“I’m not entirely sure what you want to talk about.”
I was walking into attorney Noah Adelman’s office, having wrangled a meeting by being mildly evasive when I threw Dr. Janice Takeda’s name into the phone conversation I’d had with the man an hour ago. At least I wasn’t pretending to be a client this time.
Although grateful that he’d agreed to speak with me, my mind was on Kendall. There had been no response from her, not even an “I’m ok” text after I’d left concerned messages. My most recent call had gone straight to voicemail, so someone had switched the phone off. The call I’d put in to the Renacido Center had been met with “We can’t give out that information.” I was left to contemplate how to identify and get ahold of her father. Or to storm the gates.
Adelman was a one-man shop. In other words, a legal generalist—divorces, wills, petty disputes over a neighbor’s dog, anything that walked in the door and flipped his switch that day or his bank account balance. It wasn’t high-paying law, but it kept you sharp.
I followed Adelman into the small office suite he shared with a CPA on the second floor of a dingy South Loop high-rise. There wasn’t a window in the place, and the buzzy florescent lighting gave everything a greenish cast, including Adelman’s skin. I had no doubt it was the cheapest space they could find within a ten-block radius of the courthouse and it smelled like wet dog.
He was round and grandfatherly and gruff, but in a sitcom kind of way, and I was having trouble picturing a friendship between him and Janice.
“Sit.” He flapped his hand toward a chair as he settled his doughy body behind the desk. “What’s this about?”
“I’ll get straight to the point,” I said, knowing that attorneys like him watched the clock like hawks. Every minute with me was a minute of billing lost to a real client. “I understand that you had a run-in, if that’s the right expression, with a Dr. Troy Wykell. He is a psychologist specializing in addiction treatment.”
“Yes, I know exactly who he is. But you’re an attorney, or at least you used to be, right? So you sure as hell are aware of the confidentiality requirements of our work.”
“And I haven’t asked you to violate your oath. Talk to me about the public information. There were legal filings. Those filings are public information.”
“Then why don’t you go find them yourself.” He looked at me over the top of his glasses like I was a first-year law student. I could practically see the word dumbass forming in a thought bubble above his head.
“I have. You represented the plaintiff.” I reached into my bag and pulled out a manila folder. I laid it on his desk and pulled out its contents, pleased with myself for having squeezed in a stop at city hall between my visit with Janice and my appointment here.
“Owen Mosier, Sr. versus Renacido Treatment Center, Inc. September 30th, 2017. Case was dismissed. Fill in the gaps.”
“Are you recording this?” He looked at me skeptically.
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
“Okay, if you have a device hidden somewhere, shut it down now.” He paused and chewed a lip, waiting. “I’ll give you the basics, but I won’t admit to being a source. So my name had better not appear in your next exposé.” His tone said he meant it.
“I promise.” I smiled and held up a palm. “This is just background. If I get to the point where the story needs a quote, we can renegotiate.”
He glared at me and shook his head but didn’t throw me out.
“Mr. and Mrs. Mosier came to me after their son, Owen Jr., passed away. Cause of death was basically a heart attack. The kid was only twenty-eight. He’d been a hard-core heroin user for nearly seven years and, like most, had tried nearly everything else you could imagine to kick his habit, including some homemade concoctions. According to the medical examiner, the kid had a defect in one of his heart valves. Probably something he was born with but was undiscovered. After years of hitting the drugs hard, his heart just couldn’t handle the strain and gave out one day.”
Another heart issue. Adelman loosened his tie and readjusted his rolled-up shirtsleeves. He chewed the corner of his lip mindlessly and picked up a pen, only to put it back down, looking like a guy itching for a cigarette.
“Then why the lawsuit?”
“Mom and Dad were unconvinced. One complication was that they had trouble wrapping their head around the whole concept of an autopsy. Some religious objection. Not that I remember his affiliation. Can’t say I can keep all these Christian faiths straight in my head.” He shrugged. “But Junior was an adult, and when anybody under thirty drops dead, you know damn well there’s going to be an autopsy, whether the parents like it or not. But the autopsy was really the least of it. The parents were suspicious of everything. They knew the kid used drugs, but in their thinking, it was an evil curse. It simply meant they just weren’t praying hard enough. Another loony tune expecting prayer to deliver a medical miracle. I’m as religious as the next guy, but these power-of-prayer zealots confuse the shit out of me.”
“As in, God would find a way to remove the addiction if they were devoted enough?”
He nodded. “I’m not saying I understand. But they literally believed that the devil had taken over their son’s body. They spent hours praying, even took him to some holy water bath where they nearly drowned the kid. It was supposed to scare the devil out of him, but of course, that didn’t work either.”
“Sounds like throwing a woman suspected of being a witch into the water to see if she’ll float.”
“Don’t laugh. There’s a surprising similarity,” he said, rubbing a hand over his forehead. “God knows what the kid thought about his parents or their religion. No pun intended. Eventually he sought out more conventional treatment at the Renacido Center. To me, it sounded like he thought it would be less painful than what Mom and Dad were putting him though.”
“Was this his only stint in rehab?”
“Is there ever just one?” He raised his brow. “He had been to Bible study, faith-based healing centers, private counseling. His family was made up of hard-core God types. All of it was sanctioned first by the parents. And then, sanctioned by their church.”
“His church got involved?” I asked, confused by the concept.
“That’s how these guys work. Don’t expect me to explain it, but yeah, this church had some kind of religious council that met and tried to come up with an approved treatment plan. They would only agree to individuals or facilities that were willing to honor specific practices and beliefs.”
“Like what?” I’d come across people with religious beliefs so strong they dictated associations, but never anyone who filtered their medical treatment past a religious tribunal.
“I haven’t the faintest idea. Way too cult-like for my tribe.”
“So how did he end up at Renacido? Was it blessed by the church?”
I was struggling to comprehend the idea of needing church approval during a medical crisis. My only religious motto was the classic “Do unto others” philosophy. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe; it had just never seemed necessary in my life to use an organization as a way to monitor decency in my own behavior. My mind flashed back to the meeting room the afternoon of the open house. The center hadn’t struck me as a faith-based organization at the time. There had been no mention of prayer or God in the literature, no crosses or other paraphernalia. If Renacido had a religious affiliation, they hid it well.
“Like I said,” Adelman continued. “I don’t know exactly how it happened, but the parents were adamant with me that neither they nor their church had sanctioned Owen’s participation in treatment at this facility.”
“He was going against all of his religious upbringing,” I said, thinking out loud. The kid either felt betrayed by the doctrine or was so desperate he’d do anything to shake his vice.
“Or maybe the center told him enough of what he needed to hear, to make him think God wouldn’t smite him. What do I know about Christianity? Regardless, he signed up. About three weeks into the program, he had his heart event and died. Despite the autopsy reports, the parents came to me wanting to blame the center, and by extension Dr. Wykell, for the death of their son.”
“And you believed there was enough there to warrant the suit?”
“At first, not really, but they were so distraught, and so firm in their convictions, that it seemed like they needed to make the effort just to have closure. I was skeptical, so what I agreed to do was to help them get a copy of their son’s medical records. I figured we would take this one small hurdle at a time. If we got information that increased any suspicions about his medical care, we could move forward. But if everything looked kosher, perhaps the parents would be appeased. In my mind, it seemed that they just needed to do something in order to accept what had happened to their son. Parental guilt, perhaps. As you know, it’s not unusual for the family to need a deeper explanation when the truth is hard to accept. Families need answers, and when those answers are not available, imagination can take over.”
“And were you able to get his medical records?”
“That’s when things took a turn.” He paused and laid his glasses on the desk. “The center, of course, lawyered up. No business wants legal challenges in the public eye. Par for the course, they refused polite requests, so I had to turn up the heat a little and subpoena the records.”
“Which meant that you needed to show probable cause.”
“Exactly. I had to present the case that we were concerned about the death being suspicious and make the argument that medical records of his treatment would clarify the issue. If everything was on the up-and-up, those medical records would corroborate the medical examiner’s findings.”
“And did you get the records?”
“The center fought the subpoena, but ultimately they were ordered to turn them over. They had thirty days to do so, and in the meantime, I scheduled Dr. Wykell for a deposition.”
“Did that deposition occur?”
“Sort of. Keep in mind that I was still a bit skeptical of the whole thing, but I figured a few questions directed at the guy who wrote the treatment protocol would accomplish two things. One, it would satisfy my clients if they could hear directly from the doctor who was treating their son. And two, if there was anything that showed up in the medical records later when they were produced, I would have already questioned him enough to know where to look for the bullshit. Well, we all arrived for the deposition, and barely fifteen minutes in, Dr. Wykell decides he doesn’t like my line of questioning. He throws a hissy fit and storms out as the parents sat there devastated. So much for empathy. This guy is one obstinate ass. You’d think there’d be a little heartfelt compassion out of a medical professional, but the only thing this guy cared about was himself. Or I should say his bank account.”
The little I’d seen of Dr. Wykell’s personality told me having a tantrum was not out of character. And there was that profit motive again.
“Did you ever get a copy of the medical records?” I asked.
“This is where it gets interesting. When we were four days away from the court-ordered due date, I got a call from Mr. Mosier telling me they had decided to drop the case.” Adelman crossed his arms across his ample chest and raised his brows.
“What reason did he give?”
“I had to pull it out of him, but the bottom line was that they were intimidated. The center’s legal team made it clear that they would bury this family financially. Drag it on for years if they needed to. Drive them into bankruptcy. Basically, the Mosiers were outgunned.”
“Was there anything else they were afraid of? Do you think Mr. Mosier told you everything?”
“No, I don’t. Didn’t think I had the whole story at the time, and as time has passed, I’m even more firmly convinced of it. By that point, I believed the Mosiers were right about needing to press forward with a legal inquiry. I was so convinced something stunk to high heaven that I even offered to bill them at half my normal rates, but they still wouldn’t bite. Look, the financial hit would scare anyone off, but my gut says it was more than the money.”