I led Channing over to the window, away from the crowd. “Are you concerned about anything in particular?” I asked, the clinician kicking in.
“It's everything in particular. You wouldn't recognize her. You could say that she's using her appearance to make a statement. And her behaviorâshe's turned moody and dark. She comes home, goes upstairs. Wham, shuts herself into her room. Spends hours alone.”
At sixteen, how I'd longed to have a room to close myself in and the world out. But in a one-bedroom apartmentâmy brother and I slept in the bedroom; my parents slept on a foldout sofa in the living roomâthere's only so long you can lock yourself in the bathroom before someone threatens to kill you.
“I know what you're thinking,” Channing said. “What do I expect from a seventeen-year old? You don't have to tell me this is normal. And God knows, it would probably help if I'd experienced good mothering when I was her age.”
I remembered. Channing's mother had killed herself when Channing was still in grammar school. Shot herself in the head. But there was no bitterness or self-pity in Channing's voice. It was just a fact, something she'd learned to live with. Once we'd stayed up most of the night, looking through Channing's family photo albums and comparing childhoods. I'd been struck by the change she'd undergone, before and after her mother's suicide. As an eight-year-old, she'd flirted with the camera, sturdy and buoyant, her blond hair short and soft around chubby cheeks and mischievous eyes. A year later, she looked away, morose and brooding. Her hair had grown long, stringy bangs creating a veil over her eyes.
“But Livvy's turning more and more inward,” Channing went
on. “Blows hot and cold like that.” Channing snapped her fingers. “She says nothing she does is good enough for meâbut the truth is, she's the one who's so ashamed of her own work that sometimes she refuses to even try. When she has to do something that seems hard, she has an anxiety attack.
“When she's in her room, she's on her computer. Hard to believe she's my daughter.” Channing gave a wry laugh. “It's all I can do to answer my e-mail. What do they do in chat rooms, anyway?”
“You probably don't want to know,” I said.
“Probably not. What I do know is that she's in another world, all the time, one I don't understand at all”âher voice brokeâ“one I can't reach into.”
I squeezed her arm. “She has friends?” I asked.
“I really don't know,” Channing said wearily. “She doesn't bring kids home. But she goes out. I think she's got computer friends. If you can call that friendship. Who knows who they are. I worry. She's so young and inexperienced.”
Channing was the one person who'd always had everything under control. Figuresâit would take a teenage daughter to throw her off-center.
“Peter, I'll bet if you spent even fifteen minutes with her, you'd be able to give us a better sense of what's going on.”
I knew what was coming. I should have stopped her right there, invoked the unwritten rule: Thou shalt not treat friends or their relatives. That's if she'd been a casual friend or a colleague. But Channing was much more than that.
“Please. See her informally,” she begged.
I knew what Kate would say: “If you can't help your friends, then what's the point of the fancy degree?” And I remembered a picture in our photo album of Kate playing with six-year-old Olivia at a picnic in the Berkshires, one of the few times we'd seen Olivia when she was very young. The two of them sat beside a puddle, making mud pies. A pair of kindred spirits. On the ride home, Kate had talked about the daughter we'd have one day, and how she hoped our little girl would be as open to life's possibilities as Olivia.
Kate and I never did have that little girlâor little boy, for that matter. There was always a reason why now wasn't the right time.
“You say she's seeing a therapist?” I asked.
“Daphne.”
“Daphne?” I was surprised, yet not surprised. Daphne Smythe-Gooding was Channing's longtime mentor.
“I know, I know. But she analyzed me more than fifteen years ago, and she'd never spent much time with Olivia. Besides, she's a brilliant clinician ⦠.” Channing's voice trailed off.
“But?”
“Let's just say the chemistry doesn't seem to be working. Lately, seems like I have to drag Livvy, kicking and screaming, to her sessions with Daphne,” Channing said, avoiding my eyes. “Besides, Daphne's a psychiatrist, like me. We come at this from a different angle than you would as a psychologist. Maybe ours is the wrong angle, in this case. If you spent even five minutes with her, I think you'd see things both of us miss.” She looked at me, her eyes pleading. “Nothing formal. Just a casual meeting, and then you tell me I'm being an overanxious parent.”
I chuckled lightly, but I knew better. Whatever it was that Channing was sensing in Olivia, it was probably real. Perhaps not Asperger's syndrome, but something with a name, and hopefully a treatment.
“I'd be happy to see her. Informally,” I said.
“How about this weekend?” Channing rushed on, as if she was afraid I'd change my mind if I thought about it for ten seconds more. “Saturday night. It's my birthday, and we're having some people over to celebrate. Olivia will be there.”
“A party? Doesn't seem like the ideal place to talk to her,” I said. The last party I'd been to at their house was a suit-and-tie affair, the kind a teenager would rather clean her room than attend.
“I want you to get a fresh impression. If she knows you're evaluating her, she'll clam up. Say you'll come.”
Saturday I had plans for a quiet dinner with Annie Squires. Annie was a private investigator. For years I'd worked with her and
attorney Chip Ferguson evaluating defendants, until I helped them defend Ralston Bridges, a sociopathic killer who violently objected to my diagnosis. Turned out, no one ever called him crazy and got away with it. After a jury pronounced him not guilty, he took his revenge by stalking and killing my wife.
After that, I retired from forensic work. Permanently, I thought. But then I let Chip and Annie talk me into defending a man accused of murder. The prosecution's entire case rested on the memory of his ex-wife, who'd survived a gunshot wound to the head. In the end, I wasn't sorry I'd taken the case. It helped me put a few of my own demons to rest.
“Are you free?” Channing asked.
She glanced at my left hand. I fingered my wedding ring. “Actually, I have a date,” I said.
“You're seeing someone?”
The question gave me pause. I wasn't ready to think of myself as
seeing
anyone. Over the last six months, Annie and I had had a couple of dates and a bunch of near dates. A few times, she'd had to cancel because of her work. I'd had to cancel because of my work.
Our last date had been by accidentâwe'd run into each other at Wordsworth's in Harvard Square and gone out for drinks, which turned into dinner, which might have turned into something more except Annie had plans to see her sister that night. Since then, Annie's time had been occupied working and moving her office and Chip's to a renovated building near the Cambridge Courthouse. They were going into private practice.
I'd been busy. She'd been busy. I knew if I didn't get off the dime, she'd soon be getting busy with somebody else. But I wasn't sure I was ready yet for a serious relationship.
“That's wonderful! Bring your friend,” Channing said.
Visions faded of juicy grilled steaks and that bottle of Turley zin I'd been saving. Not to mention the rest of a long, empty evening waiting to be filled.
“Please, come,” Channing said.
“Sure, can do,” I said finally. At least I'd still be seeing Annie.
Relief flooded Channing's face. She took a business card from her jacket pocket, wrote quickly on the back, and handed it to me. “Here's where we are.” I recognized that precise, backward-slanted handwriting, more printing than script. “It's right near our old house. Saturday night. Seven o'clock.”
I walked Channing out. We plowed through the clouds of smoke that hung under the Corinthian columns at the front of the building. Nurses and doctors who knew better were huddled there, getting their nicotine fix. We crossed the pristine grass quadrangle, flanked by five, perfectly proportioned Greek Revival buildings, holding their own in the shadow of towering modern medical buildings that crowded in from behind.
As we headed down the path toward the parking lot, Channing had her head down. She was holding her coat together under her chin, her shoulders hunched against the cold. March in New England can be so discouraging. More cold nasty weather when we're all good and sick of it.
Channing gave a furtive look behind her before she spoke again. “You saw the note in
JAMA
?”
“What note?” There was a pile of unread journals on my desk, including the last four issues of the
Journal of the American Medical Association.
“I'm amazed no one's shown it to you. A team from Hopkins dismissed my research as”âwith two fingers, she drew quotation marks in the airâ“âtoo flawed to be meaningful.'”
In polite scholarly circles, the phrase was the ultimate insult. Her detractorsâand there were many, since Channing minced few words when it came to exposing the questionable practices of othersâwere probably rubbing their hands together with glee.
A pair of doctors passed us going in the opposite direction. One of them nodded and then resumed his conversation with his colleague. “They're all talking about it,” Channing said, lowering her voice. “They're treating me like a car wreck they don't want to get involved in. It makes me so goddamn mad. And it's complete
bullshit. When I got a call from the team that reviewed my research, they told me their results appeared to be confirming mine. A month later, it's like âNever mind, her research is corrupt.' I want to know what happened to change their minds.”
I smiled. Here was the old Channing, the maverick who followed her own compassâwhich probably explained why she'd run the Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Unit for years but had never officially been named director.
“What's the study about?” I asked.
“I was reporting the preliminary results of a pilot projectâabout twenty subjects. A treatment for addiction. We got patients fresh out of detox programsâthey take care of the easy part, the physical addiction. Then we focus on the psychological craving.” Channing's voice was animated and enthusiastic. “Keep them for two weeks. Treat them with a compound called Kutril.”
“What is it?”
“You're going to laugh. It's actually a highly concentrated extract of kudzu, combined with Trilafon.”
“Kudzu? Isn't that the vine that's devouring the state of Florida?” I envisioned a viscous green potion.
“That's it. Actually it's the root that's medicinal. The Chinese used it at least as far back as the first century A.D. to inhibit the desire for alcohol.”
“You're serious, aren't you?”
“Completely. There had been trials with rats that showed promise. Imagine if it works for humans? Kudzu isn't even a prescription drug! And Trilafon has been on the market for nearly thirty years. It's cheap. We've got a company in New Jersey making up batches of the compound in pill form.”
Trilafon was one of the first antipsychotics developed. It tranquilized without sedating. “What about side effects?” I asked. I recalled that was one of the reasons doctors had stopped prescribing it.
“From long-term use, yes. This treatment is short and intensiveâpatients take a dose every four hours the first day. Every eight hours
for a week. Twice a day for a week. Then we discharge them with a dose a day for two weeks. Then nothing. Kills the craving right from the beginning, and it doesn't seem to return, even after the treatment is discontinued.”
“What's the success rate?”
“We just finished analyzing the results of the full-blown study. It confirms the findings of our pilot. Eighty percent after six months. Sixty-five percent after twelve months.”
I whistled. That was impressive.
“The only serious adverse events we had were two patients who had seizures, which were then well controlled with Neurontin.”
“Can it be administered outpatient?”
“Perhaps. Eventually.” Channing glowed with satisfaction. “Sounds like a magic bullet, doesn't it? Talk to the drug companies, you'd think it was a subversive plot to put them out of business. Acu-Med went ballistic when they heard. And oh, big surprise, one of the guys who submitted that note to
JAMA
used to work for them.” She gave a disgusted sniff. “Wouldn't surprise me if he's still on retainer.”
“They're probably trying to develop a prescription drug to do exactly the same thing.”