Saving Meghan(64)
ZACH
The restaurant was upscale for a pizzeria, but the moody décor, black-clad waitstaff, eclectic artwork, and obscure pizza toppings helped to justify the obscene prices demanded for a ten-inch pie. No doubt Zach’s boy, Will, would never have suffered such a hipster joint. He could not wrap his mind around why someone would actually request pineapple on a pizza. Will liked his pizza plain and cheesy, and his pizzerias a little more on the greasy side. Zach could never predict what things would make him think of his son, which was why he seldom varied his routine. But tonight, on account of Dr. Peter Levine, Zach was willing to make an exception.
Dr. Levine had sent an email near the end of the workday, requesting an off-campus sit-down about Meghan Gerard, claiming to have some big revelation that might change everything. The restaurant was Levine’s choice—neutral ground, he’d called it, away from White, Nash, and other inhibitors to an open dialogue.
Zach sat at a table in the back, scanning the menu halfheartedly while keeping an eye on the front door for Levine, who was nearly twenty-five minutes late. Checking his phone, thinking he’d missed Levine’s call or text, Zach saw only an email from Jill Mendoza. She was responding to a message Zach had sent earlier, an electronic missive of the “ready, aim, fire” variety—an email typed in haste, layered with emotion. While he grimaced slightly at the tone of his correspondence, Zach stood by every word. Even so, he hoped it would not end up in Knox Singer’s in-box.
In Zach’s mind, the Gerards had been hit with charges simply because they disagreed with the diagnosis of two doctors. “You’re using a sledgehammer to try to force a square peg through a round hole,” Zach had written in his email to Mendoza. “The peg may go through, but only if it breaks.”
The system was the problem. The state could not investigate even the suspicion of medical child abuse until doctors formally declared the parents unfit. The parents not only endured the trauma and indignity of losing custody to the state, but they also lost their rights to govern their child’s medical care.
Zach had written:
The medical capacity of DCF is nil. The entire agency has one half-time pediatrician, one half-time psychiatrist, and a handful of nurses on staff. You’re making a very dangerous assumption based on scant medical evidence, and I fail to see why these drastic measures are even necessary. By bringing in all these subspecialists, you’ve clouded the situation with value judgments from egos that cannot accept the possibility they’ve made a terrible and potentially tragic mistake. I suggest we convene a meeting with the clinicians involved, try to reach a consensus on a plan, and work with the parents instead of treating them like criminals. Let DCF take the lead on coordinating the key players if that will satisfy them, but once all the views get aired, it would help immensely if you and the others holding Meghan hostage would take a damn humility pill.
In her reply, Mendoza did not seem to take offense. She thanked Zach for his suggestion and promised to explore the idea of a consensus meeting. She then went on to detail how Meghan had gotten violently ill during the mother’s visit, but her doctors could find no physical cause.
It sounded to Zach like Meghan had experienced some type of a somatoform disorder, in which her bodily symptoms present in a disproportionate level of distress, including pain, but the source cannot be traced to a physical cause. It was a telltale marker of Munchausen syndrome, and the fact that the mother was present during the episode lent credibility to the proxy accusation. Zach had no doubt Meghan had experienced real distress, real pain, but the incident served only to reinforce the notion that Becky Gerard might be so deeply enmeshed in her daughter’s mind, her psyche, that a single suggestion could be enough to trigger a profound somatic reaction.
Zach wondered if that frightening episode was at the heart of Dr. Levine’s surprise dinner invitation, but the mystery seemed destined to remain unsolved. Almost thirty minutes late now, Levine was still MIA.
Zach approached the hostess at the front of the restaurant. “Do you do deliveries?” he asked.
The curly-haired hostess said they did. He explained his dinner companion’s tardiness.
“I’m a fellow doctor at White Memorial,” Zach said, showing her his license with the MD stamped at the end of his name. “I’m a bit concerned. It’s not like Peter to be late.” Zach knew they could not call him on this embellishment. “If he’s ordered takeout from here before, perhaps you have his address on file. I’ll pop over and just make sure he’s all right. He’s not answering his phone or texts.”
There was some hesitation on the hostess’s part, a brief conversation between her and the manager, but eventually, the MD won their trust. Zach set off into a humid spring evening in search of the missing doctor.
* * *
ZACH USED the address the pizzeria had given him to locate Dr. Peter Levine’s home four blocks away. He lived on the first floor of a classic three-family dwelling in Roslindale, an established residential neighborhood of Boston. It was not the fanciest of places, but Levine was a newbie doc with plenty of medical school debt to pay down. There was no garage or driveway, but ample street parking made it so that Zach did not have to drive around searching for a place for his car. Zach did not know if Levine lived alone or if he was married, straight or gay, happy or sad—he knew nothing about the man other than that he was wrong about Meghan and very late for dinner.