Сэмуэль Шэм - Mount Misery

"What the fuck are you doing, Lloyal, having our subscribers talk to us?"

It was astonishing how easily such a solid-seeming system

could be shaken to its core. Seemingly as solid as a bank, it was every bit as flimsy.

We went after Schlomo too. We began to name his name. Wherever we went, whatever forum we found ourselves in- staff meetings or AA encounters or on night call on all the various wards of Misery, in talks with friends-we mentioned that we had heard on good evidence that Dr. Schlomo Dove had sexually abused at least two women patients. The women were about to bring charges. Naming his name made us realize how we doctors never did this, never revealed the secrets we knew about another doctor if it might harm his or her reputation. Now, to break the code of silence was scary, but thrilling.

"SCREWING PATIENTS IS legal," Gilda was saying, sitting with me and Hannah and Solini in my office in Toshiba.

"You gotta be joking," I said.

"I don't joke. It's not against the law."

"Of course it's against the law," I said. "Has to be."

"Sexual abuse of a patient by a doctor in this state is not against the law. It's not a crime. Same as in most states, in fact."

"You shittin' us, man?"

"I am not a man."

"You shittin' us?"

"Unless it's done under the influence of drugs. If you fuck them, it's not a crime. If you drug them up and then fuck them, then it's a crime. And Schlomo didn't drug them up."

No one said anything for a long time.

"So what do we do now?" Hannah asked.

Gilda went on to explain that Lily and Zoe could file a civil suit, for malpractice. They could also make a complaint to the State Medical Board to take away Schlomo's license to practice, and try to get him thrown out of the Freudian Institute, Misery, and the BMS. And, of course, longer term, the victims could try to influence the state legislature to pass a law to make sex with patients illegal. Minnesota had such a law. We asked Lily and Zoe what they wanted to do.

They wanted to do it all: sue for malpractice, file complaints with the state, the Freudians, Misery, and the BMS. They were excited about the idea of forming a nonprofit organization-

which Zoe named TALL: "Therapist Abuse Link Line"-to find other victims. They wanted to talk to the Globe, as well.

Gilda informed the state board that she would be filing a complaint with its Ethics Committee against Schlomo Dove. The board informed Gilda mat Schlomo Dove was a member of its Ethics Committee.

"Like unreal!" Solini said.

"Hardly," she said. "I've researched it. These pricks are often members of these so-called ethics committees. They get their kicks from it"

Gilda demanded Schlomo recuse himself from the deliberations. Schlomo, in a bravura performance at a semiprivate emergency hearing before the board, a hearing to decide about the issues of the public hearing, convinced a majority of the board members that he was being slurred maliciously and that to remove him from Ethics without due process would set a dangerous precedent for "the hundreds of upstanding physicians threatened by mentally disturbed patients," and might lead to his filing a suit of his own against the board for its proceeding without due process. The board, in secret deliberation, recommended another, strictly private hearing of all parties separately, which would lead to a fairly-strictly-private rehearing of the original semiprivate emergency hearing, to see if there were grounds for a public hearing to deal with the matter. Then the board lost the records.

"Even if we get rid of that little putz," Gilda said, "his cronies are on the Ethics Committee. The whole thing sucks."

She immediately prepared to file, on behalf of Lily Putnam, a suit for malpractice against Schlomo Dove.

The backlash from Schlomo was swift and vicious. He sent identical letters to Lily and Zoe:

You two women are not the victims, / am the victim. Your complaints are totally false and pretty pathetic. You are severely disturbed women diagnosed as severe borderlines (BPOs, 301.83, with HF-Hysterical Features). Your hospital records will embarrass you and your families in a court of law.

I am assured by my lawyer, Nash Michaels, that your testimonies are further contaminated by the fact that you obviously have had extensive talks together to

collaborate in fabricating your stories. Dr. Roy G. Basch's record is filled with complaints by nearly every division of Misery, from Chief von Nott all the way down to Buildings and Grounds and Nursing.

If you persist in this "Misery Conspiracy," Dr. Dove will file suit for defamation of character. The monies figure suggested by Schlomo Dove's counsel is $2.75 million. Each.

Grow up, get a life. Any further correspondence should be addressed to N. Michaels, Chief Counsel, Mount Misery.

More in anger than sadness, Schlomo Dove, M.D., F.R.A.P.S.

"Let me give it to you straight," Gilda said to Lily. "Juries respond to authority. He has all the authority of Mount Misery, the medical school, and Freud. It's your word against his. In court he will bring up every lurid detail anyone has ever written down about you, and his own lies about you, from his files. He will paint you as crazy, march out expert witnesses to testify that you are crazy and that part of your craziness is your being vindictive, and more experts to testify to his own integrity. This will give the jury the impression that you are at best an ax murderer and that he is at worst a hybrid of Simon Wiesenthal the Nazi hunter and Saint Francis of Assisi. The odds are stacked way against you. The humiliation you will experience, in front of your friends, family-children! — as you are sucked up and spit back out by the press and TV and film industries hungry for your life-the pressure of public degradation, will be unreal. And there is a risk of countersuit."

"So you're saying," Lily said, "that we don't have much of a case."

"Oh, you have a great case. You just don't have much of a chance."

"But the truth," Lily said, "is that he did abuse us both."

"Sweetheart, sweetheart," Gilda said, smiling and shaking her head. "The law is not about truth, but proof. That's what I was taught by the world-expert lawyers at Yale. That's why I bought my spread in Wyoming. Land and livestock are about truth."

A sense of gloom settled over us. We felt the weight of the

status quo press up against us, as a mountain might against a climber who is tiring, caught a little too high up in the unexpected cold of a spring afternoon.

"Is there anything that would strengthen our case?" I asked.

"Your chancesT I nodded. "Let me think." She reached into a pocket of her cowgirl vest and took out a Swiss army knife, one of the thick ones with blades enough to open a reluctant can or scale and fillet a tough trout. She flicked out a white plastic toothpick and picked away for a while, Malik-like. "Okay. Here's what will give you a chance. Find another victim. With impeccable credentials. Who has contemporaneous evidence-that is, notes which she, the victim, actually wrote down at the time of the abuse. She has to be totally willing to come forward."

"Cool," Solini said. "Anybody know another Schlomo victim?" No one did. "There's got to be like somebody."

"Perhaps if TALL gets the word out," Lily said, "one will come forward."

"If so," Gilda said, "don't talk to her. Send her to another lawyer." She paused. "And if you don't find anyone else, we drop the case?"

"Yes, there would be some relief hi that," Lily said. "We could all get on with just trying to heal."

WE TRIED TO find another victim, and could not. Days passed, then weeks, and we were stuck. Henry, Hannah, Gilda, and Malik would all be leaving in a few weeks. Momentum would slow, then stop. Time was running out.