Addiction

by G. H. Ephron

  “You should have come to me for that,” Destler said.

  “Pardon me?” I said, belatedly processing his words.

  “Yes. Those files were given to me for safekeeping.”

  “You have them?”

  MacRae looked like he was watching a tennis match. He could see two players, swinging their rackets, but he couldn’t locate the ball.

  Destler went on, “I know Dr. Temple didn’t think we were as supportive of her work as we might have been, but she did have a sizable grant from the NIMH. And despite the questions that have been raised about her methods, her results are quite … interesting.”

  The medical examiner stepped into the corridor and pulled MacRae aside. They conferred. I took the opportunity to use the in-house phone in the hall to call my unit. “We noticed all the emergency vehicles,” the night nurse said, “so we did an extra bed check. Olivia Temple isn’t in her room. Neither is Matthew Farrell. We’ve searched everywhere. They’re not here.”

  Immediately I thought: Albert House. “When were they last seen?”

  “According to the charts, at eleven o’clock checks.”

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I told her. “I think I know where they are.”

  When I got off the phone, MacRae finished talking to the medical examiner. Destler looked at him expectantly. “Apparently Dr. Jensen died at least several hours ago,” MacRae told us. I was relieved. “And he probably died instantly.” He turned to me, “You have someone who can vouch for your whereabouts this evening?”

  After an instant’s hesitation, I said, “Annie Squires.”

  He’d have made a great poker player. MacRae didn’t even blink. He just nodded and took a note. All he said was, “You can go now. I’ll be in touch.”

  Destler walked me partway down the hall. When we were out of earshot, he stopped. “Research?” It was a controlled explosion. “In the middle of the night?”

  I swallowed. “We have a patient who’s gone through physical withdrawal from Ritalin, and we’re treating her with Kutril for the psychological dependence. There’s nothing else that …”

  Destler interrupted, “I know what Kutril is.” He glared at me. “But it’s an experimental treatment. Who is this patient you’re treating for Ritalin addiction?”

  “Olivia Temple.”

  “You’re still treating Dr. Temples daughter, even after her arrest? Doesn’t that seem just a bit inappropriate?”

  “Dr. Liu is her doctor, and I believe the treatment is appropriate. I already have Dr. Temple’s research analysis, her preliminary paper—”

  “You do?” Destler’s eyebrows rose to meet his nonexistent hairline.

  “Yes. But Olivia has experienced some side effects, and I wanted to …”

  “What side effects?”

  “A seizure. We need to see if other patients experienced similar problems, and how they were treated for it.”

  “The data from the trial was given to me for safekeeping,” Destler said, his voice cold. “Now I can see why. I think you and Dr. Liu had better be in my office, first thing in the morning.”

  He put both hands up to his collarbone. I had the impression he was reaching up to straighten the bow tie that wasn’t there.

  “Christ,” he said, “when the press gets a hold of this, they’re going to have a field day.” Then he muttered, “Damage control,” and started back.

  I hurried to the opposite end of the building, to the door from the basement to the tunnel. My mind was churning. If Jensen fell to his death before midnight, then the wooden spindles had to have been sawn through within a few hours of that. Annie and I might have come across Jensen’s body earlier if we’d come up that staircase. And why was Destler being so helpful? Was it just to protect the institute from more public tarnish?

  I stood at the door to the tunnel and looked up into the dark stairway. I whispered, “Annie!” I listened to the silence. I called her name again, as loud as I dared.

  I heard her light footsteps. In a minute, Annie was beside me. “You survived,” she said.

  “I had to tell MacRae I was with you tonight.”

  “Well you were,” she said. She didn’t miss a beat. “I’ll bet you enjoyed that.”

  “Actually, I did.” I couldn’t hold back the grin. But I quickly turned serious. “I’m sure Jensen had to have been pushed off the staircase. But how? It wouldn’t have been easy.”

  “Maybe he was drugged first. That coffee on his desk could have been spiked,” Annie suggested. That would have explained why it was left there, unwashed. He never made it back to tidy up. “One way to find out. We take a sample of what’s in that mug, and I get it analyzed.”

  Annie had already started up the stairs. I followed. I said, “Olivia Temple and another patient are AWOL.”

  Annie paused. “That music?”

  “Probably. The idiots.”

  “This shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes,” Annie said, continuing up.

  This time, Annie took a minute to get Jensen’s door open. We knew we didn’t have much time before the police showed. I groped for the lamp and turned it on. I stared at the desktop. The only suggestion that someone might have been in there after us was that the pencils and pens alongside the blotter weren’t parallel with the edge of the desk. I was sure I’d left them perfectly aligned. That, and the fact that the Acu-Med mug had vanished.

  On top of the file cabinet, leading the mug lineup, an Acu-Med mug now stood. I examined it. It had been rinsed out, but it was still damp.

  There were footsteps in the hall. We both froze. It sounded as if someone had put a key into the outer office door. A moment later, the knob to the inner door turned. Was it the police or someone coming back to erase any other clues to Jensen’s murder? We waited. The doorknob returned to neutral.

  I yanked the door open. No one was there. I rushed out. The door to the stairway at the far end of the hall was closing. And there were footsteps clomping up the opposite staircase. Probably the police and security guards. Annie and I ran the other way.

  It felt as if I didn’t take another breath until we’d reached the basement and were out in the tunnel. There was no sign of whoever had preceded us. The rain had stopped pounding, but the ceiling still dripped, and the walls exuded the smell of decaying concrete.

  When we got to Albert House, Annie put her hands in front of her face as she advanced on the door. She took a credit card out of her wallet, crouched, and started working on the lock.

  “Hold on a minute,” I said, and inserted my master key. It worked.

  “Show-off,” she said.

  Annie pushed the door open. The basement corridor of Albert House was dimly lit. Mildew and dust thickened the air. Some old furniture lined the hall—a battered metal desk, a stack of mattresses, iron headboards. I pressed a finger under my nose to keep from sneezing.

  The music wasn’t too far away. Annie tried the first door. It opened into a closet. Inside was a deep white porcelain sink with a galvanized metal bucket in it. The next door was another closet, this one with shelves. It had old linens that no one had bothered to remove, neatly folded inside. The smell of mildew was overpowering.

  We approached the next door. The music was louder. I turned the knob. A moment later, the music shut off. I pressed, and the door started to open, then stopped and stuck. Something was holding it in place.

  “Olivia, are you in there?” I said, hoping my voice wasn’t carrying into the tunnel.

  There were scuffling sounds.

  “Open the door.”

  There was a high-pitched giggle.

  Now I was pissed. “I’m not playing around. Open up.”

  I waited. Nothing but some intense whispering. Then, the squeal of furniture being moved. The door pulled open to reveal Olivia, bug-eyed, staring back at me, wearing a light-blue terry-cloth bathrobe. Her once pink slippers were soiled and wet.

  Matthew stared at us from a mattress in the corner. About a
dozen candles flickered at his feet, alongside a bottle of water. He was making a feeble attempt to push something under the bedding.

  As I followed Annie inside, something crunched underfoot. I reached down and picked up a white tablet. There were two more on the floor along with a half-full blister pack. I picked it up. Ritalin, ten-milligram tablets.

  I retrieved what Matthew had shoved under the mattress. It was a paper plate with a residue of crushed pills on it, and a length of plastic soda straw. Snorting Ritalin? That was a new one on me.

  Matthew was sweaty, pupils dilated. Olivia was panting, like an overheated terrier. If she’d been any other patient, I’d have been evaluating the course of treatment, racking my brain for additional support systems, reviewing our security procedures. Instead, anger boiled up inside of me. Olivia shrank away, cowering.

  “What in the hell is the matter with you?” I cried.

  She flinched. “I didn’t do any,” she squeaked.

  I felt like a parent, staring down my nose at an ungrateful child. I’d lost my professional distance, but at least I knew it.

  I lowered my voice. “I don’t think you realize how much you have at stake here. The only reason the judge let you come back to the Pearce instead of carting you off to jail is because you’re in a secure unit. If the police find out you’re getting out, taking drugs—”

  Now, Olivia’s fear turned to petulance. She planted her feet and faced me. “So what?”

  “They’re not going to take you to reform school, you know. If you’re lucky, it will be a detention center. Maybe even jail.”

  “This is jail,” she retorted.

  “Have you ever been to a real jail?” Annie asked her. Olivia stared down at the bedraggled ears of her bunny slippers. “Well, I have.”

  Olivia gave her a sideways look. “What’s the big deal?” Olivia folded her arms across her chest, but the sullen tone was tinged with curiosity.

  Annie went on. “You won’t like it.”

  Olivia wiped her nose with her sleeve.

  Annie asked, “How old are you? Fifteen?”

  Olivia gave an indignant snort. “Seventeen.”

  “That’s how old I was.” Annie and I exchanged a look. “I didn’t do drugs. But I did drink. A lot. I thought I could handle it.

  “One night, I was out late with my friends, hanging out behind the high school. I’m driving home, like about the time it is now, when a cop pulls me over. Turns out it’s my uncle Jack. He shines a flashlight in my face and growls, have I been drinking? I tell him no. I figure, all I’ve had is a few beers and over four or five hours. He’ll never know. So he asks me to recite the alphabet.”

  Olivia was hanging on Annie’s words.

  “Got up to G. Or maybe H. Then the letters got all mixed up. Surprised the hell out of me. So I say to him, ‘You gotta let me sing it.’ I know I can do it that way. I was so shit-faced, I couldn’t even sing it.”

  Olivia suppressed a giggle.

  “He says, driving around like that, I could get myself killed. Besides, I’m underage. So I said to him, ‘What are you going to do? Arrest me?’ And he says, ‘Exactly!’ I laughed. I thought he was kidding. But he was dead serious.

  “He takes me in, books me, puts me in a cell with this other woman who’s drunk, dirty. Puking her guts out. As the night goes on, they put more and more people in with us. The cell across from ours is full of men—drunks and perverts. One guy is screaming and banging on the bars. Another one is exposing himself. The place stinks. Urine. Vomit. BO. The worst part is, there wasn’t anywhere to go. Just a couple of cots and the floor. There I was, locked into this little space. I couldn’t get away. I felt violated, just being there.” Olivia gaped at Annie. “It felt like anything could happen to me. I’d have died if I’d had to stay in that jail for another night.”

  Olivia took a few moments to digest Annie’s words. “What happened—” she started, when Matthew Farrell staggered to his feet. He pressed himself against the wall and started banging on it with the back of his head.

  Olivia went over to him, examined his face, then raised her arm and pressed the inside of her wrist to his forehead. It was tender, caring gesture—the kind of thing a mother does with a feverish child. “Is Mattie okay?” she asked me.

  Mattie? He sank down to the ground. He was scratching at his arms. Now, he was rubbing his legs with jerky movements and swearing under his breath.

  I squatted beside him. He pulled away, holding his hands up in front of his face. His forearms were covered with an angry rash. “Looks like an allergic reaction to too much Ritalin,” I said. Not surprising. We’d started him on Adderall, also a psychostimulant. The combination could make a Ritalin overdose worse.

  I took Matthew’s arm. He tried to pull away. “I just want to take your pulse,” I explained.

  “Pulse?” he gasped.

  “Um-hmm,” I said holding his wrist. His pulse was racing.

  “You want to abduct me,” he said, the words staccato.

  Olivia crouched beside him. “No one wants to abduct you, Mattie.”

  “X-ray me with infrared beams,” he continued.

  Common reactions to Ritalin overdose were psychosis and paranoia. “I’m Dr. Zak, Matthew,” I said. “All I want to do is get you stabilized.”

  “In-fra-red.” Matthew repeated the word, rocking on the syllables.

  “We should get them back to the unit,” I said, hauling Matthew to his feet and dragging him out into the hall. Olivia tried to help support him on the other side.

  Annie pulled the door to the tunnel open and stuck her head out. “All clear,” she called back to us.

  We held onto Matthew and started back. The dripping from the ceiling had slowed. Our trip through the tunnel was quick and uninterrupted.

  When we got to the unit, Annie left through a basement exit and the rest of us took the elevator to the first floor. A nurse who’d worked nights on the unit, on and off for years, greeted us. Her gray hair was disheveled and her uniform was rumpled, as if she’d been in bed for the last four hours but not sleeping. It’s amazing how anxiety can wrinkle clothing. “Thank God you found them,” she said.

  I sent Olivia to the common room to wait for me. I watched her walk off, struck once again by how waiflike she seemed, her clothes hanging on her thin frame. But something seemed off. Her gait was stiff-legged. I knew she was probably tired, but this wasn’t a tired walk. It was the walk of an old person with the beginnings of Parkinson’s disease.

  I passed Matthew Farrell over to the nurse. She clucked under her breath.

  “Can you be sure he gets back to his room?” I asked. “Put him on five-minute checks. I don’t care if he sleeps—he probably won’t be able to for a couple of hours—but I want him in his room. I’ll beep Dr. Liu and ask him to come in and examine him. Oh, and one other thing. Once he’s settled, can you have Ms. Temple’s room searched? We’re looking for drugs. Probably sample packs.”

  Then I joined Olivia. She was curled up on the sofa. I turned on a light and brought a chair to sit opposite her. She blinked, put her arm up across her eyes, and turned away from me.

  “Olivia, please sit up for a moment. I need to check something.”

  “Turn off the light,” she whined.

  I turned it off. Gray dawn barely made a dent in the gloom. But I could easily see her.

  She sat up. “What?” The belligerence was back.

  “Put your arm out,” I said.

  She made a sour face but put her arm out anyway. I took her hand in mine and put my other hand around her biceps. Slowly I raised her hand, bending the arm at the elbow. The muscle ratcheted instead of contracting smoothly, jerking from one position to the next, like when you try to pedal but your bicycle chain has missing teeth.

  Olivia sat up straight. “What the hell is that?” she asked, staring at her arm.

  “Cogwheeling,” I said, giving her the medical term.

  Olivia held out her arm and slowly
flexed and bent it. “No shit.”

  I watched her for almost a minute, looking to see whether she was also smacking her lips, drooling, or if her tongue was protruding from her mouth. Fortunately not.

  “Can you make it stop?” she asked.

  “Dr. Liu is going to come in and have a look at you. I hope so.”

  She lay back down. I got a blanket and covered her. Then I called Kwan.

  “This better be good. You’ve interrupted my beauty sleep,” he grumbled.

  I told him about finding Jensen dead, and Olivia and Matthew in Albert House. When he asked what I’d been doing, roaming around in the middle of the night in the first place, I told him I’d been looking for Channing’s research files in Jensen’s office. “There wasn’t any other way to find out what I needed to help Olivia. And I’m worried that if I don’t find Channing’s work, someone’s going to destroy it to keep it from being published. I was stunned when Destler told me he has the data.”

  “Unbelievable,” he muttered.

  Then I told him about Matthew’s rash and Olivia’s tremors.

  He agreed, that it sounded as if Matthew was having a reaction to a Ritalin overdose. Of Olivia, he said, “I don’t like the sound of that. If she weren’t so young I’d be worried about something like tardive dyskinesia.”

  It wasn’t a pleasant prospect, a teenager with her tongue going in and out, arms shaking, doing the Thorazine shuffle. “I’m hoping it’s only temporary,” I said.

  “You’re right about one thing. We really do need to see Dr. Temple’s research notes. There’s nothing about this kind of side effect in her report. If we keep Olivia on Kutril, I want some assurance that these symptoms are only temporary.”

  “This is your lucky day. Destler says we can see Channing’s research notes first thing this morning. Right after he talks to us about the novel approach we’re using to treat Olivia’s drug craving with Kutril.”

  “Does this story have a happy ending, or should I bring my resume to Xerox?”

  “Wouldn’t hurt,” I said.