui’shonna thundered past him and Mo and threw open the door for the ambulance guys. “We got us a situation!” she shouted.

  The older, more experienced EMT sat two chairs away from where the guy was holding Mo. He smiled, wished the drunk a Happy New Year. He asked him if he’d been partying. Asked him what his first name was. “Bones? Yeah? Gee, that’s a name you don’t hear too often…. A nickname? Oh, okay. That makes sense. What kind of music you like, Bones?…Tom Petty? No kidding. Geez, that’s a coincidence because I’m a huge Petty fan. Petty, Clapton, Steve Win-wood. That’s real music, right? Hey, Bones, what do you say you let go of her now? Because I bet she probably needs to go check on her patients. Okay, Bones? What do you say you let her go?”

  The cops arrived shortly after he had released her and Mo had run into Qui’shonna’s enveloping arms. “Oh, Jesus Christ, not this bozo again,” one of the cops groaned. “Come on, Bonezy. Let’s me and you and Officer Collins take a little ride, and let these nice folks get back to work.”

  He left peacefully. The EMTs hurried down to room 19 and wedged open Mr. Anderson’s bathroom door. He’d come to by then, but he seemed dazed. Concussion, maybe. But the wound wasn’t as deep as Maureen had feared. They strapped him onto a gurney and wheeled him out the back door to the waiting ambulance.

  Maureen couldn’t stop shaking, but she assured her staff, over and over, that she was okay. She was fine. Could they all just please stop looking at her like that? Because everything was fine. Peek-a-boo! You want to get shot today? You think you look cool or something? You’re a fucking geek….

  She considered trying me again, she said later, although she knew I’d be sleeping. She thought about calling Dr. Patel’s service and saying it was an emergency. Thought about asking Althea or Nehemiah, her NarcAnon friends, to help her. Instead, at around two a.m., she went into the med closet and closed the door behind her. She took from her pocket the syringe she’d used to medicate Mrs. Civitello, wiped the needle with alcohol, tapped at a vein, and injected herself with the remaining half-milligram of Xanax. She sighed, waited. In under a minute, she was calm, in control again. Crazy circumstances, she told herself. Just this once. She smiled. The Xanax had banished Klebold and Harris. Sent them back to 1999. In the log, she wrote, “Civitello, Marion, one mg Xanax @ 12:05 a.m. by injection, repeated @ 4:00 a.m., as directed by Michael Smiley, M.D.” At four, she returned to Mrs. Civitello’s room. She was awake now, but woozy. “I’m going to give you a shot now, Marion,” she told her. “Doctor’s orders. You ready?” Mrs. Civitello stared at her with glassy eyes, Mo said, as she injected her with another half-dose. She pocketed the syringe. By six a.m., she was jumpy again. She felt his hands pawing her, smelled his sour breath. “Going to the ladies’ room,” she told Lorraine. Sitting in the locked stall, she found a good vein in her other arm. Stuck the needle in and depressed the plunger.

  OFF AND ON, DURING THE next months, Maureen would promise herself that this next injection would be her last. She was lucky not to have been found out, and she would stop after this one, and no one would be the wiser. It wasn’t like she was depriving any of her elderly patients of meds they needed; she would never, ever do that. But most of the docs overtranquilized these frail, underweight elderly. She and Jackie had concurred about that.

  In July, Jackie finally confronted her about her suspicions. Mo had cried, begged her not to go to Gillespie, made promises she had every intention of keeping. And she had kept them, too, until mid-September, that long stretch when she’d worked ten nights in a row because Claire’s husband was so sick.

  The accident happened on Saturday, October 9.

  IN PART TWO OF “A Victim’s Victims,” investigative reporter Rosalie Rand shifts focus from the Seaberry family to the other two principals in her story: Maureen and Resident State Trooper Brian Gatchek. Gatchek, a thirty-two-year-old third-generation cop, was the first responder at the scene. He told Rand he had suspected from the start that there was more to it than a nurse’s exhaustion after a long overnight shift.

  Rand’s depiction of Maureen is evenhanded. She first recounts Mo’s troubles: the Columbine murders and the emotional and physical ravages that survival had cost her. On the advice of her lawyers, Maureen granted Rand an interview; in it, she talked frankly about her posttraumatic stress, her drug dependence, and—this surprised me—her father’s sexual abuse. (Arthur had pledged to pay half of Mo’s legal costs, but after the article ran, he withdrew the offer and, through his attorney, notified Mo that she’d been disinherited and disowned.) Rand does not, as I feared she might, reshape Mo’s words to push a thesis or an agenda. Nor does she discredit the mitigating factors in the case. Instead, she presents them objectively and lets the reader decide: Should the quality of mercy be strained or unstrained, given the facets of the case?

  For the section on Maureen, Rand also interviewed Jerry Martineau, Jackie Molinari, Connecticut Health Department attorney Peter Hatch, and Lindsay Peek. Jerry spoke candidly for a cop, second-guessing his decision not to arrest Maureen the day the system had red-flagged her as a substance abuser. (“The truth is, I felt sorry for her. What she’d been through out there in Colorado. She looked so pathetic and scared when my detective brought her in that day. I’ll admit it. I let my sympathy cloud my better judgment.”)

  Jackie said she suspected Maureen might be using, and falsifying med log records to cover her tracks. “She kept asking me to sign off on witnessing discards when I hadn’t witnessed them. We were friends; we worked the same shift; we trusted each other. It happens sometimes when you’re in a hurry, or when you space out and squirt out the rest of an injection without thinking about it. But it started happening pretty consistently, usually with Ativan or Xanax. And I began to ask myself if she had a problem.” Rather than report her suspicions to her supervisor, Jackie had confronted Maureen directly, and Mo had admitted everything: “doctor shopping,” NarcAnon, and how she’d first injected herself on New Year’s Eve when that creep had gotten in and it had triggered a flashback. Jackie believed Maureen’s promise that, as of that moment, it was going to stop. “I’m convinced Maureen believed it, too,” Jackie told Rand. “Look, she had an illness, but she was a great nurse. If I had reported her, the Health Department would have swept in, prosecuted her, and taken away her license. Do I feel horrible about what happened? Sure I do. Guilty? You bet. But what I want to know is, why the system lets doctors who have a drug problem keep their licenses and their anonymity, but if you’re a nurse, you get publicly humiliated and they take away your career.”

  “Because drug addicts are in denial,” the prosecutor told
Rosalie Rand. “They won’t stop until the profession stops them. Or until there’s a dead kid lying in the middle of the road. Which do you prefer?”

  “She was nice enough when she worked at Columbine,” Lindsay Peek told Rand. “Kids liked her. I liked her. She’s probably the main reason I decided to go into nursing. But nurses are supposed to heal people, not kill them. When you think about it, what she did dishonors all the kids who died that day at Columbine.”

  I tried to convince Maureen not to read “A Victim’s Victims” when it came out, but she didn’t listen. When she got to Lindsay’s quote, she wailed like a wounded animal.

  THERE WERE TWO EYEWITNESSES TO the accident that killed Morgan Seaberry that morning. Tawnee Shay, herself a recovering addict, was running down Route 32, late for work at McDonald’s. Later that night, she’d watched the TV news footage: the car up on the lawn, the sign knocked crooked. They’d shown the victim’s high school yearbook picture, and Gerry Brooks from Channel 30 had asked anyone who might have witnessed the event to contact the state police. Tawnee had not contacted them, though; she wanted nothing to do with cops. But Officer Gatchek had gone into full-bore investigative mode and, a few days later, had ferreted her out.