The California Coven Project

by Bob Stickgold

  Both men? Carol checked her records. She was right. The other failure, the one last week, was Peter Oberdorf. She ran through the list of all of their patients to date.

  Leaping up from the desk, she dashed into the hall, and shouted at the top of her lungs, “Mom, I’ve got it!”

  * * *

  They mulled it over all afternoon and into the evening. But came up with only two explanations: the men were less trusting, and weren’t doing whatever it was that the patient had to do, or they were trusting, but their body chemistry was different enough from women’s that the medicine just couldn’t carry out its half of the cure. Neither one was a very useful explanation, but it was all they had.

  They decided to tell no one, since if the apprentices knew that the treatment might not work on men, they might not be as persuasive with them, and that in turn could cause it to fail. So on Sunday each of the six unknowing apprentices accepted two new patients.

  Maggie was left with little to do. “It’s ridiculous,” she complained to Beckie at lunch on Monday. “I feel as if I should go back to work at the clinic or something—I mean, I have absolutely nothing to do. Amy and Carla each made up a half-dozen batches of potion, which is all the apprentices need since it can be frozen, the apprentices are going out by themselves, and Carol’s keeping the records. All I do is fret.”

  Beckie smiled. “Why I thought you’d love being an administrator. You get to sit at your desk all day, talk to people on the phone, plan things. Why, that means you’re rising in this society. Power, Maggie, you’ve got power!”

  “It’s not funny, Beckie. I feel more like a secretary than an administrator. I should be with the patients, not stuck behind some desk.”

  “And just what do you think I do all day?”

  Maggie was flustered. “But you’re organizing. You’re setting up a union, fighting off the A.M.A. and the hospitals, worrying over the N.M.A.’s accreditation and a thousand other things.”

  “I spend my whole day sitting behind a desk, talking on the phone, just like you, while other women are going out there and doing the real work that I’m organizing about. Maggie, take my word for it—from over here you’re in one of the most enviable positions imaginable.

  “And speaking of losing accreditation! Maggie, have you seriously dealt with what’s going to happen when your potion finally hits the papers?”

  Maggie looked surprised, then shrugged. “Well, I figure there’ll be rumors all over, and reporters wanting to do stories about it and all that. It’ll be a nuisance in a pleasant sort of a way.”

  “You mean fame and fortune?” Beckie asked.

  Maggie just shrugged again. “Well, I don’t know that it’ll be all that much. . . .”

  “Jesus Christ, Maggie, you are really, and truly, beyond belief! Fame and fortune? How about arrest and prosecution? Maggie, wake up, will you? There’s a war going on right now, with the A.M.A. and the medical establishment on one side, and us midwives on the other. You want them to welcome your discovery with open arms and call you their savior?

  “Listen, my naive old friend, you had best put your mind to the question before much longer, because the more people we treat the more likely a leak is going to appear, and when it does, you had best run for cover.”

  “But,” Maggie said, “what could I do? I mean, I am practicing medicine without a license—I guess that’s true—but what can I do now to prepare for it?”

  Beckie shook her head. “For a start, you can worry about more than practicing without a license. For example, that first guy who you gave it to, and it didn’t work, what’s his name?”

  “Peter Oberdorf.”

  “Right, that’s the one. What’s his status now?”

  “I don’t know,” Maggie answered. “I haven’t seen him in the last week. But be was pretty bad. Unless the potion caused some retardation of his cancer, I doubt that he has much more than a month to live.”

  “Well, have you considered the possibility that if he dies you might be charged with murder.”

  Maggie was stunned. “That’s absurd!”

  “Says you. But the A.M.A. says that the defendant gave an illegal concoction to this individual, Peter whatever, almost guaranteeing him a cure, and six weeks later he was dead. Not only that, but given the number of men you’re treating this week, there are going to be more such deaths. With evidence of a half-dozen men who died within two months of your treatment, what are they going to conclude?”

  “Beckie, for God’s sake, they’re terminal cancer patients. Of course they’re going to die!”

  Beckie just stared at her. “Well, Maggie, I promise that if I’m the judge you’ll get off scot-free, because I know that you’re innocent. But there aren’t many people like me who are judges nowadays. So if I were you, I’d think about the problem.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  THE last week of March was not an easy one for Maggie. Beckie’s warning had struck deep, and the old fears, which had somehow been pushed aside with the conviction that the potion worked, returned full force. And now she also felt responsible for the others who were involved in the project. Even Carol might be liable to prosecution. And the situation with the N.M.A. wasn’t going any easier. Through the prodding of the A.M.A. and City Hospital, the state legislative committee on accreditations had scheduled the N.M.A. license-revocation hearings for the first Monday in April. Beckie was working day and night with her staff and their lawyers preparing their case.

  And Maggie had little to do but worry about everything. By the end of the week the prognosis for the latest dozen patients was obvious: eight women cured, four men unchanged. The potion was not working on men. And, as if to prove Beckie right, one of the two men who had shown no response to the treatment the previous week died.

  With seven men uncured—all the men they had treated—Maggie saw no reason to test more. Unfortunately, there was a hitch. Since all the women in the Coven Were recruiting patients for them, more men had been recruited during the week and Maggie wasn’t sure how to handle them. Finally, Maggie called an emergency meeting of the women who had been working most closely with her, Carol, the two “pharmacists,” and her six apprentices. They met at Maggie’s Saturday afternoon, after the latest dozen patients were given their last treatments.

  “Well,” Maggie began, “there’s good news and there’s bad news, and I’m not totally sure which is which. Look, it’s real simple. You probably all know that we had four more failures in this batch of twelve, making a total of seven failures out of twenty-eight patients. What you probably haven’t pieced together—and actually it was Carol, and not me, who finally figured it out—is that the seven failures constitute all of the men we’ve treated so far. We have a hundred-percent cure rate with women, and zero percent with men.”

  Everyone started talking at once. Finally Maggie shouted them down. “Please! In a minute, I’ll have finished everything I wanted to say and someone else can talk.” She waited while they quieted. “First of all, we’ve only two explanations. The first is that we’re just not convincing the men, so whatever that mystical step is that can only happen if the patient is ‘helping,’ well, they just aren’t helping. The second is a variation on that, the men are convinced, but something about their body chemistry makes it impossible for the potion to work on men.” She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s not a pair of brilliant insights, I admit.

  “But the other thing I wanted to say is that we have to decide whether we should stop treating men for the time being. Oh, and there’s another thing. Beckie has suggested, and I agree, that we need to discuss the possibility of legal action being taken against us, for what we’re doing.” She paused a second. “I guess that’s all I have to say.” She leaned back in her chair, trying to look relaxed.

  Amy Belever was the first to speak. “I want to say a few things about your last point, Maggie. First of all, unpleasant as the thought is, I really think we shouldn’t assume that we don’t have an informer amo
ng us. I don’t think we do, but I think that’s a dangerous assumption to go on. And even if no one is now, no one can say for sure how each of us would react if threatened with prison,” Amy paused for a moment, then continued, “First of all, I think Maggie and Carol should make plans to go underground if it’s their only way of avoiding arrest. They have all the data, and they could continue the tests somewhere else. We shouldn’t get hung up in a long trial and let the testing come to a complete halt. In fact, in a crunch, the completion of our tests might make a big difference to the outcome of the trial.” Before she could continue, others started to interrupt. “Let me finish!” Amy insisted. “I’ve just got two short points left. One, the rest of us might also consider going underground separately since we all have the information necessary to carry out the cure. And two, I think that it’s important that we not tell each other our plans. If you’re thinking of contacting someone about going underground, keep it to yourself. That’s all.”

  But, of course, that wasn’t all, and the meeting didn’t break up until after midnight. The Coven decided not to treat any more men for the time being. Maggie agreed to keep the names of the six men recruited in the last week, so that if and when it became appropriate, she could contact them about treatments.

  Carol helped Maggie clean up before bed. “Do you really think we’ll have to go into hiding?”

  Maggie smiled. “No. I don’t think it’ll come to that, and if it does, it’ll just be for practicing without a license—and the success rate of our treatment will be too impressive for any jury to convict us.”

  “But shouldn’t we make some plans, just in case?”

  She gave Carol a hug. “Not tonight, anyhow. Let’s go to bed.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  MAGGIE drove to San Francisco for the opening of the accreditation hearings. The legislative committee had agreed to hold their hearings in San Francisco, since that was the center of N.M.A. activities. On her arrival, she was shocked to find Beckie in a very fashionable—but proper—dress.

  “Bought it just for the hearings,” Beckie confided as they sat in the visitors’ gallery. “When the legislature investigates you, you call them all sirs, whether they’re men or women.” She removed a pair of kid gloves, then opened her attaché case and withdrew a sheaf of papers. “Maggie, didn’t you bring anything to take notes with?” Maggie shook her head. “Honestly, Maggie! You should be taking this more seriously.”

  Maggie smiled. “You forget, I’m not even a practicing midwife. This is your bag, Beckie.” Their sniping was interrupted by a gavel calling the hearings to order.

  The morning session passed without excitement. The mandate of the committee was read, the chair introduced the members of the committee, and a brief history of the legalization of midwifery in California was read by some doctor from the A.M.A. The split between the California Midwives Association and the N.M.A. was described only in those terms, as a split, and at that point the hearings recessed until after lunch.

  For lunch they were joined by Liz Jason, the N.M.A.’s lawyer. “Can you get any sense of how it’ll go?’ Maggie asked after they had ordered.

  “It isn’t going at all, yet,” Liz replied. “They haven’t even started jockeying for position. I know that McCardle opposed the legalization of midwives. He appears to be a crony of your friend Dr. Somers. Aside from him, though, I don’t think there’re any members who are fanatically on one side or the other. I suspect that’s in our favor, since it’s a pretty drastic act to revoke licenses for a whole group of professionals. But I don’t know what the A.M.A. has cooked up, and I don’t know just how big a fight McCardle is planning to dish out. To a large extent, I suspect it’ll depend on popular reaction to the hearings, so they’ll probably be just fishing around for the first few days, without anyone taking clear positions. But so far, like I said, they haven’t even started to do that.”

  “Will Beckie have to testify?” Maggie asked.

  “At some point. She’s been asked to be available, which means that she’ll probably be called as a witness by the committee. But even if she isn’t, we’ve formally asked to speak during the open testimony, and they’ve told us that we’d get time then. Of course, how much time can depend on how things are going.”

  They stopped talking as the food was served. Finally Maggie said, “Liz, I know this is a silly question, but is there really any logical reason to revoke our licenses? I mean, we haven’t done anything that’s improper.”

  “That depends on whose version of improper you’re going by. In McCardle’s eyes you acted improperly when you first tried to deliver babies. He would have stopped you then. In the eyes of the A.M.A., you acted improperly when you rejected their standard operating procedures, and claimed to know better than they bow to deliver a baby. In the end the question boils down to how badly you misused the privileges that licensing implies.”

  “But that assumes we’ve acted badly,” Beckie pointed out. “First they have to prove that, and that’s going to be next to impossible.”

  “Still,” Liz replied, “this isn’t a court hearing, this is a legislative hearing. They could revoke our licenses just because they don’t like the way we look, then we’d have to go to court, and that’s slow and expensive. So, our job here is to try to keep them honest.” She looked at her watch. “In fact, we bad best get back so we can do exactly that.”

  * * *

  The afternoon dragged on uninterestingly until the hearings were recessed. But the next morning, things picked up, as Beckie was called to testify.

  She was brilliant. She answered each question carefully, politely, and honestly. At one point McCardle asked her, “Do you think that your group knows how to deliver babies better than obstetricians?”

  “No,” she replied, “I think we know how to deliver babies differently than physicians. I think their classroom and clinical experiences lead them to favor one approach to childbirth, and our experiences lead us to favor a different approach. I openly admit that in many, many cases I believe that our methods are more appropriate, and I would not hesitate to tell any obstetrician that I thought so. But I would not presume to force my approach on obstetricians, any more than they should presume to force their approach on us.”

  Maggie hadn’t known that Beckie could be so polite. It had certainly never shown before. But McCardle pushed on. “So you don’t think you have anything to learn from regular, ordinary physicians.”

  “That isn’t so,” Beckie said. “Most everything I have learned in the field has been taught to me by physicians, and, indeed, most of the scientific studies which have led me and my colleagues to our current attitudes toward childbirth were carried out at medical schools and by physicians. As does anyone who practices a profession, I have also learned considerably from my daily experiences, but still, when I need to I always fall back on what I have been taught, and most of that constitutes information and practice I have learned from, I believe your phrase was ‘regular, ordinary physicians.’”

  McCardle was getting nowhere, and some of the committee members were beginning to show their boredom. Finally, McCardle seemed satisfied that Beckie would make no embarrassing admission, so he dropped the line of questioning. He looked down at his notes a minute, nodded his head to himself, and looked back up at Beckie. “What do you know about curing cancer?”

  Beckie looked around nervously. “What?” she asked, almost in a whisper.

  “Come now, it’s a simple enough question. I asked you what you know about how to cure cancer.”

  “Well,” she responded unsurely, “we had a unit on it in school, but that was several years ago, and I haven’t kept up on the literature.”

  “You haven’t, say, been treating cancer patients on the side?”

  “Senator McCardle?” It was the chairperson. “I can understand the confusion of the witness. Perhaps you could give us all some idea of where you’re heading with this line of questioning?”

  McCardle was irrit
ated by the interruption. “Where I’m heading? I’m afraid, Mr. Chairman, that I’m not absolutely sure yet. I do know,” he said, his voice beginning to rise, “that there are women, who purport to be midwives, who are visiting cancer patients. They claim to have a cure for cancer. I also know that two of their patients died within weeks of receiving this so-called treatment. I was wondering—since the so-called Natural Midwives Association rejects standard, medically accepted procedures involved in the safe and healthy delivery of newborns, and since they feel that they can safely practice whatever form of pseudomedicine they deem appropriate—I was wondering whether perhaps they are the same midwives who feel that they can improve on the billion-dollar effort of the legitimate medical establishment to cure cancer.”

  Liz was on her feet. “This is outrageous, and slanderous!” she exclaimed.

  “You have neither the floor nor a right to the floor,” retorted the chairperson. But by then members of the committee had also begun to sputter in outrage.

  Liz whispered furiously to Beckie. “Don’t answer any more questions on the subject. Tell them that McCardle’s statement implies legal wrongdoing, and that you insist on consulting with counsel before responding.” But Beckie hardly heard a word of it. Although Liz knew nothing about the Coven, apparently McCardle did. Beckie frantically repressed the urge to turn to Maggie for support. Jesus God, she thought, how much does the bastard know? And how does he know? If there’s a plant in the group, we’re sunk.

  The chairperson was pounding for order, and both the committee and audience were finally quieting down. McCardle, his face red with anger, pounded on the table in front of him with his fists. “Mr. Chairman, I ask this witness again whether she knows anything about this—this abomination! Because, Mr. Chairman, this is exactly where we can expect these so-called midwives to head if we allow them their practices. If we decide that these unschooled, uneducated women can ignore the dictates of proper medical practice, if we decide that they be permitted to place themselves above the true medical profession, above those men who have graduated medical school and who do research to better medical procedures, then you can only expect that this decision will so bloat their egos that they will quickly attempt to supplant medical doctors in all their functions!” McCardle turned and glared at Beckie, his hands shaking with rage. Lifting one hand and pointing at Beckie, he shouted, “They would gladly lead us back to the superstitious ways of their predecessors, the witches and midwives of the Dark Ages!” Exhausted, he sank back into his chair, wiping his wet brow with a shaky handkerchief.