A Civil Action

by Jonathan Harr

  “I was scared to death,” said Donna of that time. “I didn’t know what was going on with Robbie. One weekend when I needed my husband at home the most with the two kids, he took off on his motorcycle. It was more important for him to go away for the weekend than to help me. I decided it wasn’t worth dealing with both things—with my marriage and with Robbie being so sick—so I filed for a separation.”

  That was on October 12, 1976. The next day, during another visit to the New England Medical Center, three months after Robbie’s first complaints of bone pain, doctors noted that his spleen was enlarged and that he had a decreased white-blood-cell count with a high percentage of immature cells—blasts—in the peripheral blood. A bone marrow aspiration was performed. The bone marrow confirmed what the doctors had begun to suspect: Robbie had acute lymphocytic leukemia.

  Donna spent most of the following two weeks with Robbie at the hospital. She missed church services, but her mother told Reverend Young about Robbie’s diagnosis. The minister drove to the New England Medical Center to visit Donna and Robbie. He asked Donna if the doctors had mentioned anything about the cause of Robbie’s leukemia. Donna said, no, they hadn’t. All they’d said was that no one knew what caused leukemia. It was, so to speak, an act of God.

  Reverend Young asked Donna if she thought the water could have played a role in Robbie’s illness. The question surprised Donna, although she knew the water was bad. From the beginning her husband had complained about the taste of Woburn water. He used to put tap water in the refrigerator because he thought that chilling it muted the smell and the chemical taste. Donna had tried to disguise the taste by mixing it with frozen juice concentrates or iced tea. She and Carl never had much money, so she used to economize by purchasing big boxes of powdered milk and mixing that with tap water. Robbie, of course, drank that. When the water smelled really awful, she would boil it before she mixed in the powdered milk. Still, it had never entered her mind that the water could have something to do with Robbie’s illness.

  She gave Reverend Young a quizzical look and said, “Do you know something?”

  The minister shrugged his shoulders and said, “Nothing, really. It was just a thought.”

  Donna had often seen Anne and Charles Anderson at church with their three children. She knew, of course, that Jimmy Anderson had leukemia. But in the three years since Jimmy’s diagnosis she’d never spoken directly with Anne because she never knew quite what to say. She felt awkward expressing her sympathy. She feared it would come out wrong, as if she were merely being nosy. And then, as time passed, Donna felt that the opportunity to say something to Anne had passed, too.

  It was Anne who approached Donna at Trinity Episcopal one Sunday morning, a month after Robbie’s diagnosis. Anne offered her sympathy and told Donna that she understood what she was going through. Her son, Jimmy, she said, had almost died not long ago. If Donna ever needed someone to talk with, said Anne, she was available.

  Standing there on the church steps, Donna began to cry. “I just want to know how you stand it,” she said to Anne.

  From that day on, Anne and Donna talked often on the telephone about the details of treatment, about the drugs, the radiation, the side effects, blood counts, and doctors. When Robbie lost his hair from chemotherapy, Donna took him to Boston to a wig shop recommended by the hospital. The chemotherapy made Robbie nauseated, and while they were in the store, he began to vomit. The clerk grew furious. The entire affair, meant to comfort Robbie, went badly and ended in humiliation. Donna called Anne. Often it wasn’t even necessary for her to explain how she felt. Anne knew already.

  In February, with Robbie’s leukemia in remission, doctors at New England Medical Center addressed the problem of his left leg. A nerve conduction study revealed that his sciatic nerve had been injured during the operation at Choate Memorial. The flexor muscles in his leg and foot were paralyzed, resulting in a condition known as “foot drop.” The muscles had already atrophied to the point that his left leg was an inch shorter than his right. The injury to the nerve, the doctors told Donna, was probably permanent. But to prevent further foreshortening of the tendons and muscles, Donna had to strap Robbie into a cast every night. During the day he wore a brace and required special shoes made of thick leather to withstand the unnatural wear. Donna had been forced to go on welfare. The shoes were expensive and Medicaid did not pay for them because they were not, strictly speaking, a medical expense. Donna lived frugally, saving what little she could to buy Robbie special treats—the television hookup when he was in the hospital, and restaurant meals when they went in to Boston each week for outpatient visits.

  During one visit to the medical center, an orthopedist shook his head ruefully as he considered Robbie’s leg. “This should never have happened,” he told Donna.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  The orthopedist said he doubted there had ever been anything wrong with Robbie’s hip. In all probability, there had been no reason to operate. And even if Robbie’s hip had been septic, his sciatic nerve should not have been injured in a simple drainage procedure. “If I were you,” advised the doctor, “I might consider going after the guy.”

  The more Donna thought about the botched operation, the angrier she became. Finally she called the only lawyer she knew, a Woburn attorney who’d done the legal work for her divorce. She felt he’d done a good job on the divorce, and he had not charged her much. He had a small office on Main Street, not far from Trinity Episcopal. The lawyer told her that he didn’t do medical malpractice cases, but he knew a lawyer at the firm of Reed & Mulligan in Boston who specialized in them.

  A week later, Donna drove into Boston with Robbie to meet Joseph Mulligan. Donna addressed him as Mr. Mulligan. He insisted that she call him Joe. He was an enormous man, over six and a half feet tall and about three hundred pounds. In his office, he kneeled down on the carpet to talk directly to Robbie, and within a moment he had the boy laughing. Donna liked Joe immediately. At the end of their first meeting he told Donna that he thought Robbie might have a promising case, but he would need to get the opinion of one or two other doctors. When Donna asked, with some hesitation, about paying Mulligan, the lawyer said, “Don’t worry about that. It won’t cost you anything.” He explained that he would pay all the expenses and take a percentage of whatever recovery Donna got in the end. Usually, he said, his fee was one third, but given Donna’s circumstances, he would make it one quarter.

  Several weeks later Joe Mulligan arranged to have Robbie evaluated by two doctors, an orthopedist and a neurologist. Donna would call him periodically. She’d leave a message, and Mulligan would usually call back within a day or two. He would assure her that he had not forgotten about her. “These things take time,” he’d tell her.

  Two years passed. During that time, Robbie’s leukemia remained in remission. Donna began keeping the books at Trinity Episcopal, a job that paid nothing but got her out of her apartment. Robbie and Kevin usually came with her to the church. Robbie was in the first grade by now, and he liked school. Despite his pronounced limp, he was gregarious and made friends easily. He joined the Cub Scouts. At the outpatient clinic, he was a favorite among the nurses and doctors. In his chart they often referred to him as “charming” and “happy,” and noted his ebullience. Although he was plagued by headaches and nausea from the drugs, when a doctor asked how his stomach was feeling, he said, “It feels beautiful!”

  Robbie’s first relapse occurred in 1979, three years after his diagnosis. His doctors tried to induce another remission with a slightly different protocol, but that failed. He was still in relapse and declining quickly when they tried a third protocol, which was successful. The entire ordeal took two months.

  He remained in remission for the next year. He was nine years old when his third and final relapse was discovered during a routine visit to the hematology clinic. His death was inevitable, although Donna would not admit that to herself.

  Reverend Young spent many hours with her
and Robbie at the hospital. “Bruce taught me about God,” said Donna. “I couldn’t believe in a God cruel enough to let Robbie suffer the way he did. But Bruce made me feel that there’s a place we’re all going where we’ll be safe. I used to tell Robbie, when we went to a department store, that if we ever got separated he should meet me in the back left-hand corner. Toward the end, he used to say to me: ‘We’ll meet in the back left-hand corner of Heaven.’ ”

  Robbie knew he was dying. On his twenty-sixth and last admission to the New England Medical Center he was treated with another course of chemotherapy in an effort to stem the production of blasts and relieve his pain. He suffered from intractable bone pain, a symptom not uncommon among leukemic children. The drugs no longer had any effect in controlling the leukemic cells, which multiplied in his bone marrow at a furious rate. He was in the final, fulminate stage of the disease. Morphine relieved his agony somewhat, but even the narcotic finally had no effect. He told Donna he wished he would die so the pain would stop.

  For three weeks Donna lived at the hospital, sleeping on a cot in Robbie’s room. Reverend Young visited often; her mother and sisters came. Robbie had waking dreams and hallucinations. Donna would stroke his arm and head and speak softly to him. She stayed by his side for thirty-six straight hours until she could no longer keep her eyes open. She was asleep in a hospital lounge when he died, at eight o’clock in the morning. She had wanted to be with him when he died. She’d thought he would live one more day.

  A year after Robbie’s death, on a hot afternoon in late June, Donna was standing in a line at the service desk at DeMoulas Supermarket, holding a half gallon of milk gone sour that she’d just bought that morning. In front of her was a blond-haired man in his early thirties. He looked tired. He was pale and had dark smudges under his eyes, and he stood in a weary slouch. He, too, held a carton of milk. He noticed Donna with her milk.

  “Sour milk?” he asked with an exasperated laugh.

  Donna nodded and smiled back. The man had a friendly face, and he seemed to have a need to talk.

  “This is the last thing I need right now,” said the man, gesturing with the carton. “I just spent a week at the hospital with my son.”

  “Gee, I’m sorry to hear that,” said Donna. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He has leukemia,” said the man.

  They stood inside the supermarket for half an hour and talked. The man’s name was Richard Aufiero, and he was a long-haul truck driver for Mayflower Moving, although he’d done little driving that summer because of his two-year-old son, Jarrod. He and his wife, Lauren, rented an apartment on Carmen Terrace, a cul-de-sac in the Pine Street neighborhood of east Woburn. Donna told Richard about her son Robbie, and also about Anne, who lived no more than a three-minute walk from Carmen Terrace. As they parted, Donna said to Richard, “Give me a call if you need somebody to talk to.”

  Three months later, in September, Donna heard that Richard Aufiero’s boy had just died. On a Sunday afternoon that September, Lauren Aufiero had called Children’s Hospital in Boston, where her son was being treated for leukemia, and told the nurse who answered that she was worried about the boy. He seemed lethargic and unresponsive. “Does he have a temperature?” the nurse asked. Lauren said no, and the nurse told here not to worry unduly. “Bring him into the clinic on Monday morning,” the nurse said.

  On Monday morning Jarrod’s breathing was shallow and Lauren could not wake him. Alarmed, the Aufieros got into their car and drove south on Route 93 toward Boston. Near the Somerville exit, Lauren, who was holding Jarrod, said, “Oh my God, I think he’s stopped breathing.” Richard pulled the car to the side of the highway and began giving his son mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He tried for several minutes without success to revive him, and then he got back on the highway and raced for the Somerville exit, where he knew there was a fire station. The firemen tried to revive Jarrod, and they kept trying as they took him by ambulance to Massachusetts General, the nearest hospital. But by the time they arrived Jarrod was dead.

  5

  The Woburn police were summoned in the spring of 1979 to investigate the appearance of 184 barrels of industrial waste on a plot of vacant land in northeast Woburn. The person responsible for dumping the barrels in Woburn, the so-called midnight dumper, was never caught, and the barrels were taken away before their contents could cause any harm. The whole event would have been inconsequential had it not been for the vigilance of the state environmental inspector who handled the case. He thought it prudent to test samples of water from Wells G and H, which lay just a half mile to the south.

  The results of those tests reached the desk of Gerald McCall, acting director for the northeast region of the state environmental department, on Tuesday afternoon, May 22. McCall took one look at the analysis and quickly telephoned the Woburn city engineer. He told the engineer to shut down Wells G and H immediately. Both of the wells were “heavily contaminated” with trichloroethylene, commonly known as TCE, an industrial solvent used to dissolve grease and oil. The lab found 267 parts per billion of TCE in Well G and 183 in Well H. The wells also contained lesser amounts of four other contaminants, among them tetrachloroethylene, known as perc, another industrial solvent. The Environmental Protection Agency listed both solvents as “probable” carcinogens.

  McCall had gone to Woburn to see the 184 barrels for himself. He had agreed then with the state inspector that it was highly unlikely any of the contents had gotten to the city wells. Now he was certain of it. The substance in the barrels had been identified as a batch of polyurethane resin that had gone bad, and none its constituents matched the solvents found in the wells. But where, McCall wondered, had the TCE and perc come from? He had no idea, but he wanted to find out. In a letter to the mayor of Woburn, McCall wrote: “The Department will continue to aid you in an investigation of the cause of the contamination of the subject wells.”

  The Woburn Daily Times reported the closing of Wells G and H two days after the event. As it happened, Anne did not see the story. She’d gone with her family on vacation to New Hampshire. Bruce Young also missed the story. In an attempt to economize, he no longer subscribed to the Woburn newspaper.

  But even if they had read it, the significance probably would have been lost on them. The article, written by the newspaper’s City Hall reporter, stated only that “a contaminant” of an unspecified nature had resulted in closing “the long controversial G and H wells.” The story focused on the mayor’s concern about a “severe” water shortage and his announcement of yet another ban on lawn watering and car washing.

  A short paragraph at the end of the article assured residents that the city’s water was safe. The Daily Times quoted the Woburn city engineer as saying that “the water coming into their homes is potable and there is no fear in drinking it. The problem wells have been out of service since Tuesday afternoon, and will remain out until the problem is solved.”

  The city engineer, whose name was Thomas Mernin, lived on Wood Street in east Woburn, a quarter of a mile from Wells G and H. Over the years he had heard plenty of complaints about the water from neighbors and even his own wife, who was upset at the way clothes came out of the wash stained with rust-colored spots. “The water had a taste of chlorine,” Mernin would say at his deposition. “But I never had any problem personally with the chlorine.”

  Next door to Mernin on Wood Street lived Richard and Mary Toomey, whose three children often played with Mernin’s children. Richard Toomey was a sheet-metal worker, a large, good-natured man devoted to family life. He’d been brought up a Catholic in the Charlestown area of Boston, but he didn’t come to understand the true value of religion until his first son, Michael, had been struck by a car and killed while picking flowers for his mother at the edge of Wood Street. His second son, Patrick, became an altar boy.

  More than once, Richard had talked to his neighbor, the city engineer, about the quality of the water. Richard believed that the water was responsible for rotting out
the pipes in his house, which seemed in constant need of repair. Mernin would bristle a little at the complaints. “We do all the tests that are necessary,” the city engineer would tell Richard. “It’s perfectly potable.”

  All three of the Toomey children suffered terribly from skin rashes. Mary had taken them to dermatologists many times over the years. She’d been told there were two general categories of eczema. One type was caused by external irritations—poison oak, parasites, and some chemicals—and the other type by either an inability to tolerate certain foods or nervous reactions, with no apparent external cause. The dermatologists first prescribed lotions for the Toomey children. When that didn’t help, they performed allergy tests and recommended diets free of milk and eggs. The eczema abated at times but never really cleared up. Mary Toomey wondered if the water that rotted out the water pipes in their house was the cause of her children’s skin afflictions.

  In June of 1979, a month after the closing of wells G and H, Patrick Toomey fell ill. His illness began with an earache and fatigue and continued throughout the summer. In August a blood test revealed that Patrick had a high white-blood-cell count. His pediatrician suspected leukemia and referred Patrick to Dr. John Truman at Massachusetts General Hospital.

  Truman performed a bone marrow biopsy and confirmed the suspicion. Patrick, who was ten years old at the time, had chronic myelocytic leukemia, a particularly lethal form of leukemia. His prognosis was not good. He would almost certainly die. Truman asked Richard and Mary Toomey if they knew of anyone else in their neighborhood with leukemia, and both parents said they did not.