He Said, She Said

by John Decure

  Because he knew I was on the board’s list and would be in no position to get creative with this case. The deal the board was offering was too good to be true, a get-out-of-jail-free card for a man who’d laid waste to his patient, her marriage, and her family. Who you know, who you blow—such was the principle in play, the driving force, the unwritten law governing how this was all supposed to go down, no doubt, the dirty details of which were not to be known to the semi-psychotic prosecutor who would only too compliantly sign off, for this was what was best for her, too. But I knew a thing or two about the sorry depths of human behavior, the lowdown scum suckers who hide behind their titles and positions waiting to pounce, the wolves in sheep’s clothing. Dr. Don used the secrets he’d drawn out of Rue Loberg in therapy, used his position of trust to exploit her, to burrow his way into her pants. And now he’d take an official slap on the wrist? Mendibles was using me.

  The locomotive had passed, and I was intact. Thank you, Raul, with your apologetic grin, your sniveling act has brought me back. I peeked around his muffin of a chin and spied the defense.

  And thank you too, Dr. Don Fallon, you, who have been studying me the way a hungry fat man eyes a steak, since the minute I walked in here.

  He was no dummy, Dr. Don—he had to know this was no way to greet the state prosecutor looking to end his career. But of course, this was his problem: the man could not control himself. If he saw something he wanted, he had to have it.

  I asked for a moment, and Judge Drummond gave it to me. I took a few steps back into the gallery and motioned to Mendibles, who followed. By now he’d lost his feeble veneer of cool and was wiping the sweat from his forehead, his eyes darting between the judge, Heidegger, and me. If I had any Oxy on me I’d have offered him one right then.

  “The offer of settlement still stands,” he wheezed.

  He was going to pay for screwing with me.

  “This isn’t right. We won the motion, and the ‘no-show witness’ showed.”

  I took out my cell phone.

  “What do you think you’re you doing?”

  “We can get a lot more. I’m going to talk Joanna Poliak into a better offer.”

  Joanna is the board’s enforcement coordinator, our day-to-day settlement contact up in Sacramento. Mendibles was choking on her name.

  “No, no—don’t. It won’t work.”

  He reached for my cell phone.

  “Excuse me!”

  “Joanna’s… she’s in a meeting.”

  “What the hell, you’re clairvoyant now? She’s in Sacramento.”

  Mendibles wiped his forehead. “She’s busy.”

  “Well, then.” I dropped my phone back into my bag. My face had feeling again, and I became aware that I was frowning.

  “Why are you doing this?” Mendibles said, as if I’d hurt his feelings.

  “This isn’t about me. Our witness came back from the dead. And even though you mailed in that motion, we won. I couldn’t have predicted this little upswing.” I shrugged innocently. “Case just turned out this way. We’re rolling. In control. No way should we be giving it all back.”

  His jaw was rigid and he panted with exasperation as he began to whisper. I was secretly reveling in his discomfort.

  “We had a plan.”

  “Exactly, we had one, past tense, which is where that shitty deal needs to stay.”

  “It’ll still work.”

  I hooked my thumb toward the door. “Should I go now? The board already thinks I’m incompetent. My name goes on a sweetheart deal for a sexual predator now, I’ll be off their cases for good. I can’t be a part of this.” I turned to go.

  “That’s it?”

  I thought before answering. “No. It’s also wrong.”

  “Wait.” His eyes met the carpet as he kneaded his hands. “Don’t go.”

  My eyes slammed shut from the strain that came with clinging to reality. “Give me a reason to stay.”

  “We can fix this.”

  “I’ll talk to Joanna. You know, when her meeting’s—”

  “No. Don’t do that.”

  “But we need her okay to—”

  “I said no!”

  The others had stopped what they were doing. The court reporter, a tootsie who shot me dirty looks whenever she thought I wasn’t looking, tilted her head toward us as she adjusted her sweater. Rue Loberg and her handsome young shrink—well, I didn’t look behind me to check on them, but I hoped Mendibles and I weren’t freaking them out with our public display of cohesiveness. The judge looked unenthused to be presiding over a prosecution team that wasn’t even on the same side.

  “What’s got your panties in a bunch?” I whispered.

  “I can’t say. Just leave it alone.”

  Huh—maybe this mental clarity I’m after is overrated, I was thinking. I knew I’d just glimpsed a situation I didn’t quite understand, like seeing the outline of a picture but not the picture itself. But Rue Loberg was here, and that fact made going to trial a reality. And a hell of a threat, when you’re talking settlement. So enough with Mendibles. I slid into the gallery to talk to my witness. If she and her bearded therapist were rattled by what they’d just seen, they weren’t showing it.

  “I’m ready to proceed to trial,” I whispered as they leaned in. “If you can testify to what happened, Mrs. Loberg, we’ve got a shot at winning.”

  “I… wanna put all this behind me, Ms. Aames. I think…”

  The victim conferred with her shrink with no more than a glance, which he returned with a nod of approval.

  “I know I can do it.”

  Fine. There would be no settlement conference this afternoon. I shuffled back to Mendibles and whispered that Rue Loberg was good to go.

  “And so am I, boss,” I added helpfully, “in case you’re wondering.”

  “You’re not going to call Joanna,” he said.

  “You’re still stuck on that, even when I’m thinking about the trial.” I surveyed him as if I were working out a puzzle. Then I acted like I’d solved it, just to see what I could find. “I know what you’re afraid of.”

  “Hah! You know absolutely nothing.”

  “Afraid, because when I call Joanna about your sweet deal? She won’t know what I’m talking about.”

  It was a calculated guess, but a good one, and he didn’t deny it.

  “Fuck it. You’re on your own,” Mendibles whispered bitterly. He got up and left. An alarmed Heidegger excused himself to follow Raul out.

  A few minutes later, Heidegger returned. Team Dr. Don huddled up, got the news, and harrumphed their asses right out of the courtroom, their cheeks puckered, as if they’d been royally cheated but couldn’t say why and that fact was killing them. I was lapping up this delicious scene, so I packed up slowly, giving Dr. Don a good look at a woman he’d never, ever possess, and letting the defense get a good head start so I wouldn’t come across them again downstairs on my way out. I still wanted those pills, but at least I was feeling stable. Outside in the hall, the young shrink, Dr. Weaver, was leaning against a wall, reading a paperback, waiting for me.

  I thanked him for coming and for bringing Rue Loberg with him. He graciously gave all the credit to her and to me for so eloquently defending those psych records on the motion. Eloquently? Without warning, I blushed.

  The man had big shoulders and a fresh smile but bland clothes—navy slacks, a rumpled blue shirt and a repp tie combination that resembled a schoolboy’s uniform. But I liked the red highlights in his short-trimmed beard and his voice was deep and so well measured he could’ve been a radio announcer. I could picture sitting on a couch, telling him my problems. Except I wouldn’t know where to start. Instead, to my surprise I pictured myself kissing him.

  It was time to go and I had to get something into my bloodstream to steady myself. My forehead was bricking up. Without a chemical or alcohol infusion, a crash was sure to come.

  We took the elevator downstairs and walked through the double doors ou
t onto Fourth, which was blaring with stop-and-go traffic. The sun had prevailed over the gray overcast, and working people were out and about. I bade the victim, Rue, and her bearded guardian farewell, but before I could walk away, he caught up with me, said he needed to ask me a personal question. I was surprised, and for a second I hoped he would ask me on a date. But his face was dead set on business, not flattery.

  “How long have you been fighting your illness?” he asked, his voice gentle and liquid smooth.

  Oh, God, I thought, I’m sinking…

  A pair of options leaped to mind. I could step into a lane of traffic on Fourth and avoid having to answer Weaver’s question for today or maybe all of time. Or I could stay on the sidewalk and melt into a puddle right where I stood, wait for a street sweeper or an early-season rain to wash me away.

  Before I could decide what to do, this Dr. Weaver showed me his powers of perception, sidestepping my little bubble of gloom and doom, my downcast alternate zone of space and time, of time not recorded in my head. He came around, a hand outstretched, detouring me from the grip of a creeping panic, coaxing me straight back into the here and now.

  Willing the moment to be solid enough to grab hold of and hang on to, I met him there, halfway—or perhaps all the way, I don’t know; but I found him, found him warm and kind-eyed and offering me a handkerchief as I set down my bag, my aching hand levitating to stay above a fire-red plateau of pure pain.

  “You’re still bleeding.”

  Shit—he’d seen me doing my no pain, no gain self-mutilation routine under the table. And if he saw it, from back in the gallery, Mendibles may have, too, though Mendibles lacked the balls to say so. Embarrassed, I shuddered, retracting my hand. This guy was probably scared shitless to have his shaky victim of a patient relying on me to take care of her when she testified. Here comes the lecture, I told myself.

  Instead, he smiled the way a good guy should smile, I guess. Patient. Kind. Pressed the hankie’s cool white folds into the palm of my hand, holding it there, firmly but not so tightly as to make me wince; just both hands over mine, the perfect level of pressure to stop the bleeding.

  And I thought: how long has it been since I let anyone take care of me?

  Too long, girl.

  7

  CRAIG P. WEAVER, MEDICAL DOCTOR

  There’s much to be said for proactive psychiatry, the central idea being that at times, a more case-sensitive, innovative mode of treatment may be found outside the traditional realm of one-on-one, couch-and-notepad, doctor-patient therapy. I, myself, am a believer. I’ve visited an ICU with a mom to say good-bye to her teenaged son when life-support was turned off; flown coach beside an aviophobic patient in-flight to San Francisco; stood by as a widow pounded the gravestone of her cheating husband, and helped her find a seasoned estate-planning lawyer after the dead husband’s executor announced an out-of-state mistress as the sole beneficiary. When proactive intervention works, it really works, but the standard of practice requires meticulous planning and discussion. The patient has to understand beforehand what will happen, what the objectives are. And, of course, the risks involved. None of this is as easy as sitting in a chair, asking a patient how her week is going.

  I wished I was doing exactly that right now, reclining in the friendly confines of my study, my father’s collection of hardbound books lining the shelves, the two lamps on opposite ends of the overstuffed leather couch casting a golden glow over the room, providing just the right measure of light—and cover—to foster steady two-way conversation. Indeed, this was the controlled, ambient setting for my latest breakthrough moment of insight, at which time I assured my patient, the fragile, oft-violated Rue Loberg, that in order to move ahead she had to be brave enough to confront her demons head-on. Little did I know that our trip to court today, which for all intents seemed to go well enough for Rue, would leave me doubtful about my line of thinking in the first damned place concerning my role in this unfolding drama. But walking double-speed down a urine-soaked sidewalk in downtown LA, heading straight for skid row, shadowing—or giving chase to—a young lawyer with a man’s name and a ballsy unpredictability that was beginning to frighten me, I couldn’t help but laugh at myself, the great, cutting-edge clinical slayer of fears: scared shitless.

  She seemed bound and determined to test me, to lure me down the darkest, dankest alley, where I might unwittingly tread, lily-white and painfully overdressed, on the ragged nerves of some snarling denizen of these parts. Whose turf might I invade with a miscast glance or an ill-timed stumble? If this were a test, my nerves were failing already. Bradlee Aames was her name, and she strode not unlike a man in purpose and intent, but with hips slim and feline in the way they smoothly swayed. Mesmerizing, even at half a block’s distance, yet quick in step. I hastened to keep pace, holding steady a few dozen clicks behind.

  My breath was quick, but not from exertion; to my shame, I was still afraid. How could I be so easily out of my element? And in broad daylight? My spirit had lost its adventurous side, if ever one existed. Slow down, Bradlee Aames, slow down.

  A woman in jeans and a fouled pink ski jacket loitered among the shadows, mumbling against a towering wall of antique brick. As I passed, she reached out with a trembling hand and whispered something I took to be a prayer. I hoofed it even faster, thinking: What are you so afraid of, Doctor? I stopped, found a quarter in my pocket, and slapped it into her grubby hand. Hustled on, my shame turning to righteous anger.

  How do people scrape by in such squalor? Well then, it’s a free country, I reassured myself. But then, a chord of truth resonated inside me until it rattled my teeth, and I felt like that brief exchange had exposed me for what I am: a pampered, highly credentialed phony. Turning back, I dug a five from my wallet, but I had no time or I’d lose Bradlee Aames; instead, I whistled at the woman, holding the fiver over my head before I set it on the pavement for her. Some gesture—I’d just treated a mentally infirm adult like a begging dog. The hell with Bradlee Aames, I’d either catch her or I wouldn’t. I picked up the bill and headed back.

  Two blocks of running at a half skip had me feeling out of my element all over again. The end of the long alley was deserted, but I saw her turn right as I jogged to catch up. How is it that I’ve become so smug in my views on the plight of the homeless—so uninterested in adequate funding for the mentally ill? How did this insulating sense of superiority become so effective in sheltering me from real life? I reached the sidewalk, a bus roaring past a few feet from the gutter. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page seemed like a dispatch from another planet just now. Some things you think you know, you just don’t know.

  Took a right, panting; couldn’t see the lawyer up the block, but she had to have gone that way. Breathe, Doctor Greg! a smarty-pants chorus sang out in my head, like the many patients of mine who would surely be vastly entertained to see me sucked into a little life’s-rich-tapestry moment (yeah—that’s a phrase I admit to overusing and should quietly retire from the therapist-patient repartee). A legless panhandler, black with grime, pumped his wheelchair toward me with a hungry, no-teeth smile. No time; no change—so much for my newfound sense of altruism. Ignoring the man as if to deny his very existence—God, the liberal guilt these streets brought out in me!—I trucked on, spotting the elusive Ms. Aames as she ducked down yet another alley.

  Oh, the human mind is such a mystery! I say this because despite my sudden attack of conscience, I could now only fix on vivid memories of… the New Haven café where I had my first cup of coffee… of footballs tossed on deep-green lawns… of arches and colonnades and all the bricks-and-mortar reassurance only a Yale education could offer a pimply geek from a respectable but humdrum corner of the San Fernando Valley. Then, an insight struck me—and in a flash I saw what was happening. Today I’d taken what I believed was bold action, accompanying my patient to court to witness a legal battle over her right to privacy. But, like the pilot who drops the paratroopers into a night sky over enemy territory, t
hen returns to a hot meal, a shower, and a warm bed back at the air base, I’d done little, acting as no more than a glib insider, a supposedly knowing observer who in truth was merely a voyeur. Rue Loberg had borne the impact of that confrontation, whereas I’d barely registered a presence.

  As a therapist I’d failed.

  But then I’d seen disturbing signs in the state lawyer’s demeanor. She was offbeat, with a strong individual presence, no doubt, but something in the modulation and rhythm of her speech and affect was… off. She’d been tough and maybe even fearless in court, successfully defending my patient’s privacy, and in a rare moment of bravery myself, I’d… rewarded her valor by confronting her about her condition. Without warning. To my chagrin—no, make that shame—I’d made her bolt.

  If I knew anything as a professional, it was that she was in some kind of trouble. So okay: I’d followed her into this hellhole, for once trusting my instincts. And this was how my mind protected me: a gush of collegiate reverie, of gauzy memories, an idyll long past if indeed, it ever even existed.

  I envied Bradlee Aames, she burned with a sense of… sheer want, such that my eyes filled with tears. The here and now—that’s where she chose to reside. But there was no time to cry for my wounded ego. Catching up at last, I saw her fifty feet ahead, leaning against the painted white brick of an old office building, her back shielding what I guessed was a drug transaction in progress with a tall man in a black beanie. When the man straightened up, his dreadlocked hair spilling off his shoulder, I thought he’d spotted me. But that wasn’t it—not at all. The dealer was backing away because just above Bradlee Aames, on an old metal fire escape, a crouched figure prepared to leap.

  There is a cry that those of us who study the human mind call the primal scream. It comes from a place deep within, encoded in that part of our DNA we share with our cave-man ancestors, a visceral reaction that springs entirely from the moment. Quite without warning I locked in with that lineage and faced the tiger with a banshee wail, startling the attacker so badly that he fell from his crouch and hit the pavement sideways. Wow!—but what now? I froze up. For her part, Bradlee instantly saw what was happening and backpedaled over the fallen man, kicking him square in the face when he lunged for her leg. Run! my brain commanded my legs. Not that way! Run away! But as I came to her side, I had no clue what I would do if the attacker went for me. And yet, I didn’t care. I’m not a fighter, but maybe I could muster a punch from the same place from which my roar had sprung. And what of the dealer? Not to worry—he’d jumped on a rusty bicycle and was already pedaling away with such fury he had to keep a hand on his beanie so it wouldn’t fly off.