When the Bough Breaks Read Free Page B

sisters were able to admit that they’d wished they’d been molested in order to be eligible for special treatment. Then they’d felt guilty about those thoughts.
    Entire families were coming apart, much of their suffering obscured by the public blood lust for Hickle’s head. The families might have been permanently shunted to obscurity, saddled with their confusion, guilt and fear but for the fact that the great aunt of one of the victims was a philanthropic member of the board of Western Pediatric Medical Center. She wondered out loud why the hell the hospital wasn’t doing anything, and where was the institution’s sense of public service, anyway. The chairman of the board salaamed and simultaneously saw the chance to grab some good press. The last story about Western Peds had exposed salmonella in the cafeteria’s cole slaw, so positive P.R. was mighty welcome.
    The medical director issued a press release announcing a psychological rehabilitation program for the victims of Stuart Hickle, with me as therapist. My first inkling of being appointed was reading about it in the Times .
    When I got to his office the next morning I was ushered in immediately. The director, a pediatric surgeon who hadn’t operated in twenty years and had acquired the smugness of a well-fed bureaucrat, sat behind a gleaming desk the size of a hockey field and smiled.
    “What’s going on, Henry?” I held up the newspaper.
    “Sit down, Alex. I was just about to call you. The board decided you’d be perfect—pluperfect—for the job. Some urgency was called for.”
    “I’m flattered.”
    “The board remembered the beautiful work you did with the Brownings.”
    “Brownells.”
    “Yes, whatever.”
    The five Brownell youngsters had survived a light plane crash in the Sierras that had killed their parents. They’d been physically and psychologically traumatized—overexposed, half-starved, amnesiac, mute. I’d worked with them for two months and the papers had picked up on it.
    “You know, Alex,” the director was saying, “sometimes in the midst of trying to synthesize the high technology and heroics that comprise so much of modern medicine, one loses sight of the human factor.”
    It was a great little speech. I hoped he’d remember it when budget time rolled around next year.
    He went on stroking me, talking about the need for the hospital to be in the “forefront of humanitarian endeavors,” then smiled and leaned forward.
    “Also, I imagine there’d be significant research potential in all of this—at least two or three publications by June.”
    June was when I came up for full professorship. The director was on the tenure committee at the medical school.
    “Henry, I believe you’re appealing to my baser instincts.”
    “Perish the thought.” He winkled slyly. “Our main interest in helping those poor, poor children.” He shook his head. “A truly repugnant affair. The man should be castrated.”
    A surgeon’s justice.
    I threw myself, with customary monomania, into designing the treatment program. I received permission to run the therapy sessions in my private office after promising that Western Peds would get all the credit.
    My goals were to help the families express the feelings that had been locked inside since Hickle’s subterranean rites had been exposed, and to help them share those feelings with each other in order to see that they weren’t alone. The therapy was designed as an intensive, six-week program, using groups—the kids, parents, siblings and multiple families—as well as individual sessions as needed. Eighty percent of the families signed up and no one dropped out. We met at night in my suite on Wilshire, when the building was quiet and empty.
    There were nights when I left the sessions physically and emotionally drained after hearing the anguish pour out like blood from a gapingwound. Don’t let anyone ever tell you different: Psychotherapy is one of the most taxing endeavors known to