The Dead Student (28 page)

“A memorial fund?” the doctor asked.

“Yes,” she said.

He hesitated. “Well, I suppose I could kick in a small amount.”

“That would be great,” she replied.

Again he hesitated. His voice seemed to take on a different pitch. “That can’t really be why you’re calling,” he said decisively.

She tried to rapidly form some sort of excuse or explanation, but could not. “No. Not exactly,” she said.

“Then, please, what is it?”

“We … I … uh, don’t think Ed committed suicide. We think there’s some incident way in his past that …” She paused, unsure how to continue.

“An incident? What sort of incident?”

“Something that connects his past with his present,” Andy replied.

“That is about as simple and accurate a description of psychiatry as you could possibly come up with,” the doctor said with a small, disarming laugh. He continued, “And my part in this?”

Again she paused. “Third year, medical school.”

Now it was his turn to be silent for a few seconds.

“The best worst year,” he said. “What’s the cliché?
That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Whoever thought that foolishness up never spent three hundred and sixty-five days as a third-year medical student and certainly knew nothing about mental illnesses.”

“Do you remember Ed?”

“Yeah. Maybe. A little bit. He was a good guy. Smart and incisive, I remember. We shared a class or two, I think—no, we had to have. We were in the same field, heading in basically the same direction. But that’s not the point, is it?”

“No.”

“I’m not accustomed to speaking with people about sensitive matters over the telephone,” he said.

“We need help,” Andy burst out.

“Who is the
we
you refer to?” The doctor was being cautious.

“Ed’s nephew. He’s my friend.”

“Well, I don’t know how much I can help.”

Andy Candy remained quiet, figuring he would continue. She was correct.

“What do you know about the third year of medical school with a concentration in psychiatry?” the doctor asked abruptly.

“Not much. I mean, it’s when you make a decision—”

“Let me interrupt you,” he said sharply. “It is …” He paused, considering what he was going to say. “There was a movie.
The Year of Living Dangerously
. A nice descriptive phrase. That’s what it was for all of us.”

“Can you help me understand?” Andy Candy asked, thinking that was a good way to keep a psychiatrist talking.

The doctor paused.

“Two things. First the context: third year. Then what happened, although I’m not sure I know too much about anything. There were some rumors, I recall. But none of us had the time to pay any attention to rumors. We were all too concerned with what was right in front of us.”

“Okay.” She was trying to lead him.

“Third year is filled with stress for any medical student. But psychiatry provides a different stress, because of all the disciplines in medicine, ours is the most elusive. There’s no rash on the skin, trouble urinating, difficulty breathing, or unexplained cough to help us out. It’s all about interpreting unusual behaviors. Third year, we were all physically exhausted, half-psychotic ourselves. We were vulnerable to many of the diseases we were studying. Crippling depressions. Doubts. Sleep deprivation and hallucinations. It’s a very difficult time. The demands were relentless and fears of failure very real.”

“So …”

“I hated that year and loved it, too. In retrospect, it’s a year that brings out the best and worst inside you. A defining year.”

“Did you take a course with Professor Jeremy Hogan?”

The psychiatrist hesitated again.

“Yes. His lecture course on forensic psychiatry. It had a great nickname:
Reading Killers
. It was fascinating, even if outside my interests.”

“Ed Warner was in the course too, and something connected Doctor
Hogan to Ed and some other students …” She quickly read off the names of the other dead psychiatrists.

The doctor paused again. “To the best of my memory—remember, we’re going back decades here—those were probably the members of Study Group Alpha. I can’t be sure, understand? I mean, it was many years ago. In third-year psychiatry, there were three study groups: Alpha, Beta, and Zeta. That was a joke in Latin—first, second, and last. There were five of us randomly assigned to each group. Some natural rivalries arose—every group wanted the best GPA, wanted the best Match Day results. But there was a problem in Alpha.”

“A problem?”

“One student seemed to be trapped in psychosis. At least, that was the story that went around. Of course, with the stress, the decisions, the never-ending course work, plus the fear that we’d make a diagnostic mistake, every group had members on edge. Breakdowns weren’t uncommon …”

The psychiatrist paused again.

“His was.”

A Short, but Dangerous Conversation That Actually Happened

“Doctor Hogan, I’m sorry to disturb you …”

“What is it, Mister, uh … Warner, correct?”

“Yes, sir. I’m here on behalf of my fellow study group students …”

“Yes? I have a class scheduled and not much time. Can you get directly to the point?”

Ed Warner: Deep breath. Organizing thoughts quickly. Shuffling feet. Sensation of doubt.

“Four members of Study Group Alpha are concerned with the behavioral patterns of the fifth member. We sincerely believe that he presents a genuine threat, either to himself, or perhaps to us.”

Jeremy Hogan: A pause. Rocking in a chair. Tapping a pencil against teeth. Scheduled class mentally postponed.

“What sort of threat?”

“Physical violence.”

“That’s quite an accusation, Mister Warner. I hope you can back this up.”

“I can, sir. And coming to speak to you was, all of us felt, the last resort.”

“You understand an accusation like this can impact all of your careers?”

“We do. We’ve taken that into consideration.”

“And why have you brought this to me?”

“Because of your expertise in explosive personalities.”

“You believe your fellow student is on an edge that might result in … precisely what, Mister Warner?”

“Over the last weeks, this student’s behavior has grown increasingly erratic, and—”

“Exams are approaching. Many students are on edge.”

Ed Warner: Another deep breath. A quick glance at sheaves of paper from each member of the group, outlining impressions.

“Last week he strangled a lab rat in front of all of us. No reason. He just seized the rat and killed it. Flat affect as he did it. It was like he was demonstrating his ability to kill without remorse. He constantly talks to himself, in a rambling, disjointed, usually incomprehensible, but frequently angry manner—especially as it relates to his family pressures and then, about us. He is isolated, but threatening. He claims to own weapons. Guns. Every effort we have made to engage him, maybe defuse the situation, get him to seek help, has been rebuffed. Sometimes his facial expressions are labile and disconnected to recognizable context—one second he will laugh inappropriately, then a second later he will burst into tears. Last week he took a scalpel from a surgical theater and sliced the word
kill
into his forearm in front of all of us, while we were holding a pre-exam cram session. I’m unsure that he either felt any pain in that second, or realized what he was doing. Whenever anyone in the study group seeks to correct him, point out a difference of opinion, even suggest a different type of answer to an academic question, he is likely to suddenly scream in their face, or else stare hatefully at them. Sometimes he writes down our names, the date, and a description of the dispute in a notebook. It’s like he’s not taking notes for class, but taking notes on us. Preparing a case, I think, to internally justify an act of violence …”

Jeremy Hogan: A nod of the head. A genuine look of concern.

“You must take your situation immediately to the dean’s office and inform him of everything you’ve told me. You should do this without delay. You are absolutely correct. Your fellow student sounds to be in significant trouble. He may need hospitalization.”

And then the brief exchange that started everything:

“Can you help?”

“Him?”

Ed Warner: Hesitation. Honesty.

“No. Us.”

“I will call the dean right now and tell him you are on your way to his office. He will want to see chapter and verse. You are correct, Mister Warner. The symptomatology you present includes several recognizable elements of certain sorts of dangerous explosions. I would think acting quickly in this situation is crucial.”

“Should we contact campus security?”

“Not yet. The dean should do that.”

Then Jeremy Hogan reached for the phone on his desk with very much the same motion he would use thirty years later in the precious few seconds before he died.

Andy Candy waited for the psychiatrist in California to continue. She could hear him gathering his breath.

“There was a physician in our department—a research guy—studying early-childhood attachment disorders, who did much of his work with rhesus monkeys. National Institutes of Health grant, I recall, not that it’s important.”

“Monkeys?”

“Yes. They’re great subjects for psychological studies. Very close in social behaviors to you and me, even if the churchgoing public doesn’t want to believe that.”

“But what—”

He interrupted her. “Just rumor, you know. Innuendo. Whatever
actually happened got covered up by the university really fast, probably because the administration didn’t want it impacting their
U.S. News and World Report
ranking. But the sort of story that stays with you, even if I haven’t thought about it in years and years. No one has ever asked me about this. And, you must recognize that as sensational as it seemed to be then, there was no time for any of us to digest it, assess it, what have you. We were all swept up in all that third-year tension.”

“I understand,” she replied, although she doubted that she did.

“The research psychiatrist came in to his laboratory one morning. Door had been forced open. He found five of his prize monkeys arranged in a circle on the floor. Their throats had been sliced.”

Andy Candy gasped.

“But what …”

“Dead monkeys. No,
slaughtered
monkeys.”

The psychiatrist hesitated. “Now, did that have some connection to the troubles in Study Group Alpha? No, one ever proved that, at least not that I know. And it wasn’t as if that research doc hadn’t made more than a few enemies. He was notoriously cruel to his assistants, and prone to yelling at them, firing them, and screwing up their futures. Not hard to imagine that one of them went looking for a little payback.”

“You don’t think that?”

“I never knew what to think, and had no time to think it anyways,” the psychiatrist continued. “That wasn’t what bothered me.”

“What was that?” Andy asked, slightly afraid to formulate this question.

“It was the number. Five—as in five dead monkeys. There were twelve others that were untouched. Sometimes, when one examines acts, particularly acts of violence—it makes sense to try to connect dots. Why weren’t all the monkeys killed? Or perhaps, just one?”

Andy Candy stammered again, making some grunting sound that came out instead of a question. The only word she could come up with was “And …”

“And that’s all. I always thought that the lab incident had something to
do with that psychotic student. A matter of timing, I suppose. A hearing. Dismissal. Back of an ambulance heading to a private psychiatric hospital. Goodbye, so long, and that was it. One minute he was there, the next gone. And there was no obvious connection to that particular laboratory. Like, he wasn’t studying with that professor. But, like all of us, he knew about it, and he knew how to get in and out. So maybe the Freudian in me wants to see a link, but a detective wouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Four people testified at that dean’s office hearing: the members of the study group. Curiously, though, there were five slaughtered monkeys. Four versus five … which threw it all askew.”

“What about Doctor Hogan?”

“He wasn’t at that hearing. All he did was what any faculty member would do: contact the dean’s office. The rest was up to the members of Study Group Alpha. So I can’t really see what he has to do with this.”

“I see …” Andy Candy said, although she didn’t know if she did.

“Of course, this all might be just conjecture. Sounds like far too much Hollywood, if you ask me. And perhaps it was the overinflated and overheated suppositions of a too-tense and stressed-out imagination, so I wouldn’t put that much credence in it. Even in medical school rumors were inflated, exaggerated, and bandied about like junior high school dating rumors. But the dead monkeys—those were very real.”

Andy Candy felt her mouth go dry and she choked out her question: “Do you remember the name of that student?”

The doctor hesitated.

“Interesting,” he said after a momentary hesitation. “You would think that recalling a detail like monkey murder would automatically mean that I would remember the name as well. But I do not. Totally blocked. Intriguing, huh? Perhaps if I think about it for some time, it will come to me. But right now, no.”