DONE GONE WRONG

by Cathy Pickens

  I’d spent the months since last October despising him. Watching him now, after Blaine Demarcos’s description, I could grudgingly see that Hilliard had to believe doctors were invincible—or at least immune from admitting their mistakes. As ludicrous as it seemed to me, maybe he’d practiced so long that, once upon a time, his faith in his power to heal was the only medicine he could offer his patients.

  Another part of me saw him as I’d seen him last fall—a lying, self-serving old fart.

  Last fall, I’d watched Hilliard use his prior witness stand experience to lead a little girl’s greenhorn attorney by the nose. No% I don’t see any indication in the record that the physician violated accepted standards of care. He had glibly stretched and misdirected the truth, believ-ably skewing everything in favor of my client, winning my case for me. To my ears, he had lied to do it, and I’d snapped.

  As I had mulled on that day when the judge’s gavel cracked down so fiercely on the tirade I’d provoked in Hilliard and on my career, I saw not just Hilliard, but myself. I’d goaded Hilliard until he began screaming, I’d baited him to catch him in his lies. The judge had declared a mistrial, and the insurance company had settled. My client had been relieved because he hadn’t wanted the humiliation of a trial in the first place, but I was out of a job and back home in Dacus.

  Now I’d come full circle, back to a courtroom facing Langley Howard. Only this time, I could only watch as I’d watched replays in my mind of our last meeting. This time he was on the other side, and I had no control over what would happen. I’d given Jake everything I could dig up to discredit Howard. Now I could only sit and watch it play out. This must be what ballplayers feel when they’re relegated to the sidelines, an ache to be a part of it, a need to believe they could make a difference, and maybe a bit—tiny, but real—of relief that it doesn’t depend solely on them anymore.

  Hilliard had sat in many witness chairs in many courtrooms. He knew the drill. Defense firms paid his fees because he was good. A bit pompous, but he knew how to talk to a jury. Hilliard didn’t respond well to sarcastic challenge, but he could take the usual attacks and parries of plaintiff’s counsel as an experienced hand.

  Arthur Vendue led Hilliard through his testimony, the gist of which said that Uplift had been thoroughly tested, that depression and anxiety disorders are common but complicated and difficult to treat, and that depressed people sometimes go over the edge and kill themselves and others.

  “Doctor, do you have an opinion, with a reasonable degree of medical certainty, about whether Uplift caused the events at Bradt Industries?”

  “Yes, I do. The events were precipitated, with a reasonable degree of certainty, by Mr. Wilma’s underlying mental instability. There’s no indication that what happened was caused by the drag Uplift.”

  “Could you elaborate on the basis for your opinion?”

  “It is well documented that Ray Vincent Wilma had a history of depression and mental problems. He’d been institutionalized once before. Both he and his mother had, at various times in their lives, made suicide attempts. He’d made plans and issued threats about ‘making the bastards pay’ for more than a year before he even began taking Uplift. And there’s nothing in the history of the drug to indicate that it would have any connection with this sort of—meltdown.”

  “What do you feel gives you the experience to render this opinion?”

  “Most notably, I’ve spent many years as chief medical officer in charge of Barnard Medical’s research program. I’m fully familiar with the FDA and NIH—National Institutes of Health—guidelines on human-subjects testing and drag research protocols. Perforce met all the requirements in bringing Uplift to market and continues to appropriately monitor and report side effects or other occurrences now that Uplift is in broad use in the market.”

  “In your expert opinion, Uplift did not cause the events at Bradt Industries?”

  “No, based on the history of the drag, it did not. Mr. Wilma’s underlying mental disorder is a better, more consistent explanation of what happened. Uplift unfortunately couldn’t prevent the tragedy from occurring, but it also didn’t cause it.”

  “Thank you, doctor.”

  Despite Judge Bream’s unhidden bias for hurry, Arthur Vendue had spent all morning letting Hilliard’s testimony unfold for the jury. We’d ran past the normal noon recess time, so I was ravenous by the lunch recess.

  In the courthouse snack bar, I paid for my cheeseburger, Diet Pepsi, and chips, and took a seat. Uncharacteristically for me, I didn’t have any notes or papers in front of me, nothing to read. Bringing something with me had taken too much effort. Just thinking takes too much effort when I’m hungry. I just stared into space, munching.

  “Wow!” A guy in work clothes sitting nearby thumped his fist on the counter. “Did’ja see that? Whoa-oh.” He almost fell off his stool. All eyes turned toward the wall-mounted TV set he was watching. The guy dishing up cheeseburgers pointed the remote control to turn up the volume. The jerky camera movements of a live report took a few Minks to decipher, but the diner who’d been watching the story provided color commentary for us.

  “Some guy’s strapped a bunch of dynamite to hisself and is holding a bunch of people hostage. Apparently he’s in love—see that little girl there? With the tits? She’s the one.”

  A brunette in a tight-fitting T-shirt huddled between an officer and a woman, their attention focused on what looked like a small fast-food restaurant. The camera filming the shots we were watching stood a bit to the side and behind the officer. The camera zoomed in on a sign: Burger Hut. Uh-oh.

  A figure repeatedly jostled into view from off-camera, microphone extended toward the teenage girl.

  “Miss Cole, could you tell us—”

  Unexpectedly the screen filled with a blur and something large and square smacked the reporter in the back of the head, cutting off his question.

  “Whoa-oh!” Our local color commentator continued. “What a shot! She clocked him out!”

  The camera followed the reporter as he stumbled to the ground, then again profiled the threesome: the police officer, the teenager—and my mother.

  Mom adjusted her purse strap back over her shoulder and put her arm protectively around Miranda Cole’s shoulders, turning their backs to the camera.

  Whoa-oh. No wonder I hadn’t heard from her this morning.

  “—standoff here in Dacus is now three hours old.” The voiceover on the television finally got louder than the background noise in the snack bar. “Sources say the man inside is wearing what appears to be a fishing vest with several sticks of dynamite and a shoebox attached to the vest with duct tape. He has threatened to blow up the building and the four workers reportedly inside if his demands are not met. He insists on talking with Miranda Cole. It’s not clear whether that’s a family member or someone else.”

  A man appeared in the glass front windows of the Burger Hut, looking like a grade-B-movie robot, his arms sticking out of a stiff, square vest which was shiny gray and lumpy. Apparently he’d never heard of SWAT snipers.

  He leaned closer to the window and waved wildly toward the camera—and Miranda Cole. Miranda shook her head and buried her face in my mother’s shoulder. The camera beside Miranda and her protective bodyguard showed a pale, pleasant-looking teenager with thin, shoulder-length hair. A nice-looking kid, but hardly the face that launched a thousand ships. Obviously enough to launch a lunatic dressed in duct tape, though.

  Seeing it on TV elevated it to gut-clenching reality, to real danger. I’d sometimes worried about my mom getting in over her head, mixed up in something dangerous as she went about saving the world. But it had never been a serious fear. She’d always seemed surrounded by guardian angels, though I wasn’t actually able to spot any of those angels on the TV screen.

  Weren’t they standing too close to the building—and the bomb-laden Lothario? They were at the edge of the parking lot. How far would a bomb blast carry?

  My mom reached to
take something from someone out of camera range. A portable phone. She handed it to Miranda, speaking too softly for the camera to overhear. The nut ball appeared in the window, holding what must be a phone to his ear, waving with his other hand. The rest of us just watched.

  “Pick him off, how ‘bout it?” Our helpful commentator encouraged the screen. “Hell, send the dame with the loaded handbag in. She could take him out. All those cops standing around with their fingers up their butts.”

  He must have felt the cloud of animosity gathering in the room behind him because he shut up without turning to look at the Highway Patrol officer sitting three stools down from him or the two city cops at the table behind him.

  Then the camera’s focus shifted. A stiff-legged man in a lumpy vest waddled out the Burger Hut door holding his hands high in the air, his hair greasy and sticking up in twigs on his head. He shambled three steps, waving goofily at Miranda, then three cops converged and took him to the ground.

  The camera lost its close-up in the jostling crowd, and I took that as my cue to leave. I’d been suckered into watching those breathless “breaking news” marathons before, always full of inane speculation. I already knew more than the commentators did—more than I wanted to know.

  My legs wobbled a bit as I headed toward the elevator—pent-up adrenaline from too much tension and too little I could do about it. Where does she find these people?

  25

  WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON

  After lunch, Jake rose to cross-examine Hilliard and wasted no time. One of his first volleys attacked Hilliard’s expertise. The judge had certified Hilliard as an expert witness, based on his research experience, and Jake had let Howard testify about psychiatric matters with minimal challenge, even though Hilliard was an ob-gyn without any training in managing depression. Now Jake lobbed one over the wall.

  “Dr. Howard, you are a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist, are you not? That deals with birthing babies and female reproductive issues, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “So psychiatric diseases aren’t really your specialty, are they?”

  “Well, you certainly deal with issues such as depression when dealing with new mothers. Postpartum depression is a big concern, you know.” He wouldn’t let Jake rattle his cage that easily.

  “I don’t think Ray Vincent Wilma was suffering postpartum depression, was he?”

  Howard didn’t grace that with a reply.

  “You aren’t certified in psychiatry, are you? Or psychology?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Dr. Hilliard, have you, through Barnard Medical, ever done research for Perforce Pharmaceutical?”

  “Yes.” Hilliard shifted in his seat. “Perforce is a major drag manufacturer. We’ve served as a test site for their clinical phase research in the past.”

  “Whenever Barnard served as a test site, that would’ve been like those situations you talked about earlier, where they would pay you to find patients to take an experimental new drag, and your physicians would let the folks at Perforce know how it worked, whether it took care of the problem or caused side effects or whatever?”

  “Yes, simply put, that would’ve been our relationship with Perforce.”

  “And you, as a physician, got paid for your work with Perforce, when you were doing these tests?”

  “It’s common for drag manufacturers to reimburse physicians for their time and effort in executing a research protocol. In the past, I’ve had patients enrolled in studies sponsored by Perforce, and there would’ve been some payment to account for our administrative time in seeing the patients and writing the reports to Perforce. We see so many patients. I don’t recall exactly which studies reimbursed what amounts. Patients are only referred to drag studies if we feel they may benefit. It’s done all the time.”

  “If you feel the patients may benefit, you say. But that’s not really the reason patients are referred, is it? I mean, patient benefit may be low on the list of reasons you might encourage someone to sign up for a drag study, wouldn’t it?”

  “I’m not sure I know what you’re asking.” Hilliard’s response was stiff.

  “Patients are told they shouldn’t count on an investiga-tional drag to make them better, aren’t they? They’re told the best reason for participating in a drag study is to do their civic duty, to help find cures for other people, aren’t they?”

  “In some cases—”

  “Is that just you doctors’ way of telling them, we don’t want you blaming us if this doesn’t work out too well? Is that why you don’t promise them any results?”

  “We can’t promise a patient a certain outcome. You lawyers would be on us in a flash.”

  “So you all just find it best not to stick your necks out, don’t you?”

  Hilliard didn’t answer.

  After a short staring match, Jake moved a step closer to the witness stand, coming in from the side. “Do you at least tell your patients that you get paid? Or is that something else they really don’t need to know, that you doctors get paid whether the new drag helps the patient or not?”

  “We’re paid for our time, time spent seeing the patient and filling out reports.”

  Jake took several slow steps toward the jury, crossing in front of Hilliard, studying the ceiling as he walked. “How much money do you usually get paid for these patients? You get paid per patient, don’t you?”

  “It varies according to the size of the study grant or the reimbursement schedule worked out by the pharmaceutical company.”

  “Well, give us an idea, a ballpark.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “A hundred dollars for each patient? Ten dollars? Five hundred? What?”

  “Maybe a hundred dollars.”

  “And maybe more?”

  “Maybe.”

  “That’s not the only way you doctors get money for one of these studies, is it?” His voice was only a touch quieter. Hilliard leaned forward as if to hear better.

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Sure you do. You doctors make money working with drag companies, big money. Not just a hundred dollars a pop for seeing patients. What are some of those ways, doctor?”

  “I don’t really know—”

  “Sure you do.” Jake and his banty rooster attitude flew at Hilliard. “Are you familiar with a drag company called Rabb & Company?”

  Hilliard’s eyes narrowed. He’d known this was coming. After I blundered into the relationship between Perforce and Rabb & Company, Hilliard would’ve been expecting this. Denials wouldn’t play well with the jurors when they found out what Jake knew. Even with forewarning, Hilliard acted defensive, as though he had something to hide.

  “Yes, I’m familiar with it.” He sounded peevish.

  “What exactly is your relationship with Rabb & Company?” Jake now sounded conversational, but his body language said he was closing in.

  “Rabb is a small pharmaceutical company. It is one of many companies for whom we’ve conducted research.”

  “You’ve done more than merely provide a research site for Rabb & Company, haven’t you? More than just another hundred-dollar-a-pop project, haven’t you?”

  “I’m not sure—”

  “Dr. Hilliard, don’t you have a drag in development, one that’s about to pass the last hurdle and become eligible for investigational drag status—IND, I believe the FDA calls it. Eligible to begin formal testing?”

  “My colleagues and I have numerous projects under development—”

  “You’ve already begun testing this product on humans, haven’t you? Even though it hasn’t formally entered that phase.”

  “That’s perfectly permissible under—”

  Arthur Vendue sat quietly scribbling on a notepad. He wasn’t demanding that Jake let the witness finish his answers. Vendue figured Howard could take care of himself.

  “Doctor.” Jake stopped pacing. “Doctor, you’ve been working on this drag for some time, haven
’t you? You’re very close to signing a contract for the further development and licensing of this drag, aren’t you?”

  “WES, yes—”

  “A contract with Rabb & Company. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “The same man is the principal stockholder in both Perforce Pharmaceutical and Rabb & Company, isn’t he?”

  Had this been a movie, a thundering crescendo would’ve sounded.

  “I believe the companies are related in some way, but I really don’t know much about business setups—”

  “You don’t know much about business setups?” Jake’s voice boomed. “You certainly knew that a man named Pendleton Rabb was involved with both Perforce and Rabb & Company, didn’t you? You certainly knew Perforce’s attorney would be writing you a check for your time spent testifying here today, didn’t you? And you hoped Perforce would be writing you an even bigger check for your new drag, didn’t you?” Jake’s voice rattled eardrums.

  “I object, Your Honor.” Vendue rose half out of his chair, his voice calm. “Counsel must let the witness answer the questions.”

  “Sustained. Mr. Baker, please confine yourself to one question at a time.”

  “Dr. Hilliard, you’re expecting to be paid for your testimony today, aren’t you?”

  “For my time in testifying, not for my testimony.”

  “You’re also expecting to sign a contract with Rabb & Company that will pay you royalties—you expect substantial royalties, if die drag is successful, do you not?”

  “Well, we certainly hope—”

  “Both Perforce Pharmaceuticals and Rabb & Company are ran by Pendleton Rabb, is that not so?”

  “I-I believe so. As I said, that’s not my area of expertise.”

  “You’ve already admitted that psychiatry isn’t really your specialty. You’re telling us Perforce’s drag Uplift had nothing to do with Ray Vincent Wilma going crazy and killing people. You say you don’t know much about business. At the same time, you’re hoping Perforce will pay you a lot of money for your drag. You think your excitement over that deal influenced your enthusiasm about Uplift in any way?”