by Jodi Picoult
My fingers curl around the cuff of my father’s jacket. “I’m not guilty, Your Honor.”
“I see bail was set at five thousand dollars personal recognizance. The defendant, having appeared here voluntarily, is released on the same recognizance. Mr. Warren, I’m going to set the same bail conditions that were set by the bail commissioner: you are ordered to have a psychiatric evaluation, and there’s a no contact order with your father, and a no trespass order with Beresford Memorial Hospital.” She fixes her bright, black eyes on me. “You realize that if you fail to have the evaluation performed within the next ten days, or if you go to the hospital to see your father, you could be brought back and held without bail at the county jail pending a hearing? Do you understand the terms and conditions of your release?”
She asks me to raise my right hand and swear that I’ll be back here in ten days for a probable cause hearing, whatever that is.
“Next matter,” the judge says, and then it’s over.
The whole procedure takes about two minutes, tops.
“That’s it?” I say to Joe.
“Would you prefer it to drag on longer?” He pulls me out of the courtroom.
I follow him through the parking lot to his car.
“Now what?” I ask, my words shifting shape in the cold. I stamp my feet while he unlocks the door.
“Now you do what the judge said. You get your psychiatric evaluation and you sit tight while I try to figure out how to get this case thrown out.” He turns on the ignition and backs out of his spot. “I’ll drive you back to your father’s—”
He is interrupted by a blast of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Startled, I fiddle with the radio to turn it down, but it isn’t even switched on. “Joe Ng,” he announces out loud, to nobody.
Then I hear another voice, broadcast through the hands-free phone system. “Joe? This is Danny Boyle, the county attorney.”
“Danny,” Joe says, wary. “What can I do for you?”
“Actually, it’s the other way around. Your stepson was indicted today for the attempted murder of his father—”
“What the hell?” I burst out.
Joe punches me in the arm. “Sorry. Let me turn down the radio here,” he says, and he shoots me a deathly look and puts his finger to his lips: silence. “I think you might have that charge wrong,” Joe continues. “He was arraigned for second-degree assault.”
“Well, Joe”—the other voice is smooth, oily—“I have the indictment sitting right here in my hand. This was a professional courtesy call, to be frank. Instead of having him picked up, I thought you might prefer to surrender him to the police department.”
“Yes,” Joe replies. “I’ll bring him in. Thanks for the call.” He pushes a button on his steering wheel, disconnecting the call, and looks at me. “You,” he says, “are in deep shit.”
“I wasn’t trying to kill my father,” I insist, as Joe drains his cup of coffee in a single gulp, then holds it out to the diner waitress to refill. “Well, I mean, I was, but not because I wanted him dead. Because it’s what he wanted.”
“And you know this how?”
I fumble in my coat pocket for the letter I signed for my father—but then realize it’s in my sweatshirt back home. “I have a note he signed, giving me the power to make medical decisions for him if he wasn’t capable of making them,” I say. “He told me if he was ever in a condition like this, he wouldn’t want to be kept alive.”
At this, Joe raises his brows. “When did he sign this note?”
“When I was fifteen,” I admit, and Joe buries his face in his hands.
“I’m going to work this out,” he promises, “but you have to tell me exactly what happened yesterday.”
“I already have—”
“Tell me again.”
I draw in my breath. I tell him about the meeting at Cara’s bedside, how the neurosurgeon and the ICU doctor both said my father wasn’t going to recover, and that we would have to make some choices about his health care. I tell him how Cara went ballistic, how the nurse shooed everyone out. “Cara said she couldn’t do this,” I explain. “She couldn’t keep listening to all these doctors telling her there wasn’t any hope. So I told her I’d take care of everything. And I did.”
“So she never actually said that she wanted you to terminate your father’s life support . . .”
“Of course not. Neither of us wanted it. Who would, when it means someone in your family is going to die? But Cara couldn’t face the fact that my father isn’t ever going to live again, either.” I shake my head. “There is no miracle around the corner, if we give it a week or a month or a year. It is what it is. And that sucks, but it means our options are sticking him in a nursing home forever or terminating life support, and either one of those choices is something Cara doesn’t want to make. I may not have been around much when she was growing up, but I’m still her big brother, and I’m supposed to be the one who protects her—from bullies, and from crappy boyfriends, and from horrible situations like this. That’s why I decided I’d make the call. That way, she didn’t have to carry around that little bit of guilt for the rest of her life.”
“But you would,” Joe says.
I look up at him. “Yeah.”
“So what did you do?”
“I talked to my father’s surgeon. I wanted to make sure that what he was really saying was that my dad wasn’t coming back. Ever. I told him I wanted to talk to the organ donation people.”
“Why?”
“My dad’s license says he wanted to be a donor,” I say. “So I met with them, and signed all the forms, and they scheduled everything to happen the next morning.”
“Why didn’t you go back and talk to Cara about this?”
“She was sedated. That’s how upset she got after the doctors told her there wasn’t a chance in hell for my father.” I shrug. “You can ask my mother if you don’t believe me.”
“Then what happened?”
“At nine, I was in my father’s hospital room with a couple of nurses and the hospital lawyer and the neurosurgeon, and the ICU doctor asked where Cara was. Next thing I know, she bursts into the room screaming that I’m trying to kill my father.” I pick up my fork, toying with it. “The hospital lawyer told everyone to step back, that this couldn’t continue as planned. But all I could think was, I can’t let this drag on anymore. It wasn’t going to get any easier, no matter how long we waited, whether or not Cara wanted to admit it. So I bent down and pulled the plug of the ventilator out of the wall.” I glance at Joe. “I bumped into the nurse when I reached for the plug, but I didn’t shove her.”
“The nurse is the least of your worries now,” Joe says. “Did you say anything when you pulled out the plug?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”
“Did you ever do anything that might have made people think you were angry at your father?”
I hesitate. “Not yesterday.”
He leans back in the booth. “Here’s the deal. The state has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you intended to kill your father, that you thought about it in advance, and that you wanted to do it with malice. You clearly wanted to hasten your father’s death. Premeditation counts, even if you thought about it only seconds before you acted. So the sticking point here—the one we can use to hang our hat on—is malice.”
“You know what’s malicious? Keeping someone alive with machines,” I argue. “How come it’s okay to prolong life artificially, but not to let someone die by getting rid of all those special measures?”
“I don’t know, Edward, but I don’t really have time to argue the philosophy of euthanasia right now,” Joe says. “What happened after you pulled the plug?”
“I got tackled by an orderly, and then security came and brought me to the lobby. The cops picked me up.”
I watch Joe take a pen from his pocket and scribble something on a napkin. “So here’s our spin: this isn’t murder, it’s mercy.”
“Exactly.”
“I’ll need you to get me that letter your father signed,” he says.
“It’s at the house.”
“I’ll pick it up later.”
“Why not now?” I ask.
“Because I’m going to talk to everyone else who was in that hospital room.” Joe slaps a twenty-dollar bill down on the table. “And you,” he says, “are going to the police station.”
The bail commissioner is the same one I met yesterday. “You know, Mr. Warren,” he says, “you don’t get frequent flyer miles for coming back.”
It is like a massive déjà vu, with another criminal complaint being handed to the commissioner, another detective with his arms crossed, and Joe by my side. The commissioner reads over the charge, but this time, I can tell, he’s surprised.
“Attempted murder is a very serious offense,” he says. “And it’s your second arrest in as many days. This one’s out of my comfort zone, Mr. Warren. I’m setting bail at five hundred thousand dollars.”
“What?” Joe explodes out of his seat. “That’s astronomical!”
“Take it up Monday with the judge,” the commissioner says.
Joe turns to the cop in the room. “Can I have a moment with my client?”
The bail commissioner and the detective finish up and leave us alone in the interrogation room. Joe shakes his head. I’m sure he’s wishing he wasn’t married to someone whose baggage includes a son like me, who can’t seem to stay out of trouble.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “When you go to superior court for your arraignment, the judge will never hold you to those bail guidelines.”
“But what do we do in the meantime?”
“We need fifty thousand dollars to post bail,” Joe explains, looking down at the floor. “And, Edward, I just don’t have that kind of money available.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It means,” he says, “that you have to spend the weekend in jail.”
If you had told me a week ago that I’d be in a New Hampshire county correctional facility, I would have told you that you were insane. In fact, I had believed that by now, my father would be on the mend, and I’d be on a plane back to my students in Chiang Mai.
Life has a way of kicking you in the teeth, though.
The correctional officer who’s processing my information types with one finger. You’d think that since this is his job, he’d be better at it by now. Or he would have taken a keyboarding course. He is so slow that I wonder if I will spend any time in a cell, or if I will still be sitting here when they come to get me for the arraignment.
“Empty your pockets,” he tells me.
I take out my wallet, which has thirty-three U.S. dollars in it and a smattering of baht, the key to my father’s house, and the rental car keys.
“Will I get this stuff back?” I ask.
“If you get released,” the officer says. “Otherwise, the money will be set up in an account for your pending trial.”
I cannot even let myself think about that. This is a misunderstanding, that’s all, and Monday Joe will make the judge see that.
But there are doubts that keep running across my mind like shadows in an alley. If this weren’t serious, why would the bail have been set so high? If this weren’t serious, why would the county attorney himself have been the one who called Joe to tell him I’d been indicted? If this weren’t serious, why would I have been driven to the county jail in the back of a sheriff’s car?
I am no expert on law, that’s for sure. But I know enough of the basics to understand that while the hospital might have filed the complaint that got me charged with assault, the state would have to be the one to file criminal charges for murder.
How could the county attorney even have heard so quickly about what happened?
Someone told him.
It would not have been the doctors, who—let’s face it—were crystal clear in explaining my father’s bleak prognosis. It would not have been the hospital lawyer, who (if all had gone according to plan) would welcome the turnover of the bed for a patient they could actually help. It wouldn’t have been the organ donation coordinator, because that would be counterproductive for her organization.
Which leaves one of the nurses, possibly. I’d met all sorts coming in and out of my father’s room. Some were funny, some were kind, some brought me snacks, and others brought me prayer cards. I guess it’s possible that someone conservative who believed in the sanctity of life at all costs might become a nurse to preserve that gift—and that terminating life support would morally upset her, even if it were part of her job description. Add to that Cara’s outburst and—
Suddenly, I trip over my own thoughts. Cara.
For all I know, she sold me out. After all, who’d pick an alleged murderer to be someone’s legal guardian?
I find myself shivering, even though the heat has been cranked up to approximately the eighth circle of Hell in here. I fold my arms, hoping I can hide it.
“You got a hearing problem?” the officer yells, standing over me. I realize I have not been listening to a thing he’s been saying.
“No. I’m sorry.”
“This way.”
He leads me into a tiny, airless room. “Get undressed,” he demands.
I don’t have to tell you the stereotypes about gay men and jail. But when he says that, I cannot pretend this isn’t real and happening anymore. I, who have never even returned a library book late, now have a criminal record. I am about to be strip-searched. I will be locked in a cage with someone who actually deserves to be here. “You mean, like, in front of you?”
“Oh!” the officer says, widening his eyes in mock horror. “I’m so sorry! You must have booked the private cabana with the beach view. Unfortunately, that package isn’t available right now.” He folds his arms. “I can, however, offer you this choice: You can take your clothes off, or I can take them off for you.”
Immediately my hands go to the belt of my pants. I fumble with the zipper and turn my back to the officer. I unzip my father’s jacket, unbutton my father’s shirt. Then my socks and finally my boxer briefs. He picks up each item of clothing and inspects it. “Face me and raise your arms,” the officer says, and I do, closing my eyes. I can feel his eyes on me, like a minesweep. He snaps on a pair of latex gloves and lifts up my testicles. “Turn around and bend over,” he instructs, and when I do I can feel him moving my legs apart, probing.
Once at a bar in Bangkok I met a man who was a prison guard. He’d kept us all in stitches with stories of inmates rubbing themselves with their own feces—which the guards called self-tanning—of one guy who dove from the top bunk into his toilet as if it were a swimming pool, of the booty they found during body cavity searches: shanks, soda cans, screwdrivers, pencils, keys, baggies of heroin, once even a live sparrow. “But the female inmates,” he had said. “They’re the ones you gotta watch. They could smuggle in a toaster.” At the time I’d thought it was hilarious.
I don’t, now.
The officer snaps off the gloves and tosses them in a trash can. Then he hands me a laundry sack. Inside are blue scrubs, some T-shirts, underwear, shower shoes, a towel. “This is a complimentary gift from the manager on duty,” he says. “If you have any questions, you can call the front desk.” He starts laughing, as if this is actually funny.
I am taken to a nurse, who checks my blood pressure and my eyes and ears and sticks a thermometer in my mouth. When she leans down to listen to my lungs with a stethoscope, I whisper in her ear. “There’s been a mistake,” I murmur.
“Beg pardon?”
I look around to make sure that the door is closed and that we are alone. “I don’t belong here.”
She pats my arm. “You and me both, sweetheart,” she says.
She turns me over to a different officer, who marches me into the belly of this jail. There are double gates at several steps, manned on both sides by people in control towers, who slide the doors open and closed in s
equence. When we step through one of the portals, the officer reaches into a bin and hands me another laundry sack. “Sheets, blankets, and a pillowcase,” he says. “Laundry’s every two weeks.”
“I’m only here for the weekend,” I explain.
He doesn’t even look at me. “Whatever you say.”
We are on a catwalk, with metal that clangs every time I put down my foot. The cells are on one side. Each has a bunk bed, a sink, a toilet, a television with a plastic casing so that you can see its guts. The inmates we pass are mostly asleep. The ones who are awake whistle or call out as I walk by.
Fresh meat, I hear.
Ooh, we got us a baby.
I find myself thinking of my father, instructing me as I approached the wolf enclosure for the first time: They can tell if your heart rate goes up, so don’t let them know you’re afraid. I keep my eyes straight ahead. My watch has been confiscated, but surely it’s already late afternoon; it is only a matter of hours before I can leave.
And again, I hear my father’s voice. It’s hard for me to describe what it was like, locking myself inside the enclosure that first time. At the beginning, all that existed was pure panic.
“Vern,” the officer says, and he stops in front of a cell that has one inmate inside. “Got a roommate for you. This is Edward.” He unlocks the door and waits for me to move peacefully inside.
I wonder if anyone has ever just absolutely refused. Hung back, clawed at the iron bars, hurled himself over the catwalk’s railing.
When the door is locked behind me again, I look at the man sitting on the bottom bunk. He has a buzz of red hair and a beard with food caught in it. One of his eyes bounces and veers to the left, as if it’s not tethered inside his head. He has tattoos on every inch of skin I can see—including his face—and his fists look like Christmas hams. “Fuck,” he says. “They brought me a faggot.”
I freeze, holding the bag with my sheets and towels. Which is all the confirmation he needs.
“You try to suck my cock in the middle of the night and I swear I’ll cut your balls off with a butter knife,” he says.
