The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder
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8
January 1993
It was night when the police arrived, the two young patrolmen toting heavy Maglite flashlights, the cop car parked conspicuously outside. This was new for Adrianne, taking it beyond the house, putting it on paper.1 She told the troopers that her soon-to-be ex-husband was a dangerous drunk, and accused him, vaguely, of domestic violence. She’d found her husband loaded in front of the fireplace, staring dead-eyed at the AA books, poking the pages to fresh flame. She told them everything she could think of, including about the investigation at the hospital, and how Charlie had once bragged about poisoning his pregnant sister’s abusive boyfriend’s drink with lighter fluid as a child. She hadn’t yet connected the dots herself, but she wanted to make an official statement linking those stories to his drinking and to her fears for her children and herself. Maybe bringing in the cops would force the issue. She was flexing a little, but it felt good.
Adrianne told the officer every odd thing about Charlie she could think of. The domestic abuse call quickly became a monologue about the strange occurrences surrounding the Cullens’ pets. So much wasn’t adding up—at the hospital, at home, in their marriage—but the animals were something she could put her finger on. It wasn’t just the missing puppy—at various points there had been ferrets, hamsters, goldfish, and, of course, Lady, her maiden animal. She told the officer how Charlie used to keep the Yorkie chained to a pole in the yard while Adrianne was at work, how it barked and turned around its worn track until the animal cruelty people took it away. Adrianne had to drive to the ASPCA and beg for her back, a truly humiliating experience. After that, they kept the dog inside, and then the noises started coming from the basement. Sometimes the thumps and yelps would wake her up. Charlie maintained he was training the dog, but to her it sounded like punishment. Adrianne would pad over in her robe and slippers and crack the door, afraid to go further. She would yell down from the top of the stairs, “Leave her alone!” Charlie wouldn’t answer, but the noises would stop. Adrianne would stand there, listening to the silence, waiting him out. She could tell he was down there, standing frozen like a child playing invisible under a blanket. Finally she’d close the basement door, pad back to bed, and put the pillow over her head.
Charlie was livid. It was simply inconceivable, not to mention totally unfair, that his wife would tell these stories to the police. There wasn’t a good reason for her to have called them in the first place. Charlie was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a wife beater. She was playing a game for the lawyers. She was making him out to be a bad guy, crazy even, creating a paper trail for the divorce settlement. Forget about the reason she had called the police, once they were there, whammo. She’d even told them about his feigned suicide attempts. Charlie replied by washing down twenty pills with a bottle of supermarket Cabernet. Showing her what it looked like, for real this time.
Charlie had often imagined his own death, even as a child in West Orange. In the dream, his hair was parted by a bullet. He was a war hero, a cop, a popular and important senator giving speeches that would ring forever in marble halls. And he was dead. Martyred. Heroic and noble. But it was always a dream. He would open his eyes, alive, a child, a nobody. This wasn’t the life he was intended for. At Catholic school he felt incompetent and humiliated; in the world he was disconnected and alone. He was often so depressed that he refused to go to school or even move. All he wanted was to stay in the house with his mother.
His first suicide gesture had come at nine years old. Charlie had mixed the contents of a chemistry set from the church charity box with a glass of milk, but the chemistry set wasn’t that good, and he succeeded only in making himself sick. His second came one afternoon in December 1977. Charlie was home in bed, playing sick from high school, when the phone rang; his mother had been in a car accident after having an epileptic seizure at the wheel. They didn’t tell Charlie that the collision was head-on, or that his mother was already dead. Charlie tried to find her at Mountainside Hospital, but the staff told him his mother had died and her body had been taken away. Charlie felt that they’d lied to him at Mountainside Hospital,2 a crime he would come to believe was characteristic of hospitals in general, and one that he would never forgive. He was angry and beyond consolation, and turned again to the relief valve of suicide. This attempt yielded his first hospital stay and his first psychiatrist, but Charlie wasn’t willing yet to talk to anybody. He didn’t want to say, yet, Nobody treats my pain. Only I treat my pain. The psychiatrist sent him home again, back to the hole where his mother had been.
Charlie hadn’t wanted to go back to school, or to the dank wooden house and the men who arrived at all hours with who knew what on their breath or their minds. The only option he saw was the Navy. The recruiters in his school had promised an identity and a uniform: white shoes, white pants and belt, even a white hat, whites that hadn’t gone gray on another boy’s life. It felt to Charlie like the most passive branch of the armed services, heroic but safe, like his childhood dreams of death. I won’t die, Charlie thought, but I could. He pictured the immaculate silence he’d seen in submarine movies, that regular, pinging heartbeat, the amniotic red lights, and he signed on for training as an electronics technician, servicing the sixteen Polaris nuclear missiles on the USS Woodrow Wilson.3 But Charlie soon tired of the routine, and realized that he didn’t like electronics anyway. And he didn’t like taking orders, or being stuck for months under the ocean surrounded by strange, rough men. Tour after tour, the pale young seaman they called “Charlie Fishbelly” was the punchline for even the most novice seamen. He tried repeatedly to cancel his six-year Navy contract, but succeeded only in being repeatedly busted in rank and pay for refusal of orders4 and his increasingly bizarre behavior.5 His final year6 would be spent above the waves, mopping out latrines and getting hammered as often as possible.7 When the booze ran out, he turned to Listerine8 or cleaning fluid. On January 13, 1984, Charlie downed a bottle and reported to the USS Canopus’s sick bay. “I drank some poison,” he told the medic. “I don’t feel well.” This was already his third suicide announcement since joining the service, and his third ambulance trip to the Charleston Naval Hospital’s psychiatry ward.9 But for all his suicide gestures, the fact was that Charlie wouldn’t kill himself, not really; the nuns in Catholic school had taught him that suicide was a sin, and Charlie didn’t want to end up in purgatory.10 But he could make himself sick, and in many ways, sick was better. Nobody loves you the way they do when you’re dying.
Charlie was still recovering11 in the ICU when Michelle Tomlinson came to visit. Michelle was a fellow nurse on the Warren Hospital Telemetry unit, a friend, and, Charlie hoped, maybe more. He knew they had a connection. There were always moments during a shift when all the patients have been looked in upon and the orders are filled, a downtime which Charlie and Michelle filled with conversation. Charlie thought that he and Michelle were very much alike. They could both talk about their personal problems with great, baring honesty. They might even be soul mates. Michelle was depressed as well. She appreciated him. He was a wounded baby bird. Michelle came with the eyedropper of attention.
Michelle saw Charlie as he felt he should be seen. She felt sorry for him. She saw his depth and pain, and responded with maternal attention. It was her suggestion that Charlie get himself transferred to Muhlenberg, a psychiatric unit across the state line, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Michelle knew people at Muhlenberg, she said. It was good. Charlie would like it. Charlie requested the transfer, took another ambulance ride, and settled in. Michelle had been right. He did like Muhlenberg. Michelle visited there, too, bringing flowers. She’d pull up a chair and sit by his bedside. Even in bed, even suicidal, Charlie could make Michelle laugh. He was self-deprecating, funny, and charming—she found him charming, at least, and the thought of that, the promise of it, became a solid thing in his mind, enough that he felt well enough to check himself out of Muhlenberg on his own recognizance, just in time to meet his wife’s divorce lawyer.
Charlie had circled the ad in the newspaper, a private basement apartment in a seventy-year-old stone house,13 and rented it over the phone, sight unseen. The landlady was cautious, renting to a strange man without seeing him, but responded well when he listed his qualifications as a gainfully employed nurse, a father, a nonsmoker. Charlie had only left out one detail: her potential tenant was calling from a psychiatric unit. He’d tell Michelle about that one when he got back to work at Warren.
Michelle was a newly single mother with a full time job, a dragging divorce, and a volatile relationship with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Jerry. Charlie was relief. Whatever absurd nugget Michelle might mine from her pathetic life, Charlie could match, then trump. He was always willing to offer up another chapter of his sometimes ridiculous life. They called it a pity party, making the joke but knowing that was exactly what it was.
When he returned to work he seemed as bonded to her as a puppy. So when she and Jerry split up for a week she figured, yeah, what the heck, and broke her rule about dating coworkers. She’d let him take her out to dinner, just the once.
9
Charlie had been excited in preparation, shaving, showering, then shaving again. He felt handsome and charming as he looked at himself in the rearview mirror on the way to meet her at dinner. By the time Michelle had ordered her brownie sundae, Charlie had fallen in love. He watched her across the booth, twirling fudge with the special long spoon, and knew it: Michelle was his soul mate, period. So Charlie turned up the charm.
The way he’d read it, Michelle liked brownies. So Charlie started bringing brownies every day, even on his days off. When Michelle didn’t touch them he’d plate up a square and place it by her charts, sometimes along with other gifts, little romantic somethings for her to find. When Michelle didn’t respond to these, either, Charlie assumed he wasn’t trying hard enough. They were on shift together at least three nights a week, but Charlie wanted more. When he couldn’t get shifts, he’d come in anyway. On those nights he could follow Michelle full-time, cranking up the charm to high. One day he came in with a ring.
He told her, I love you. I’m in love with you, Michelle. But this didn’t have the effect he’d imagined, not at all. Suddenly, she was busy with her patients. She avoided the nurses’ station for the rest of the shift, didn’t say good-bye. He’d tried calling her house but only got the machine. Maybe, he thought, I’ll see her at work tomorrow.
All that March he hurried through his routine, delivering death notices to family members with a told-you-so air. The clock turned, the sun rose, night shift handed over to day. Charlie grabbed his coat and sulked back to the car, the highway, squinting through a smudgy little hole in the frosted windshield and thinking only about how Michelle had turned off. A light had gone out in her; it wasn’t shining on him. The darkness in his soul mate could only mean one thing: she was depressed. He knew it. That was why they were soul mates. Life had become too much for her. She still needed him, but was too far gone to say so.
Back at his apartment, Charlie dialed Michelle’s number without even taking off his coat. It was the machine, so he tried again, then again. He stopped after a few hours. Then Charlie’s phone rang. It was Jerry, Michelle’s on-again off-again sometimes-ex Jerry, telling Charlie, “Lay off, leave her alone.1
“Look,” Jerry continued. “Michelle is really upset—she’s hysterical after this.”
Charlie stuttered something and placed the wall phone back in the cradle. What had Jerry meant by “hysterical”? Michelle was hysterical? Charlie knew Michelle, he understood her, better than Jerry ever could. The phone call had been from Jerry, yes—but this whole thing was a cry for help, from his Michelle. She was in trouble, suicidal maybe. He could save her. He was a hero to her, Charlie knew that, even if Michelle had forgotten.
10
March 23, 1993
Michelle rented a condo. Charlie knew the address. He slowed at her address to scan her windows and, seeing nothing, took a left then another, boxing around and cruising the building again, then boxing it the other way, checking from different angles in case he’d missed something before driving back home to leave another phone message, just to be sure. Then, back in the car and over again, cruising slow, and this time seeing one light on and her car in the drive but nobody in the window. He looped her neighborhood again to be sure. Nothing. Just the car, no life inside. Then he had a chilling thought—what if she was trying to call him? Now? Each trip was forty minutes, at least. He should drive faster. How many times had she called?
Back home he stared down at the machine, still not blinking. He played the tape anyway, in case the light was broken. No message. He called again, dialing the glowing numbers in the dark, left a long message, telling her everything in his heart, then hung up and got back in the car. Drove back to Michelle’s apartment, saw the car still there, the light still on, nobody at the window. Why wasn’t she answering? He drove back to his apartment. The light wasn’t flashing but he checked the messages in case. Picked up the phone to call but then realized how late it was. He called. No answer. He drove back to her apartment, the rain precipitating out of the fog now as he killed the lights by the curb, stepped across the lawn, his white work shoes whipping wet through the grass. He stepped carefully on the gravel by the foundation by her porch and cupped his hands to the glass. No movement in the dark kitchen, only the steady red flash of a message machine. The glass door was locked, so Charlie tried a brick. He waited for something to happen from the noise. When nothing did he stepped inside.
The kitchen was lit only by the luminous moon of the stove clock. He wiped his sneakers on the kitchen rugs, shedding bits of tracked glass, then stopped, listening. Just the tiny marching of the stove clock, the blood in his ears. No other sound. Not even his footsteps as he climbed the stairs. The bedroom door was closed. Charlie opened it.
Inside, the raw human smell, sound of sleeping breath, rough and regular. Charlie stood in the doorway, bathing in the intimacy. It is a tender thing, to watch over the sleeping. More tender still because the sleeping are unaware, like children blind to God’s attentions.
Afterwards, Charlie drove to the minimart. He bought a jumbo coffee against the morning cold, and waited by the pay phone until the sun rose and he could finally call again. This time, Michelle answered. She sounded frazzled—somebody had broken into her apartment. They’d smashed the glass and come inside, with her and her son there, asleep. It felt like a sort of rape.
Charlie rested his arm on the metal cord. He said that he wanted Michelle to know—so much to tell her—first, that he had talked to Jerry. So he knew she and Jerry were back together, and that Charlie wasn’t supposed to bother her anymore. He’d gotten that straight, he was cool, no probs. Then Charlie told Michelle, “I was the one who did your house.”1
That stopped her. “Did” her house? She didn’t know where to go with that. What else had he done? Had he come inside? Well, yes, Charlie said, he had. “I wanted to check on you,” he said. “You know, to make sure you w
ere okay. That you didn’t try anything—like suicide.”
Michelle did not say anything. “You know, I’m, um, feeling a little crazy right now,” Charlie said. He’d told her he’d totally understand if she wanted to call the police or something. He meant it as a gesture, showing her his sincerity.
Charlie knew he had unleashed yet another torrent, one already sweeping him forward like a leaf to the gutter. He crawled back into the car, feeling silly. Back home, he pulled a Coke from the fridge, found a half bag of chips, and sat in front of the TV until the phone rang again. It was an officer from the Palmer County Police. They’d issued a warrant for the arrest of C. Cullen, five foot eight, 150 pounds, brown hair and mustache. Yes, Charlie said, that was him. He promised to drive himself straight down to the police station and give himself up.
Normally, this would be the perfect moment for a suicidal gesture, but the necessity of showing up at the police station complicated things. With the proper timing, it was still possible to do both; in fact, as he thought it through, it was actually better this way. He’d collapse and fade, right in the jail cell, where he was sure to be seen and saved. He would be simultaneously both the criminal and a victim. Charlie popped a handful of the .05 mg Xanax the doctor at the psychiatric ward had prescribed for him, and added some narcotic Darvocets he had taken from his wife after her gallbladder operation, twenty pills in all. Then he drove straight to the police station.