Amnesia

by G. H. Ephron

  His disembodied voice floated from behind the yellow pad. “And, in this case, what were you asked to do?”

  I answered carefully. “I was asked to help guide the defense in evaluating the memory difficulties that this particular individual has manifested and how they might affect the kind of testimony she might give.”

  Sherman wrote several words on the yellow pad and underlined them.

  “Dr. Zak,” he said, lowering the pad and crossing his arms, “you’re not one of Sylvia Jackson’s treating physicians, are you?”

  “No, I am not,” I answered.

  “You were hired by the defense specifically for this case?”

  Here we go, I thought. “Yes, I was.”

  “At that point, when you were hired, you weren’t even asked to do an evaluation of Sylvia Jackson, were you? In fact, you were provided with certain limited information about the case and you were asked to guide the defense in certain areas.” The phrase “certain areas” took on sinister significance. “That’s what you were asked to do, right?”

  “That’s correct,” I said, trying to keep my voice even.

  “Evaluating the victim, Sylvia Jackson, putting her through — how many was it, twelve hours of tests — that was your idea, was it not?”

  Obviously this still irritated the hell out of him. “Six hours,” I said. “Ms. Jackson’s memory is a critical issue in this case.”

  “So you asked Ms. Jackson to tell you what she remembered about how she was shot in order to help prepare the defense for this case. Is that correct?”

  I could feel my hairline prickling. “No. I always ask the person I’m evaluating to tell me how they were injured. It’s standard operating procedure.”

  “Standard operating procedure?” Sherman repeated slowly with mock surprise. “I take it you’ve been asked, for example, your opinion as to whether Sylvia Jackson could in fact recall what she told the police she did recall.”

  “No, I haven’t been asked that.”

  “You have not?” He paused. The grooves in his forehead deepened as he stared at me straight on. “Then it’s unclear to me what you mean by” — he referred to his yellow pad — “‘guiding the defense in evaluating memory deficits.’ Could you explain that for me?”

  “Sure,” I said agreeably. “I don’t know whether she remembers what she purports to remember or not. I can’t make that determination. I wasn’t there. I don’t know what actually happened. What I can do is make informed judgments about what her memory function is like now, following her very significant brain injury.”

  Sherman looked at me stoically, tolerating my obtuseness. His eyes focused on the top of my head. I stifled the desire to smooth my hair.

  “Is there some kind of acid test for whether or not a person can recall what she says she recalls?”

  I stroked my chin. “Bottom line, if your question is, can you ever be certain that somebody recalls accurately an event that occurred in the past, then the answer is no. Not unless you have corroboration for that event.”

  I wasn’t expecting the question that followed. “Have you been provided with information about a prior encounter between Stuart Jackson, Sylvia Jackson, and Tony Ruggiero?”

  “Yes,” I said cautiously.

  “Okay. So you know there was a prior incident?”

  “I do.”

  “Is it your opinion that the details she gives about what happened before she was shot are confused with the earlier encounter?”

  “All I can say, definitively, is that she certainly has a tendency to do that now.”

  “To do what now?”

  “To mix together details from different events.”

  “Okay. Do you have any opinion as to whether she’s mixing those two things?”

  “No.”

  “And is there any way of telling whether or not she’s mixing those two events?”

  Sherman knew I’d say no before I said it.

  He retreated behind his pad, flipped to the next page, and asked, “What have you been told about how Sylvia Jackson’s memory returned to her?”

  “My understanding is that several weeks after she woke up, she was interviewed by the police. And after some weeks, during the course of those interviews, she said she thought her ex-husband, Stuart Jackson, did it.”

  “Okay. Based on your testing of Sylvia Jackson, would it surprise you to know that some weeks after she received her injury, she started having nightmares, saying things either in her sleep or immediately afterwards like ‘Please, don’t leave me here — you can’t leave me here like that’? Would that surprise you?”

  Sherman was talking faster now and the volume and tone of his voice were rising. It pushed me into reverse. I answered quietly, “No.”

  “After those first few weeks, instead of talking to the police, she told a nurse that Stuart Jackson shot her. Would that surprise you?”

  “Would it surprise me that she’d tell a nurse?”

  “Would it surprise you that she went from having nightmares to remembering who shot her?”

  “No, it wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “And then a week or so later she was able to give the police a more detailed account of what happened. Would that surprise you?”

  “A more detailed account of what she believed happened.” The course correction broke his rhythm.

  “Okay. Would that surprise you?”

  “No.”

  Then he was back on a roll, the volume rising. “And would it surprise you that four months later she couldn’t remember a lot of the details she remembered earlier?”

  “Is it surprising that she forgot details of what she told the police? No.”

  A twitch beat a tattoo at the corner of his right eye. “Details of what she told the police?”

  “Yes. You see, it’s at least possible that what she claims occurred on the night she received her injury is inaccurate. I remind you, I don’t know what happened that night. But it’s certainly possible that she’s making everything up.”

  “Possible.” Sherman tasted the word. “Is it likely?”

  “What do you mean, likely?”

  “Is it more likely than not?”

  I sighed — the poor man. His orderly mind with its sharp creases and right angles wanted to apply statistical probability. He’d choke on the glorious chaos of real human behavior. “I would say equally likely that what she’s talking about happened or didn’t happen. How she remembers information from before the injury is something I can’t determine one way or another. Keep in mind, my evaluation has to do with her current cognitive status.”

  By the time I’d finished, Montrose Sherman was looking at a crack in the ceiling, his mouth set in a grim line, his silver pen tapping rhythmically against the yellow pad. I could almost hear his little gray cells muttering, “Yadda, yadda, yadda.”

  Then Sherman shifted gears. He asked a whole series of questions about the tests I’d administered. The jurors were good sports, but by the time Sherman was satisfied thirty minutes later, even my salt-and-pepper friend’s eyes were glazed over.

  “And the content of these tests is as you have described them?” He cleared his throat for emphasis, bringing a few jurors to startled attention. “Houses? Cowboys? Bats and butterflies?”

  “They’re the standard tests,” I told him, bristling, “used by experts to evaluate cognitive functioning.”

  I glanced at Chip. His raised eyebrow was telling me to stay calm.

  “I understand that,” Sherman said, more to the jury than to me. “So you felt that Ms. Jackson’s recollections of what happened to her weren’t as important as how she remembered the pictures of houses and cowboys?”

  He was baiting me. Once, I’d have been impervious. Now, I felt anger rising like bile in the back of my throat. “I had no way of validating her recollections. The only way a professional can get a sense of how someone deals with memory is by knowing exactly what the stimulus material — the test — is. I have n
o idea what happened to Ms. Jackson, but I do know that there are houses and cowboys in those test pictures.”

  “I see,” Sherman said, leaning toward me. “So your findings did not rely on any information about the crime itself, is that correct?”

  A yellow light flashed in my head as I answered, “Yes. That’s correct.”

  “Although you say you were not concerned with the details of this crime, it’s true, is it not, that you were provided with some limited information about the crimes the defendant is charged with?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were provided with, for example, Detective MacRae’s report containing Sylvia Jackson’s statements last spring?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “You were provided with the police reports describing the scene at Mount Auburn Cemetery?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were also provided with a report of what Nurse Carolyn Lovely said Sylvia Jackson told her, correct?”

  “No, I was not,” I answered.

  “Were you provided with police reports stating a bloodstained pillowcase and belt were found at the scene?”

  “Not that I recall. If it would be helpful to you, most of what I was provided …”

  “I’ll ask the questions if you don’t mind.” Sherman spat the words out.

  Chip rose. “I’ll ask that the witness be allowed to explain his answer.”

  “It wasn’t an answer,” Sherman cut in.

  The judge agreed and let Sherman continue with his litany of evidence to which I had not been privy.

  “Were you provided with the police report indicating that a camouflage fatigue hat was recovered from the defendant’s apartment?”

  He’d made his point abundantly clear. I had not had access to the massive amounts of circumstantial evidence that made up the prosecution’s case. I scanned the jurors and wondered how my cowboys and butterflies stacked up against bloodstained pillowcases and camouflage fatigue hats.

  Finally, I responded. “As I’ve already said a number of times, I was doing an evaluation of her current cognitive status. All of this evidence you’re referring to wasn’t relevant to my testing.”

  Montrose Sherman gazed at me, suddenly quite pleased. I had a sinking feeling that I’d just violated the cardinal rule of expert testimony: just answer the question, don’t volunteer. The light that had been flashing yellow turned to red.

  “So, if all you were concerned with was her current cognitive status,” Montrose Sherman gave a sharp cough, “then perhaps you can explain to the court why one of the first things you did when you sat down with Sylvia Jackson was to take a statement from her about the events preceding her injury?”

  Now red lights were flashing like a pinball machine. It took me a few seconds to gather a response. “I asked her to tell me what happened. Yes — I do that every —”

  He cut me off. “And you wrote down everything she said?”

  “Yes, that’s part of the testing process —”

  He cut me off again. “But you didn’t write down everything else she said during the tests. Not everything she said during those twelve hours?”

  He was determined to double the length of time I’d spent testing Sylvia Jackson. Correcting him again would only be counterproductive. “No, sir.”

  “But you did write down, specifically, verbatim, exactly what she said in response to your question concerning what happened preceding her injury. Correct?”

  I swallowed. “That’s correct.”

  I had no time to ponder why this answer sounded suspect. Sherman was already on the move again. “In fact, taking this statement wasn’t necessary at all for your evaluation of Sylvia Jackson, was it?” Sherman turned back to me, the lines above his eyebrows deepening into furrows. “Dr. Zak, would you agree that corroboration is the only way to tell whether someone accurately recalls an event?”

  “Yes,” I said, “if that corroboration comes from someone who saw the same event.”

  Sherman looked toward the jury, nonchalant. “You mean, if someone had been in the house, for instance, and had walked in on the murder while it was taking place —”

  My mouth hung open and I felt color rising from my collar. Of course, he knew all about my wife’s murder. He hadn’t been personally involved, but his office had prosecuted the case. I started to get up out of my chair. Chip was on his feet. “Objection.”

  The judge looked surprised. “On what basis?”

  Sherman shrugged. “Question withdrawn.”

  The callous deliberateness with which he was trying to sabotage me took my breath away. I dropped back into my seat.

  Sherman put down his legal pad, crossed his arms in front of him. I barely heard the next question. “So the only way for you to corroborate what someone says they saw is if another person was there and tells you they saw the same thing?”

  “Correct,” I said.

  Sherman took a half turn toward the jury as he delivered a final shot. “So if I told you that it rained outside while you were in this courtroom, and you walked outside and saw the sky was clouded over and there were puddles out there and the grass was wet, it wouldn’t be enough corroboration for you, I take it?”

  I took a deep breath and smothered the urge to vault out of the witness box and wring Monty’s neck. He dangled the absurd question in front of me like bait and I rose to it, just as he must have hoped I would. “No. A sprinkler truck might have come by.”

  My salt-and-pepper friend tittered in an otherwise stone-quiet courtroom.

  “A sprinkler truck,” Sherman repeated and glanced at the jury.

  “Mr. Sherman, do you have any more questions for this witness?” the judge asked.

  “I do, Your Honor.”

  “In that case, since it’s already late,” the judge banged his gavel, “court is recessed until Monday at nine.”

  I left the courtroom feeling I’d been sucker-punched.

  “We’re going to get a drink down the street,” Chip said as we were leaving the courthouse. “Join us?”

  I got waylaid by a reporter in the lobby. By the time I got to the tavern, Chip was standing alone at the bar. “Where’s …” I started to ask when Annie emerged from the gloomy inner reaches of the room. Transformed into herself, she’d changed into jeans and her aviator’s jacket. Her hair, sprung loose, curled around her face.

  “Phew,” she sighed, sinking into the stool beside me and draping a zippered garment bag across the bar, “that’s much better. That outfit makes my teeth itch.”

  “I didn’t know teeth could itch,” Chip said.

  “That’s what my dad used to say about wearing a tie,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

  The beer arrived. Chip raised his glass. “To a fair verdict.”

  “A fair verdict,” I said and tapped mine against his.

  We all drank. I barely tasted the beer.

  “Sorry about that sprinkler truck,” I said. “It just slipped out.”

  “Peter,” Chip said, “he took a cheap shot. Any reasonable person would have reacted.”

  “Look, I told you I wasn’t doing this kind of work anymore. Now I’ve gone and screwed up your case.”

  “It ain’t over till it’s over,” Annie said. “One sprinkler truck isn’t going to wash away the lack of evidence.”

  Chip and Annie started to discuss the day’s proceedings. Annie dissected the jury’s response to the defense case, juror by juror. I tuned out and replayed Sherman’s words, “You mean, if someone had been in the house —” It was, as Chip said, a cheap shot. Cheap and potentially lethal. Nothing was the way it had been before Kate was killed. I went to work, I treated my patients, I kibitzed with Kwan, I went home — it looked the same. But sameness was an illusion. Like a house Kate and I had once looked at. It seemed sturdy, but when you took a knife to the foundation, the punky wood gave way like balsa. I had a vulnerability that D.A.s could attack with impunity without the jury even suspecting that something was up.

>   Just then, my pocket buzzed like an angry bumblebee. I’d turned it from beep to buzz — it’s not cool to have your pocket beep while you’re testifying. I got up to find a phone. Annie offered me her cell phone.

  “Something wrong with your beer?” she asked, noticing that I hadn’t touched it.

  I pushed the beer away. “I guess my stomach’s a little queasy.”

  I dialed the hospital. Kwan picked up.

  “It’s Peter. What’s up?”

  “Maria Whitson’s split.”

  “How?”

  “She must have followed someone out through an exit. When she didn’t show up for dinner, we went looking for her. She’s not in the building.”

  31

  I WAS already out on the street, looking up and down, trying to recall where I’d parked my car, when I remembered. It was in the shop. I returned to the bar where Annie and Chip were still nursing their drinks.

  “What happened? Decide to finish your beer after all?” Chip asked.

  “My damned car is being fixed,” I complained. “I’m going to have to call a cab. I need to get to the hospital right away.”

  “I’ll drive you,” Annie offered.

  “Would you? I’d appreciate that. We don’t often lose patients.”

  “Who’d you lose?”

  “A young woman. And now I’m kicking myself because I noticed that she was acting oddly this morning and I didn’t take the time to find out what was up. We were managing so many other crises.”

  “You think she’s in danger?”

  “She’s attempted suicide before. I don’t think that’s what she’s up to. But why split? We were releasing her in a few days. Maybe she’s still somewhere on the grounds. I feel responsible. She’s my patient and I wasn’t paying attention.”

  Annie tossed a five-dollar bill on the counter, grabbed her garment bag, threw her coat over her shoulders, and headed out. Her Jeep was parked in a lot down the street. I held on as we bounced over the potholes that have achieved landmark status in East Cambridge. The rush-hour traffic slowed her down only slightly as she dodged and weaved with the nonchalance of a veteran cabby.