by John Decure
My job was to pull together the declarations, based on the documentation and reports. The most important input would come from the expert Jerry was lining up to review the 5150 medical charts.
Jerry drove the paperwork over to the office of the board’s expert. Four hours later, he emerged with a report declaring Dr. Burgess a danger to himself or others. The first 5150 hold established the fact that without medication and therapy and professional oversight, the doctor couldn’t function. The second 5150 hold led to a single manifest conclusion: off his meds, Burgess was a danger to himself and his patients.
So I typed, and typed—but all in a tired loop, sometimes reworking the same sentence or phrase, over and over. Going nowhere. Words, words, words… but where had their meaning gone, and why did they refuse to fit together? I’m an experienced lawyer who knows her job, and I knew this kind of brain lock should not occur while working an easy ISO matter. I knew—but didn’t want to believe.
Until I ran out of excuses. My problem was obvious: the drugs designed to keep me from seeing things that were not really there were also restricting my view of my own distorted self. I was useless like this.
But hey!—here’s another tip of the cap to the drug industry, I must concede, because good golly, the side effects of these substances had, indeed, been thoroughly explained! These days pharmaceutical companies, and prescribing MDs, are expert at covering their asses, so good golly again, I can’t say I wasn’t warned! (Not to worry, big pharma, though I may be a lawyer, I wouldn’t dream of suing you!) But side effects aside, the net result—disconnection, debilitation—was utterly unforeseen. These drugs in which I placed my faith and well-being had turned my high-level cognition into a false-starting stammer and stutter, wrecking my core ability to move from one thought to another, then another. No logical progression, no recognizable train of thought. I’d lurch forward, stagger to catch my breath, fall back without even noticing I was starting over, puzzling over the same issue again—only it was worse the second time, my self-confidence diminished, my fear of failure further distorting what was left of my judgment. And all my prescribing doctor seemed capable of doing was to query me on side effects, consult his Physician’s Desk Reference, read more about the limitless array of wonder drugs available to the caring physician with a patient in need, and attempt yet another titration.
The next day Jerry drove around, getting signatures on the declarations, two from arresting officers and one from the board’s expert. Still flagging badly on my meds, I worked all day on the ISO brief, one step up and two steps back. Got it filed and served on Dr. Burgess. Then I caught up on the work in other cases I’d neglected for days. Sometime after 10:00 p.m. I noticed that the office was quiet. I walked to my window, where eight floors below, lovely stripes of skid row asphalt shone soft orange under a searching, prison yard moon. Another time, those stripes might bend into the shapes of letters, spelling out my kindergarten teacher’s name. Not tonight. Ah, night. Time to plant my feet and take it on faith that one more time, the earth has rotated away from the sun.
My desk phone rang—very strange at this hour. I answered in the usual manner, naming my employer but not myself.
“Department of Justice, eh? That’s a hot one, young lady,” Dr. Burgess said.
“You’ve read the ISO brief.”
“I read it all right. And you’ve violated state and federal patient privacy laws.”
“But… you consented to release of your records.”
“The hell I did. I signed off for you to see the first 5150 records, from the hotel incident. Not the second one, though. Hermosa PD just wanted to railroad me. No mind-expanding trips into the surf allowed. One of ’em even admitted he didn’t like doctors, said we acted like ‘gods in white coats.’”
“But—”
“Get your facts straight. I was fine that day at the beach. In fact, I was following my psychotherapist’s advice not to always be the tightly wound, uber-responsible physician and all-around serious guy, but to allow myself to unwind, grant myself permission to act on impulse now and then. Long as it’s a healthy impulse, that is, and what’s wrong with swimming in the ocean? Is that a banned act?”
My instinct as a litigator was to dig in hard against my opponent, but he sounded so… reasonable. In fact, everything Burgess had said had a ring of truth, an authority you typically can’t fake. Even worse, his travails seemed barely once removed from my own. He was coping as best he could, breast-stroking through his own ocean of molasses—just like me. As for dipping into the ocean, he’d come close to describing my own best outlet for dealing with the stress of constant self-regulation. I should be cutting him a break.
With empathy came a fear of powerlessness that I’m not proud of, but—well, what the fuck. I’m not a perfect human being.
“I said—is that a banned—”
“I heard what you said, so back the hell off!”
“Okay, fine, you don’t need to yell at me. All I was saying—”
“Just stop talking. I need a minute.” While the doctor huffed, I silently searched for the release Jerry had supplied with the newest documents. Then I found it. “I’m looking at it. With your signature at the bottom.”
“That can’t be. It’s a forgery, Ms. Aames.”
“It looks pretty good.”
“I’m telling you, it’s wrong. I never signed on for that Hermosa Beach affair. Look closer at the document. What else do you see?”
“Descriptions of the 5150 docs we were after.”
I heard a hard, bitter chuckle, followed by a long sigh. That’s when he let the stoned prosecutor have it.
“Are you serious? I get it now. That Goggins character came out to my office and had me sign the thing.”
You mean Gerry Roggin.”
“Roggin, shmogin, the name doesn’t matter. It’s what he did that’s important here. Listen to me. Know what I distinctly remember? Asking him where I should put the date. Know what he said? Not to worry, he’d type it in. But all that happened earlier this month. Get it?”
“The date on this release is from yesterday.”
“Course it is! Don’t you see? He came around, but I was in with a patient and late to do a procedure. Not my top priority, to drop everything for you people. By the time I could spare a minute, he was gone.”
“You didn’t see him.”
“Boy, you are quick.”
“Don’t be an ass.”
“Okay, okay, I’m upset.”
“I get that.”
“Sorry. So, what else is on the form?”
My forehead pounded with exertion. Another bad sign. Thinking is labor, but Jesus, it shouldn’t hurt.
“It describes, uh… both 5150 holds.”
“I told you, it’s a fraud. The Hermosa Beach thing was added onto the old consent form I signed well before I went swimming. That second 5150? A hatchet job! They looked me up and saw I was in the system recently, so they treated me like I was nuts. The evaluation was one-sided in extremis as a result. Pure garbage. Think I aced it anyway. So they had no objective evidence. No choice but to release me.”
“The ISO hearing’s tomorrow,” I said.
“What that means to me is you better get your facts straight, pronto. I don’t think that’s asking too much. We’re just talking about my life, here.”
Outside my office window, a thousand crows flew in from east LA like a plague, singing like happy mariachis.
“I’ll… work… on it.” The words swung in the air like a rope of taffy.
“Either we’ve got a bad connection or you’re slurring your words, miss. Forgive me for asking, but I am a doctor. Are you on something?”
I’d gotten punchy and drifted sideways again. The way he asked me, in a caring, almost fatherly voice, it pierced my chest, made me hurt inside like I hadn’t hurt in a long time. My recent travels through Pharmaland had kicked up a lot of feelings I hadn’t been in touch with in a long time—if ever. I came back li
ke a prosecutor anyway.
“Don’t step over the line with me.”
“I think you’ve got that backwards. You’re messing with my life.”
My head was on backwards. I was hyperventilating from the heat of the confrontation, which to me, shouldn’t have been happening. He was a good guy, but I’m on the side of the good guys. Usually, I’m adept at objectifying the opposition, which makes it easier to focus on what I have to do. Only now, instead of feeling nothing, I saw a big part of myself in this man, in his predicament.
“I’m doing my job.”
“I’ll give you that, young lady.” He chuckled benignly. “One simple, well-intended request: please do it better.”
My breathing took a while to return to normal. My brain was as flat as that glowing skid row asphalt outside, minus any illumination whatsoever. I wanted a drink, a shot, a line of coke, anything to dull the pain, wanted it so badly I had to dig my fingernails into my forearms to make the craving go away. In time, I sat up straighter and thought of the doctor’s plea that I do my damn job. Well… yes, okay. I studied the consent form on my desk. My guess was that Jerry had been sloppy, forgetting to fill in the date back when Dr. Burgess had previously signed off. Then yesterday, he’d been inconvenienced out at Dr. Burgess’s office—though I knew now that Burgess wouldn’t have signed another consent form anyway. So Jerry took a shortcut, filling in the second 5150 description and forward-dating the document.
What I should have seen—and instantly questioned—was the use of one form for two separate 5150 records. Too convenient. But I was zonked, incapable of sustained critical thinking, paying zero attention to detail. Useless.
Screw this shit, I decided. This job isn’t worth doing if I can’t do it right. And I love this job.
That night, I got ready for bed, then sent the meds down the toilet. All of them.
The next morning I walked into Raul Mendibles’s office, first thing, to tell him everything—that is, except the part about flushing my meds. Mendibles is my supervisor and not much of an attorney, a rumpled, mediocre testament to the Peter Principle. He’s also married, which has had no apparent effect on the candle he’s been burning for me since the minute I walked into this place. He stares, he hovers, he pries, he speaks in halted hiccups. The office gals make fun of him when they think I’m out of earshot, but I’ve heard what they say. She’s a suicide pill, Raul. A hot looker with a hot mess for a head. Don’t toss your heart in a Cuisinart, Mendibles.
At the moment he was on the phone with his wife, Myrna, whom he talks to about ten times a day. Motioning me to sit down, he dumped the call. I laid out what had happened with Burgess. When I was done, he asked me if I was sure—meaning: did I know my head well enough to be certain? I was stunned by his apparent lack of concern.
Mendibles is the only person in the office who knows of my internal struggles because when I started in with the meds, the insurance company paying for them had called him, without my knowledge or consent, to verify my employment. (I’d like to sue those pricks for violating my patient privacy, but that’s another story.) It seemed he wouldn’t be beneath holding that personal, medical information against me, a fact that rattled me further.
Again, I attempted to lay out the Burgess ISO situation. He listened quietly, without even a word, but when I told him I was going to tell the truth at the hearing and withdraw the ISO motion, he made a teepee of his hands on his desk, sighed, and said he had one question for me first.
“Are you sure?”
Again, I knew what he meant: Was I sure of my own mind, that this was precisely what had gone down? Could I stand by the order of events as I recalled them? Jerry Roggin’s and Dr. Burgess’s careers may be depending on it.
Not to mention mine.
“As sure as I need to be,” I told him without further explanation.
I was spinning when I left Mendibles’s office. He’d more or less shown me no support, but in a nice-guy, gutless wimp way that seemed helpful yet wasn’t worth a damn. Made me want to kick the shit out of him.
I didn’t find out how ill-equipped I was to deal with the ISO until I got to court. Made my stand, bore the brunt of Dr. Burgess’s suitable outrage, which was amplified by his new lawyer, a woman named Marilu Edwin, who sported a blond wig and a haughty manner. What’s worse, Jerry Roggin was sitting in the gallery, and he took the opportunity to look deeply offended and shake his head gravely as the administrative law judge, Henry Contreras, grumbled about how he didn’t care for this, didn’t like the sound of it at all. The judge asked Jerry if he wanted to explain himself, and Jerry took the opportunity to destroy my credibility in a way I should’ve seen coming.
Jerry said he’d been shunned when he’d gone to Dr. Burgess’s office a few days ago. When the judge asked Dr. Burgess if this was true, the doctor said yes.
Then Jerry flat-out lied, said he told me he’d struck out at Dr. Burgess’s office, but that I’d told him it was all fine, we’d just keep forging ahead. I had an idea that would fix everything, I said, as I took the incomplete form from him.
Jerry had no answer for how the consent form got executed, but he readily pointed the finger at me. I’d been the one to file the paperwork, not him. I’d been the one to use the consent form as an exhibit attached to a legal brief with my name and state bar number on the front page, and my signature on the last page.
“I’m not a lawyer,” Jerry pointed out with feigned innocence.
My response was that it was my fault not to have caught the error. But I would never, ever alter a legal document. To the best of my recollection, this was what Investigator Roggin submitted to me.
“I did not, Judge,” Jerry said.
“Sloppy work either way,” the judge said. “Sloppy at best, and at worst? I don’t even want to say.”
He glared at me for a long time. Then he denied the motion. Though it was a loss for the board, Jerry did his best to act vindicated, stalking out of the courtroom after he thanked the judge for being so fair-minded. It wasn’t until I was down on the pavement again, dragging my file cart back to the office, that I was stopped still by a question: why had Jerry Roggin even been in court when the motion was heard?
I hadn’t invited him to come. The ISO brief was self-contained in the papers I’d filed. He should have been out working his other cases, which, like mine, had been neglected the last few days as he raced around on the Burgess matter.
A homeless one-legged black man in a wheelchair rolled up to me, as I’d made an easy target of myself by lingering in one spot too long. I dug down in my purse, found a crumpled dollar, and handed it to him.
I’d not gone thirty feet from the doors of the Junipero Serra Building, where the Office of Administrative Hearings has its sixth-floor courtrooms, when I gazed up at the terra cotta Italian Renaissance ornamentation, the jutting cornice way up top, the high clouds scrolling by. This building was once the Broadway department store, the flagship operation, the best in the west. People rode the trolley downtown, made a day of it shopping for hats and winter coats, luggage and makeup kits, vacuum cleaners and crystal vases. Times change. Now, it was the place where shaky prosecutors went to have their asses handed to them by mentally-ill doctors.
“Weather gettin’ colder,” the homeless guy commented with desolation familiar to my ears.
“Seems to be.”
He smiled as if pleased with the dignity that my simple recognition of his presence afforded him. Or maybe he was just happy to have a dollar in hand.
“God bless you.”
I certainly hope so, I was thinking. Because I am fucking lost.
Maybe a vagrant’s benediction can work as Grace from God, because at that moment it was as if a set of gears in my head that had rusted in place beneath a hardened glaze of medications suddenly broke loose. I knew why Jerry had come to court, had been there to vindicate himself and make a fool of me; why his play was so much more sophisticated than might be expected of a cop—the cool lo
gic, the clean chronology, the reliance upon authorship of the documents on file.
Just the way a lawyer would have broken it down. As if Jerry had been advised by a lawyer familiar with the case and its facts.
Mendibles. It had to be.
I’d always tossed off the pockmarked attorney with the junior-high crush with practiced ease. But now he had me.
All I could do was make myself a promise. If I was going down, my reputation and career shot to hell, I’d do it on my terms, with as close to a useful, high-functioning mind as I could capably maintain. No more hopeful upbeat titrations, no more soul-sapping meds. No more pharmaceutical fog.
Walking on, I stopped at the light before crossing the street at Fourth and Spring. Down the block, the original Farmers and Merchants Bank building’s stone façade and stately columns shone a gold-tinged white in the late-afternoon light, like an ancient temple built in honor of the almighty dollar. Calling me to it, almost, inviting me to pay further homage to its timeless, awesome strength. I checked my watch: 4:15, and I hadn’t taken my morning or lunchtime meds today.
Well, so what, no more—if it was going to be one girl’s willpower against the world, I might as well start now.
The light changed. I tugged my cart into Spring Street’s lanes and through the crosswalk, heading north at the Banco Popular building. Behind me came a profoundly deep thud, and another, then a third—a trio of sonic booms with the cadence of footsteps.
God’s footsteps.
What else? No—what now? I asked myself. Turning back, I peeked around the corner, down Fourth toward Main, my eyes widening until I felt the lids peeling back into my skull. The thundering continued. It was the Farmers and Merchants Bank, it had torn itself from its foundation one block away and it was coming straight toward me. For me.
2
RAUL MENDIBLES, ESQUIRE, SUPERVISING DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL
