Unclean Spirit (6 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

              Saul Feener rubbed his temples. He had one hell of a headache and his telephone conversation with Dr. Gomez hadn't done anything to diminish it. Although not especially close to the Forsythes, Saul had been distressed by Dr. Gomez' report. Saul Feener took his role as town physician very seriously and tended to question his abilities when his patients experienced difficulties. Had he missed something significant in his examination of Paul Forsythe? Had he acted quickly enough in getting Paul to El Paso? Had he overlooked some relevant piece of datum in the man's medical history? Saul hated his propensity for second-guessing himself but, try as he might, he was unable to break his compulsion for doing so.

              Saul had spent the first five years of his medical career in the Emergency Department of a very busy County Hospital in East Texas. What a zoo that place had been! The strangest assortment of persons and maladies had wandered in through the Emergency Room doors: The young gay man whose butt had apparently mistaken a coke bottle for a penis; the old bag lady who didn't seem to realize there were just so many times a person could attempt to push a prolapsed bladder back into its natural position before it was scraping the ground; the retarded wino who had no conception of the difference between sitting by the train tracks and sitting on
the train tracks! Then there had been Hillie Perkins. Hillie was an angelic six year-old whose flaxen hair, delicate facial features and radiant turquoise eyes set her apart from the usual ER fare. Hillie's physical presence was certainly commanding, but it paled in comparison to the natural charisma that the child possessed. What could possibly be wrong with this perfect little girl? Saul had wondered.  Hillie had been brought to the ER by her mother, a rather nondescript woman whose own appearance seemed to belie any genetic link to the child. There seemed to be a close bond between mother and daughter, however, that transcended physical attributes and Saul listened closely as Mrs. Perkins explained that Hillie had been complaining of a stomachache all day. 

              "Doctor, I know that kids get tummyaches all the time, but when it didn't let up I was concerned that it might be Hillie's appendix."

              Saul had been impressed by Mrs. Perkins' obvious intelligence and foresight. Not all parents would have made the connection between a stomachache and appendicitis.

              As it had turned out, Hillie's workup was completely negative and, aside from a little epigastric discomfort, the child seemed fine. Saul had seen no reason to admit Hillie to the hospital and had decided to discharge her with a tentative diagnosis of gastritis.

              After giving Mrs. Perkins all of the appropriate discharge instructions, Saul had felt Hillie's small hand take hold of his own as she said, "Thank you, Dr. Feener. I'm sure I'll be okay now."

              Almost eight months later, Saul was shocked to see Hillie Perkins' name in the Sunday newspaper. Even though Saul had treated hundreds of patients since Hillie, he had never forgotten the beautiful child and he felt heartsick as he read the brief newspaper article.

Authorities have disclosed that Mrs. Eleanor Perkins of 1406 Belcourt Drive has been charged in the death of her six year-old daughter, Hilda Leanne. The child died thirteen hours after her admission to Payne Memorial Hospital. Autopsy results, as yet unconfirmed, suggest that Hilda Leanne had ingested a substantial amount of strychnine. The District Attorney's Office has consulted Dr. Louise Rice, a Houston psychiatrist, to examine Mrs. Perkins. Although Dr. Rice has declined to comment on the case, sources in the D.A.'s office say that Dr. Rice is an expert on a condition known as Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, a little known disorder in which a parent intentionally causes the illness of his or her child. The parent's intent is not to kill child, although death is sometimes the end result of the parent's actions. On the contrary, the child's illness is what allows the parent to play the role of martyr, thereby garnering the attention and admiration of others.

              Munchausen's, Saul vaguely recalled hearing something about it in medical school. Sweet Jesus, he'd thought, my stupidity caused that child's death!

              It had been ten years since Saul had treated Hillie Perkins, and he was still doing penance for his perceived role in her death. Nothing anyone had ever said had convinced Saul that he had not missed some telltale clue of Munchausen's in Eleanor Perkins' behavior and so he constantly endeavored to ensure that he would never again make the same mistake. 

              "DOCTOR, CHARLIE TOOBIN'S HERE TO SEE YOU."

              Saul's head nearly split open. Wanda was a good woman and a hard worker but Saul simply could not break her of her habit of hollering into the intercom.

              "Okay, Wanda, bring him on back."

              "You say this popped-up instantaneously?"

              "Ain't it the damnedest thing, Doc? I figur' the skeeter what bit me must be the size of an armadillo!"

              Saul was not at all sure that the abscess on Charlie's nose had resulted from a mosquito bite.

              "Listen, Charlie, I'm going to have to open that thing up and have a sample of its contents analyzed."

              "Yer gonna have to do what?! Na, I don't think so, Doc."

              "Charlie, I can't treat you properly unless I know exactly what it is we're dealing with. All I need to do is stick a needle in, withdraw some fluid, then allow the absc...boil to drain. I doubt that it will hurt you at all; in fact, the pain you're experiencing now will probably subside once the pressure has been relieved."

              “I donn
o
”  Charlie didn't sound convinced.

              "All right, here's the deal. I'll spray some anesthetic on the area first. It'll feel cold and numb your nose for awhile."

              "Shit! Can't we just wait fer the fucker to start drainin' on its own?"

              "Charlie..."

              Charlie finally gave in.

              "Aw, hell, let's get it over with! But I'm warnin' ya, Doc, first twinge of pain, I'm haulin' ass outta here!"

              Twenty minutes later, Charlie was still sitting in the examination room. Saul had drained the abscess and dressed it with a topical antibiotic. The stench from the fluid that had oozed from the top of Charlie's nose had caused both men to gag and Saul was fearful of what the lab results would show. 

              "Charlie, it's going to take at least twenty-four hours to get a preliminary report back on that fluid. In the meantime, I want to get you started on an antibiotic. I'll need to give you a dose now, through one of the veins in your arm, and then again later this evening."

              "Aw, shit, not another needle!"

              It had been a busy day for Saul and he was exhausted. He had already made four house calls and the Forsythe place was, thankfully, his last stop. Saul planned to give Charlie his second dose of antibiotic and then head home for the night. 

              Saul stepped up on the Forsythe's front porch and reached out to ring the doorbell; a tiny voice, however, stopped him dead in his tracks.

              "I don't like being dead, Dr. Feener."

              Saul Feener turned quickly to his right and found himself face-to-face with the floating visage of Hillie Perkins.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Third Night

              Night had turned to day and then to night again as Tamara and Starr took turns sitting with Paul. Starr finally left to feed Penelope and get cleaned up prior to meeting Patsy and Marybeth at the airport.

              As her husband slept, Tamara studied his face. God, she thought, I love this man so much.              The seedling values that the Forsythes cultivated in the sixties had ripened over the years to become the nourishment for their marriage. Because of their shared belief in love, commitment, passion, and compassion, their respect for one another had deepened with each passing year. Paul and Tamara were, however, only human and consequently not immune to the disagreements, frustrations, and dissatisfactions that crop up in any relationship. In point of fact, one particular dispute had almost been the couple's undoing.  Paul was a very tolerant man who had always believed that diverse ideologies and philosophies possess varying degrees of merit and, as a result, deserve investigation rather than condemnation. There was, however, one glaring exception to his tolerant and inquisitive nature--organized religion and its reliance on an omniscient and omnipotent deity. In short, despite the fact that he lived his life according to the Golden Rule, Paul Forsythe was a devout atheist. Paul and Tamara had butted heads on the God-issue on more than one occasion, but it wasn't until Starr turned fifteen that their conflicting views actually threatened the integrity of the marriage.

              Starr, like so many other girls her age, was dealing with the essential developmental task inherent to adolescence--the realization of a personal identity. In her quest to find her place in the world, Starr had decided that she must first ascertain the reason for and meaning of her existence. She determined that the best place to search out such information would be through religious channels.

              When Starr told her parents that she would be attending services at a nearby Episcopalian church, Paul had hit the roof. Starr had never seen her father so unreasonable and she was disappointed in his obstinate refusal to see things her way. Paul had never before put limits on Starr's search for knowledge and understanding, so, she had wondered, why was he doing so now? Starr was beginning to see why her friends bitched about their parents all the time.

              Tamara was sickened by the discord between Paul and Starr and, quite uncharacteristically for her, entered into the conflict by siding with Starr. It was one thing for Paul to be adamant in his personal beliefs; it was quite another for him to consign his biases to his daughter. Tamara and Paul had always collaborated on the substantive aspects of Starr's upbringing, but Paul's inflexibility in this matter had left no room for discussion. Tamara had never understood or agreed with Paul's closed-mindedness when it came to the subject of theism and if he was unwilling to defend his position, she was unwilling to support it. Starr attended church services; Tamara supported her decision to do so; Paul felt betrayed by his daughter and his wife. 

              Starr felt responsible when the emotional temperature in the Forsythe home dropped from warm and loving to cool and distant. Screw religion, she'd thought, it's not worth busting up my family. Starr figured that things at home would return to normal once she had stopped going to church, but she was wrong. Tamara and Paul continued with their activities of daily living, but it was obvious that things had changed between them. It was as though the platinum cord of love and respect that had always bound them together had been stretched almost beyond its limits. Starr, employing a classic adolescent maneuver, took control of the situation by running away from home The note she'd left for her parents read:

Dear Mom and Dad--I love you more than anything and it breaks my heart to think that because of me you don't love each other anymore. I don't want to leave home but maybe, without me around, you will be able to get back to normal. I'll be okay, I promise.                              

Love, Starr

              Paul and Tamara were incredulous, scared, heartbroken, and guilt-ridden. They looked everywhere for their daughter but, despite the assistance of neighbors, friends, and the police, Starr was not to be found. And then, three days after she had gone missing, Starr returned home. The first words out of her mouth had been, "I'm sorry, Dad, I didn't know about the snakes and the crosses; I saw them last night and I knew that I had to come back home right away."

              Tamara, although fearful that Starr was delusional as a result of being drugged and/or traumatized, knew better than to automatically attribute her daughter's comment to physiological causes. And, when she noted Paul's look of astonished recognition, she knew that Starr had "seen" something significant.

              Paul pulled his daughter and wife close to him and hugged them tightly. Tamara felt warm tears flow from her eyes as she realized that they were a family once again. When Paul finally pulled reluctantly away from Starr and Tamara, he'd said, "I have something to tell you that I should have come clean about a long time ago."

              And so, he'd began...

              "I had an older brother, Matthew, whom I never told you about. I don't know why I felt I had to keep Matt such a secret--maybe because if I denied his existence I could also deny my pain--I don't know. At any rate, Matt was my idol and I loved him dearly.

              "Mom and Dad were staunch Roman Catholics whose prayers were seemingly answered when Matt affirmed his complete devotion to God by studying for the priesthood. I was sad when Matt left for seminary school but I was also very proud of him. I was an impressionable fourteen year-old at the time and was in awe of Matt's dedication, sensitivity, introspection, and sense of purpose.

              "For the first six months he was away, Matt called home weekly and sent wonderfully descriptive letters of his life as a seminarian. He sounded happy and excited about his theological instruction and I found myself thinking that I would one day follow in his footsteps.

              "But then, the calls home became less frequent and the few letters we received from Matt were disappointingly terse and devoid of emotion. At first, Mom and Dad tried to convince me, and themselves, that the demanding nature of his studies must be responsible for the scarcity of Matt's communication with us. As time passed, however, we realized that we were just fooling ourselves and so we decided to pay Matt a visit.

              "I was shocked by Matt's appearance; he had lost a considerable amount of weight and his once tanned complexion had turned sallow and lackluster. My folks insisted on taking Matt to see a doctor but he refused, telling them that he was finally recuperating from an especially virulent flu that the seminary physician had been treating. Mom and Dad seemed to buy that explanation, but I wasn't so sure that the flu was responsible for what was going on with my brother.

              "When Matt and I finally had some time alone, I begged him to tell me the truth. I could sense that Matt wanted to tell me something, but he couldn't.

              "The day we left for home, Matt pressed a note into my hand and told me to read it later, in the privacy of my room. Of course, I couldn't wait that long, so I opened the note in the car. 'Genesis 3:1' was all that was written on the small piece of paper.

              "As soon as we got home, I took the Bible to my room and read the designated passage:’...the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made...’

              “I had absolutely no idea what Matt was trying to tell me and I pondered over the verse for days. I was still trying to deduce its meaning when we received notification that Matt was dead.

              "Matt had committed suicide; of that there was no question. Two significant items had been found with his body: An ornate jewel-encrusted crucifix and a lengthy suicide note. I kept a copy of the note."

              Paul paused in the telling of his story long enough to retrieve the copy of which he spoke. Tamara and Starr knew better than to interrupt Paul's thoughts and emotions with either words or actions, despite their need to comfort him. The tears that had been welling up in Paul's eyes finally escaped as he read from a worn sheet of paper...

To Mom and Dad: Words can't possibly convey to you the deep sorrow I feel for the pain that this, my final action, will cause you. Please know that I take full responsibility for the choice I have made; nothing you ever did or didn't do has influenced my decision to end my life. I love you, perhaps more in this moment than ever before.

              To Father Timothy: I will die with your treasured crucifix in my hand in order that you will always be reminded of how
your
betrayal of Christ lead to my passage from life and into, most certainly, eternal damnation. Your rape of my body was tantamount to a rape of my soul.

              To Paulie: You are stronger than I could ever have hoped to be; you will get through this, believe me. Remember Genesis 3:1? Beware of serpents, my dear brother, they exist to corrupt...

              Tamara, whose hand had covered her mouth as Paul read the note, felt tears seep between her fingers. How Paul had been able to remain silent about his brother all these years was beyond her. 

              Paul continued...

              "The Father Timothy of whom Matt spoke denied Matt's written allegation of rape, but the autopsy did conclude that 'the possibility of anal intercourse could not be ruled out'. Since there was no way of proving that the priest had molested Matt, the official police investigation was closed and Timothy's fate was left in the hands of the Church.

              "My parents, God-fearing Catholics that they were, didn't pursue the issue; their absolute belief in their faith, coupled with their overwhelming grief, thwarted any further action. I didn't understand why they wouldn't make Timothy pay for what he had done to Matt--still don't--and my anger toward them began to chip away at my love for them.

              "I never knew what happened to Timothy--God forbid the Catholic Church should acknowledge, much less publicize, the sexual deviants within its ranks. That man robbed me of a brother, eroded my respect for my parents, and destroyed my faith in a fair and loving God--not a day passes that I don't condemn his soul to whatever hell he believes in.”

              Paul sat in silence, as did they all. It was Starr who finally spoke. "The snakes and the crosses brought me home, Dad."

              "Yes, baby, they took Matt away but they brought you safely back to your Mom and me." 

              As Tamara watched over Paul while he slept, she was struck by the realization that something in Paul's appearance had changed. It was nothing that anyone else would probably have noticed, but there was a certain set to Paul's features that, for some unknown reason, put Tamara in mind of snakes and crosses.