Q. How did Dr. Everett react to your explanations?
A. He asked me if I didn’t think it unnatural for the driver to have refused treatment for those glass lacerations. Whether I thought it possible that these weren’t glass lacerations, that there was another cause for his bleeding. “You’d better tell me what you mean,” I said. “All right, I will,” he told me. “I think the driver refused treatment because somebody bit him on the hand. I think Tony Polanski bit him.”
Q. Could this conceivably occur as a reflex action in such a situation, Doctor?
A. It could, it could indeed. An animal, injured and in pain, will instinctively bite at the nearest object, which may be the hand of a rescuer. I immediately reminded Dr. Everett of this very example. “Then why didn’t the driver mention this when he made his report?” Charlie said. “And what about the brake handle that came off the wheelchair. I took some blood samples off it too, from both ends. One end had Polanski’s blood type, the other was different. But it matched the foreign blood type from the lips and under the fingernails.” Well, it seemed to me that there was a perfectly obvious explanation for this, too. If the brake handle presumably came off and inflicted the head wound Charlie was talking about, that accounted for the presence of Polanski’s blood on one end. And if the driver noticed it lying there in the street beside Polanski’s body he might have picked it up on impulse, perhaps to identify this piece of metal for what it was. Holding it in his lacerated hand would result in his leaving blood stains. As I say, this seemed a reasonable enough possibility. And that’s what I told Dr. Everett.
Q. Did he agree with your conclusions?
A. No, he did not. He kept repeating himself. The fact that the body had been released disturbed him. “If it hadn’t been cleaned up and embalmed, we could make a further examination,” he said. “You could see for yourself.” Finally I lost patience with Charlie, I asked him what he was suggesting. “I don’t know,” he said. Quite honestly I don’t believe he did. He was exceedingly overwrought. “Then I’ll tell you,” I said. “You’re suggesting that Anton Polanski was murdered.” He looked at me for quite a while. “I suppose I am,” he said finally. “Supposing isn’t good enough,” I told him. I was quite angry then. “If you’re going to sit here in my house and tell me that boy was killed deliberately, you damn better well have more on your mind than ‘I suppose so.’ ” I asked him who he was accusing. Was it Hollis Todd?
Q. What did he say?
A. All he said was, “Sweet Jesus.” And he stared at me and shook his head. “I wasn’t accusing Hollis Todd of murder,” he told me. “You said it first.” I spoke quite harshly then. I thought it was justified. I told him I didn’t know what was wrong between him and his wife, but it obviously was having a serious effect. If he was reaching a stage where he was beginning to construct paranoid systems he was a possible candidate for Neuropsychiatric. Charlie knew I was angry but he also realized my personal concern for his welfare. We had been very close. He had always respected me, trusted my judgment, and now he was visibly shaken. “Do you want me to forget I ever said anything?” he asked. I told him that we could neither of us just “forget.” I told him he was going to have to work this situation out by himself. In my opinion he was in no condition to operate, so he was free to pursue whatever research he liked on the matter, on two provisions. One, Hollis Todd’s recovery was to be, as a doctor, his first consideration. Two, under no conditions was he to divulge his rather vaporous suspicions to any official authorities. If he was right, of course, I wanted to know it. But if he was wrong, and I was convinced that he was, we had everything to lose. I was not talking about incurring the wrath of Hollis Todd. I was not talking about involving the hospital in an unpleasant situation. I was talking about blighting the whole future of transplant surgery.
Q. What was Dr. Everett’s reaction to that?
A. He knew the stakes. He agreed.
Continued Extract From the Statement of Charles Everett, M.D.
Q. Dr. Everett, how did you feel after you left Dr. Geiger’s house?
A. Like a damned fool. Tilting at windmills. I had to admit the logic of his argument. His interpretation of my findings seemed entirely plausible. But I still kept on seeing those windmills.
Q. What did you do?
A. I got in my car and drove to the hill at the top of Roman Street. It must have been after midnight. I parked the car and stood at the top of the hill. It was only a couple of blocks from Tony Polanski’s house. You know the neighborhood. Blue collar, well kept, older homes and small bungalows. I looked down towards Modeno Avenue below. I never knew the hill was so steep. A wheelchair, if it goes out of control, well, I guess at the bottom of the hill it would be hitting thirty-five, forty miles an hour.
Q. What did you do then?
A. I walked to Polanski’s house. The lights were on inside and I saw two women go in. They were carrying covered dishes, food, I suppose. Another woman came out and got into her car. She was crying. I went up to the porch. They were having a rosary inside. I could hear the priest reciting the five Sorrowful Mysteries. I didn’t go in, just stayed on the porch. Then this man, this elderly man, came out onto the porch. He noticed me standing in the shadows and he asked me what the hell I was doing there. That’s exactly what he said. He was built like a hydrant. He said he was sick and tired of the damn reporters sniffing around and why didn’t they let the dead be. I told him I wasn’t a reporter and he asked if I was a friend of Tony’s. I told him yes. I guess by this time I was a friend. They had one of those veranda swings on the porch and we sat down on it and he offered me a drink. “Too damn much crying in there,” he said. “Too damn many women.” He said his wife wouldn’t let him take a drink inside, so that’s why he came out on the porch. He had a bottle, a pint bottle of whisky, and we just sat there in the shadows, listening. His name was Vacek. Tadeuz Vacek.
Q. Did you identify yourself to him?
A. Not by name. I was a friend of Tony’s and that was good enough for him. He wasn’t wasting any time with the bottle, and the liquor started to hit him almost immediately. He began to talk, he wanted to talk. He was a neighbor, he’d known Tony Polanski ever since he was a kid, and he told me something about that. And then he said something else, something that really interested me. He said he was probably the last person to see Tony Polanski alive, before the accident. I asked him if he could remember and he said sure. He speaks in a heavy accent, but he speaks slowly so you can understand him.
Extract From the Statement of Tadeuz Vacek
My name is Tadeuz Vacek and Tony Polanski, he’s my friend. I tell you what I tell the doctor that night. I don’t know he’s doctor or maybe I don’t say this to him. But he tells me I should tell you, so I tell. Tony I know all his life. My wife, me, we live across street, three doors down, by the hill. Tony, after he gets sick, well, he don’t change much. Every night, eleven o’clock, you can set your watch by it, he comes out on his front porch. You know, like some people take a little walk before go to bed, well, Tony, he goes for a ride in that . . . in that thing. Up the street, by my house, to the top of the hill. At bottom of the hill, by Roman Street, is place called Pat’s. Pat’s Bar, maybe a block south there on Roman. Well, Tony, he go there every night, eleven o’clock, for a beer. One, two beers, he don’t drink much but every night he likes a beer. Somebody always give him ride back up the hill. Couple times Tony, he always a wild kid, he go down the hill full speed on that thing. He say okay, don’t worry, brake work good, no sweat. His mother, she don’t like for him to do this. She say stop, so Tony stop. After that he just take it easy, go down slow. So this night Tony go out. I watch the television in front room but I see him go by. God damn commercial come on, I don’t look. I see Tony go to top of hill and stop. He talk to lady there. No lady I ever see. Just lady. And I don’t see her good because street light is way off to other side. Tony, he’s always got plenty lady-friends, never one girl he goes with, lots of ladies even after he get sic
k, so I don’t be surprise to see this. Right now, god damn television go on blink, something happen to picture, one hell of a noise. I go over to fix, turn knobs. Then I come back, look out window again. Nobody on top of hill now. No Tony. No lady. Gone. So I watch television some more.
Continued Excerpt From the Diary of Natalie Everett
Under Dateline October 14
About midnight last night I went to bed, but I didn’t sleep. I kept thinking about Charlie, about the way things were with the two of us. Not just the present situation, but how it started. My fault, his fault, that kind of thing. The same old routine, I’ve been over it a hundred times, God knows, the same questions. When did it change, why did it change? It used to be so good, so perfect.
That’s what I keep telling myself, and this time wasn’t any different. Except that I started wondering—just what did I mean by “it”? Our relationship? But our relationship, any close male-female relationship, isn’t something you can squeeze together into one word, certainly not into a nothing word like “it.” And just what kind of relationship did Charlie and I have?
Sex, of course. At the beginning it was mostly all sex. If I’m honest I’ve got to admit that to myself; right from our first date I wanted to go to bed with Charlie. And I know he felt the same way about me, because later, that time after we did go to bed, he told me so. And I believed him. That’s when he said maybe we’d better break it off right then and there, stop seeing each other, because it wouldn’t be fair. He still had a year to go to finish medical school, and he was working five nights a week at that restaurant in Westwood because he needed the money to pay for his tuition. Then he’d have two more years interning and if he went into surgery or even got started in his own practice, he’d have to figure on another two years at least before he could make enough to even think about marriage.
I told him I didn’t care, we didn’t have to get married, all this nonsense about being fair went out with the horse and buggy.
That was the first time I ever saw Charlie get angry, really angry. For a minute I thought he was going to hit me. “All right,” he said. “Maybe I’m the horse and buggy type. Maybe that’s what I’ll be, a horse and buggy doctor. But don’t you see, it means something to me, I’m not going to quit now. And I’m not going to spend the next five years of my life sneaking in and out of motel rooms, either. Or running up to your apartment to grab a quickie. That’s not what I want from you, that’s not the way I feel about you. Look, you’re twenty-one and already you’ve got a responsible job, you’re going places. Somewhere along the line you’re bound to meet someone else and then you’ll be sorry you ever got involved. You’ve got to look at this thing objectively, and so do I. Five years is one hell of a long time in both our lives. And I can’t ask you to wait.”
I told him I didn’t like this sneaking around bit either, and I certainly had no intention of waiting any five years. But we wouldn’t have to because he was right—I did have a responsible job, I was earning good money, enough so that we could get married tomorrow.
That’s when we had our first argument. Funny thing, I hadn’t really thought about it as an argument before but that’s what it was, a real quarrel. No, he couldn’t think of such a thing, out of the question, he wasn’t going to let anyone else support him, he couldn’t have that kind of relationship with a woman and certainly not with a woman he loved.
None of it made any sense to me, it was just pride, pride and ego, and I told him so. I said the only important part was that he loved me. And I loved him, and here was a perfectly reasonable solution to a problem that was purely a financial one. Why couldn’t he let me provide the income until he got started, thousands of other couples did the same thing nowadays; and when he began to earn he could pay me back if that would make him feel any better. Well, I could tell he wasn’t buying this; I said everything I could think of to persuade him and it was like talking to a stone wall. And then I played him a dirty trick. I took him to bed with me again.
That wasn’t dirty, the bed part itself, but my motives were. I wanted him to say yes and I knew this was the way to make him say it. And he did.
I think right now is the first time I’ve ever understood what happened. It was starting then and I didn’t know it. I won the first argument and that was my first mistake. Because even if it was Charlie’s pride and ego talking, he was telling the truth. Charlie wasn’t, isn’t the kind of man who can accept what he had to accept for five years after we got married. Maybe that’s wrong, I happen to think it’s wrong, but there it is. I made him feel inadequate. Emasculated. That’s the way Dr. Gradwell would put it, wouldn’t you, Dr. Gradwell? And after you’ve finished all your labeling, would you kindly do me one more favor and drop dead?
I didn’t do any labeling, I didn’t even know what was going on. I thought we were happy, I know I was happy, and Charlie never said a word to make me think otherwise, not once over all those five years. But it must have been eating away at him inside, even though he never showed it the way he shows it now. Now I can tell when he’s bugged, that’s because he doesn’t try so hard to hide it anymore.
When did that start, the not-hiding part? After he began at Temple, I guess, though I can’t say I really noticed the real change until he went to General. Working with Geiger did something to him. It’s not just the crazy hours and the tension—Charlie loves surgery and what he’s doing is something he’s always wanted, something really important and worthwhile. And that’s it, I suppose. Now he has identity, status, all those convenient little labels I learned about from dear Dr. Gradwell, and the only thing that spoils it for him is remembering he didn’t do it all by himself, that I helped him.
God that sounds petty Natalie, you know it’s not as simple as that, not as stupid. But the resentment must have been building up inside him all this time, and it had to come out. I should have let him pay me that money back when he offered to. Then perhaps he wouldn’t have been paying me back in a different way ever since.
Maybe I’m making a mountain out of a molehill. Or out of hundreds of molehills, all the little things that kept piling up to come between us.
One big thing, of course. Ever since Charlie got on his feet he’s been after me about quitting my job. Even before that I know he resented it—not just the idea of my working, but the job itself. All right, being a sound engineer in a recording studio isn’t the most feminine occupation in the world, but I’m good at it. Damned good. I suppose in my own way I’ve gotten as much satisfaction from cutting records as Charlie does from cutting patients. How corny can you get, but it’s the truth. Of course the hours are bad, all these night sessions, but half the time Charlie is working nights anyway and it gives me something to do besides just sit around the apartment. Why don’t we buy a house, Charlie said. If you quit at the studio we could have a real home, there’d be plenty for you to do.
It isn’t as if Charlie and I ever had any open battles; he’s not the type, he represses his emotions. Maybe it would have been better if we did, maybe if we’d had a big fight it might have ended up in some kind of lasting peace. As it is, all we’ve had going between us is a sort of cold war.
So when he started doing these transplant surgeries with Geiger he got more and more wrapped up in work, and little by little he was spending more and more time at the hospital. For a while there I was knocking myself out trying to work around my schedule so I’d be home when he got there, have meals ready for him. But when he did come in usually he was too tired to talk, too tired to go out anywhere, and there was always the damned telephone. Then he started this business of sleeping over at the hospital and he asked did I mind and I said no, go ahead, maybe it’s better for both of us. I hated myself for saying it, it wasn’t true, but that’s the way it came out. And he said okay, if that’s the way you want it, and there it was.
That’s when I started with Dr. Gradwell, because I knew a lot of this was my fault, there was something wrong with me and maybe I could work it out. But I
couldn’t talk to Gradwell, not when it came to opening up with him, getting down to the real nitty-gritty. I think now that the reason was he reminded me too much of Charlie. Not the way he used to be when we first met but the way he was now, a doctor, everything very professional, very cold.
Now I want to stop all this rambling and just put down what happened when Charlie came back.
Two A.M. and I still wasn’t asleep, not with all this going through my head. I heard the front door open and I switched on the light, but before I had a chance to get up and put my robe on Charlie walked into the bedroom. He sat down on the side of the bed. He looked very tired but he didn’t seem quite so upset anymore—as if whatever it was that was bugging him, he’d made up his mind how to handle it. I didn’t say hello, how are you, where have you been. I just waited for him to talk, and he did.
He said he’d been doing a lot of thinking. And if I had been contemplating a divorce, now was the time to get it. Because there was a strong probability that in a very short time he was going to be a medical and social outcast.