Living and Dying in Brick City (9 page)

And I wasn’t just talking about facial scars.

As I prepared to leave the room, I jotted down my number at the hospital and handed it to her. “If you ever need help or just want to talk, give me a call,” I told her.

Debra thanked me, but I knew she would never call. Moms had never called anyone for help either. She always figured she could handle my father. I guess it’s fortunate that the worst damage they ever caused each other were bruises and a few nasty cuts. But I spent an inordinate amount of my childhood worrying that one of them would wind up in a cemetery and the other in jail for murder. I prayed Debra’s case wouldn’t end that way. One in five domestic abuse cases does, I knew, and usually the victim is the one killed. All I was absolutely sure of was this: Debra’s husband would beat her again.

Debra was still on my mind when I headed home early the next morning after my twelve-hour shift. I lay awake for hours, as I often did, wrestling with what I could have said or should have done differently. I knew it in my heart:
I shouldn’t have let her go
.

My mind wound back to Brenda and Dave. For the longest time after Brenda went to jail, I wondered what had gone so wrong between the two of them that final time. Why couldn’t they have just stayed away from each other? I’d wondered the same about my
parents. In some ways it was a relief when my father finally left for good when I was twelve. At least the fights stopped.

It didn’t occur to me till much later, though, what I’d missed by rarely seeing happily married couples. I can’t recall seeing, on a regular basis, any examples of romantic love that didn’t involve a great deal of suffering and pain. Even the few couples I knew who had somehow managed to stay together seemed more committed to some ideal of long-suffering than to each other’s happiness; whatever joy they might have once found together seemed long gone. The kind of love and relationships I saw in the movies and on
The Cosby Show
seemed about as fake and unattainable to me as the middle-class lives of the characters.
Yeah, right
, I thought to myself after yet another episode of my favorite TV show wrapped up neatly with Clair and Heathcliff Huxtable—a lawyer and a doctor—still loving each other after whatever challenge they’d faced.
Yeah, right
, I thought again, secretly wishing I was one of those lucky children.

But even though I desired the success, status, and peaceful life of the Huxtables, I could hardly imagine that life. I must have been a teenager when I first told myself that I would never go through the hell of marriage or put anyone else through it. I’d felt the racing heart, sweaty hands, shot-to-the-loins kind of feelings. That wasn’t hard to understand. It was what came next that puzzled me. What was a couple to do once the excitement of just being together wore off? How were two individuals supposed to negotiate the differences that inevitably became apparent? How could each one maintain his or her individuality without the other feeling threatened? I had no blueprint for any of it. I’ve always wanted to be good at everything I did, even when I was hustling. And nothing in my experience had me believing it was possible to have a truly happy marriage—one that was still happy when the door shut to the outside world.

I was in college the first time I told a girl “I love you” and really believed I meant it. But even then, I wasn’t comfortable opening my heart completely—it seemed to give her too much power. The more I opened up my life to her, the more vulnerable I felt. A real man just didn’t do that, or so I thought. What if she hurt me? Would I become the kind of coward who needed to beat his woman into submission to feel powerful? This question stayed in the back of my mind, and I challenged myself to learn from what I’d seen. I had no vision of the kind of man I wanted to be; I just knew I didn’t want to repeat the behavior I had witnessed. I promised myself from the time I started dating that I would never hit a woman. Somehow, I would be better, stronger, I told myself.

But getting there took time. It took unlearning the lessons of my childhood.

In high school, I sometimes behaved badly, treating girls like they were as dispensable as clothes, trying different ones, leaving behind a trail of tears and heartbreak. That had me feeling empty, but it seemed better than the alternative. At least that way, I thought foolishly, I maintained my manhood. I was in control.

In my senior year of college, though, I fell hard.

I had been accepted into a new program for minority students, Access-Med, a joint venture between Rutgers University and the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. The program offered the chance for me to get some of my first-year medical school courses out of the way by taking them in my senior year of college. That would ensure a lighter load in my first year of medical school—an intensive period when many overwhelmed students drop out. It also would guarantee acceptance (depending, of course, on my academic performance) into Robert Wood Johnson without having to take the MCAT, the standardized test usually required to enter medical school. I transferred from Seton Hall University to Rutgers to complete my senior year of college and to participate in
the program. There I met my girl in the cafeteria of the university’s Livingston campus. When I first saw her, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was fine—petite with pecan-colored skin and narrow deep brown eyes. The two of us clicked immediately and quickly became inseparable as a couple. She was different from the fast party girls I often met. She was sweet and nurturing but not the least bit boring. She knew how to have a good time at a party, but she was just as comfortable staying at home. She was confident and didn’t waver on the things in life she wanted. I loved that about her, but after about two years of dating, her decisiveness—or she might say, my indecisiveness—began to cause problems for us. She wanted to settle down and get married. I wasn’t ready. Aside from my ambivalence about marriage, I was in my second year of medical school, and my studies were demanding more of my time. It seemed to her that I was pulling away. She wasn’t going to compete with my career for my attention, she said. She called things off.

On impulse one Friday night, I decided I needed to see her—right then. It had been about a week since we broke up, and I was missing her badly. Maybe we could talk and work things out, I reasoned. I didn’t want to give her a chance to say no, so I showed up at her dorm room unannounced. I knew her roommate usually went home on weekends, so my girl had the place all to herself. The main doors to the dorm stayed locked at night, but I was certain I could get inside the way I had many times before when I visited her after hours: I would wait around outside and follow one of the residents in. My plan worked. I dashed up the stairs to her second-floor room and instinctively turned the doorknob. It wasn’t locked, which meant she was probably in the shower. I had warned her many times about leaving the door unlocked, even while she walked down the hall to the bathroom. I stepped inside her room to wait and surprise her. The anticipation of that sweet moment gave me a rush. She would run into my arms, wearing nothing but
her robe, smelling fresh with the light, flowery scent of her favorite body wash. We’d kiss, tell each other how lonely we’d been, and she’d ask me to spend the night with her.

Her room was dark, but not completely. And what I made out startled me. Someone—not her, the body frame was too large—was asleep in her bed, and the covers were pulled over the mystery person’s face. My eyes turned to a pair of worn boots and denim jeans lying on the floor beside the bed. Damn, it was a dude. She’d already invited another man into her bed? My heart and mind quickly filled with rage. What should I do? Kick him out that moment? Wait and confront her? I felt the urge to rush down the hall, grab her out of the shower, and demand some answers.

As I stood there quietly for a moment, still in shock, contemplating my next move, I felt the veins pulse in my head. I exited the room as quietly as I had entered it and squatted around the corner. I had a full view of her door, but she wouldn’t see me. The shower in the community bathroom stopped, and I knew she was just moments from walking out.

My head hurt, and the rage inside me only grew as I saw her, as beautiful as ever, strolling down the hallway in her robe and slippers. She was supposed to be as heartsick as I was over our breakup, unable to eat or sleep. What was she planning to do when she got to the room? Did she have anything on under that robe? Why were his jeans off? Was she going to make love to him? Had they made love already? It had been only a week since we’d ended things. One week! We were in love. She had told me she loved me. And I loved her. Had she played me? The beast inside me was rattling the cage. And I felt the urge to punish her, hurt her the way I was hurting.

So, this is how it happens
, I thought, feeling justified in my fury.
This is how it all goes down
. Before I could figure out what to do or say, she was entering her room. I rushed from my hiding place, grabbed the door before she could close it behind her, and followed
her inside. Startled at the sight of me, she jumped back and ran to her roommate’s side of the room. I saw terror in her eyes, but I wanted her to be afraid, to hurt, and to feel my hurt. She deserved whatever happened for hurting me this way. I walked over to her bed and snatched the covers off the guy. He had three seconds to get his stuff, or it was going to be down, I warned. Jeans and boots in hand, he fled the room. The coward didn’t even have the guts to stick around, I taunted. As I walked toward her, I noticed she was crying. I saw a reflection of myself in her frightened eyes. It unnerved me. What was I doing? But the beast wouldn’t let me back down.
She
had hurt
me
. I walked toward her with my hand balled into a fist, my rage boiling. I unleashed it all with a powerful punch. I’d intentionally struck the wall.

“How could you?” I yelled.

My fist trembled from the impact.

“How could you?”

I stared at the floor for what felt like forever. I could give in to the rage that was threatening to take control of me. Or I could walk away. I chose the latter. While I’m not proud of how close I came to losing control, I learned that day that I was strong enough to reject the kind of violence I’d seen during my life.

Unfortunately, dating violence is far too prevalent among college students. In a 2011 survey commissioned by Liz Claiborne Inc. as part of its “Love Is Not Abuse” program, 43 percent of college women reported having experienced abusive behaviors while dating. That includes physical, sexual, or verbal abuse, or the use of digital technology in an abusive manner, like the guy who constantly checks his girlfriend’s emails and text messages or demands that she delete certain friends from her Facebook list. Also, 52 percent of the college women surveyed said they had a friend who’d experienced such abusive behaviors, and nearly one in three reported having been involved in an actual abusive relationship.

In addition to the survey, which included 508 college students, Liz Claiborne Inc. put together a task force of educators and domestic violence experts from various universities, who came up with a curriculum that teaches students about the dangers and warning signs of dating abuse, offers lessons on avoiding and protecting yourself from the increased use of technology to harass and abuse, and provides resources for students to find help. The task force was created after the highly publicized murder of Yeardley Love, a twenty-two-year-old University of Virginia lacrosse player, in May 2010. Love’s on-and-off boyfriend, George W. Huguely, a fellow University of Virginia student and lacrosse player, was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to twenty-three years in prison. Huguely was drunk when he kicked his way through the door to her bedroom and wrestled her to the floor after she refused to talk to him. He admitted shaking her and slamming her head against a wall. He then left her to die on a blood-soaked pillow. On the way out, he stole her computer. She was discovered hours later by her horrified roommate.

Courtroom testimony portrayed Huguely as a possessive, controlling boyfriend who sent Love a threatening email just days before their final night together. He’d heard that she’d been romantically linked to a lacrosse player from a rival school, and he fired off a message that said, in part: “I should have killed you.”

These were young people of privilege, unlike the young men and women I most often encounter in the emergency room. But rich or poor, domestic abuse and dating violence hurt the same.

N
early two years after my encounter with Debra in the emergency room, I was wrapping up a thirty-hour shift at University Hospital when I noticed the on-duty trauma team working furiously on a female patient. She was limp on a stretcher in a corner of the department. I immediately ripped off my jacket, ran toward my co-workers, and gloved up. The patient needed intravenous access
to deliver lifesaving fluids and medications to her depleted body. I grabbed the triple lumen catheter and placed a large bore needle in her chest through the vein known as the subclavian. This advanced procedure requires quick, smooth hands to guide the needle in the right direction. Aiming it directly under the collarbone, I had to be careful not to puncture the patient’s lungs. During the procedure, I quickly eyeballed her. She had multiple bruises, ranging from deep brown to yellow and green, indicating she’d been beaten over a period of days … and beaten badly. Maybe she had been held hostage, I thought.

She had a weak pulse, and her blood pressure was dropping. No doubt she was bleeding internally. With the central line in place, she was finally receiving the needed fluids. The anesthesiologist completed the intubation. The patient was holding on.

I walked to the head of the bed and noticed a well-healed facial scar over her eyebrow. It jogged my memory. I’d taken care of this woman before, but where? The more I looked at her bloody, beaten face, the more familiar she looked. I quickly went to the nursing station and grabbed her chart. My exhausted eyes scanned it, looking for her name. There it was: Mrs. Debra Cooper. Debra. The same Debra. I stood there in shock, her blood on my gloves and scrubs. I knew right away who had done this to her. Again. She’d insisted on staying with her husband, despite my warnings. But I was full of regret.
I should have called the police
, I thought. Just then, a nurse grabbed my elbow.