The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder (6 page)

C
harlie was still recovering
¹¹
in the ICU when Michelle Tomlinson came to visit. Michelle was a fellow nurse on the Warren Hospital Telemetry unit, a friend, and, Charlie hoped, maybe more. He knew they had a connection. There were always moments during a shift when all the patients have been looked in upon and the orders are filled, a downtime which Charlie and Michelle filled with conversation. Charlie thought that he and Michelle were very much alike. They could both talk about their personal problems with great, baring honesty. They might even be soul mates. Michelle was depressed as well. She appreciated him. He was a wounded baby bird. Michelle came with the eyedropper of attention.

Michelle saw Charlie as he felt he should be seen. She felt sorry for him. She saw his depth and pain, and responded with maternal attention. It was her suggestion that Charlie get himself transferred to Muhlenberg, a psychiatric unit across the state line, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Michelle knew people at Muhlenberg, she said. It was good. Charlie would like it. Charlie requested the transfer, took another ambulance ride, and settled in. Michelle had been right. He did like Muhlenberg. Michelle visited there, too, bringing flowers. She’d pull up a chair and sit by his bedside. Even in bed, even suicidal, Charlie could make Michelle laugh. He was self-deprecating, funny, and charming—she found him charming, at least, and the thought of that, the promise of it, became a solid thing in his mind, enough that he felt well enough to check himself out of Muhlenberg on his own recognizance, just in time to meet his wife’s divorce lawyer.

Charlie was determined to represent himself for the divorce.
¹²
The divorce itself was already going to cost him enough money, so there seemed little point in paying a stranger to lord a degree over him just to speed his bloodletting. Charlie had thought about it enough that he was now actually looking forward to stepping into this new role as pro se advocate, showing that he could do the lawyer-speak and jump through the hoops. He was a quick learner and had no doubt that he could perform against Adrianne’s professional lawyer, a local attorney named Ernest Duh. It seemed strange to Charlie that what was knit together under God in a fancy rented hall could be dissolved by a lawyer on office furniture. Duh presented a checklist for splitting conjoined lives into equal parts. She got the house, he got the Honda and the Ford, they’d sell the Oriental rug and the Royal Doulton
china. The rest fit easily into the back of Charlie’s Escort station wagon for the ten minute trip down US 22 to his new apartment on the other side of Phillipsburg.

Charlie had circled the ad in the newspaper, a private basement apartment in a seventy-year-old stone house,
¹³
and rented it over the phone, sight unseen. The landlady was cautious, renting to a strange man without seeing him, but responded well when he listed his qualifications as a gainfully employed nurse, a father, a nonsmoker. Charlie had only left out one detail: her potential tenant was calling from a psychiatric unit. He’d tell Michelle about that one when he got back to work at Warren.

Michelle was a newly single mother with a full time job, a dragging divorce, and a volatile relationship with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Jerry. Charlie was relief. Whatever absurd nugget Michelle might mine from her pathetic life, Charlie could match, then trump. He was always willing to offer up another chapter of his sometimes ridiculous life. They called it a pity party, making the joke but knowing that was exactly what it was.

When he returned to work he seemed as bonded to her as a puppy. So when she and Jerry split up for a week she figured, yeah, what the heck, and broke her rule about dating coworkers. She’d let him take her out to dinner, just the once.

9

C
harlie had been excited in preparation, shaving, showering, then shaving again. He felt handsome and charming as he looked at himself in the rearview mirror on the way to meet her at dinner. By the time Michelle had ordered her brownie sundae, Charlie had fallen in love. He watched her across the booth, twirling fudge with the special long spoon, and knew it: Michelle was his soul mate, period. So Charlie turned up the charm.

The way he’d read it, Michelle liked brownies. So Charlie started bringing brownies every day, even on his days off. When Michelle didn’t touch them he’d plate up a square and place it by her charts, sometimes along with other gifts, little romantic somethings for her to find. When Michelle didn’t respond to these, either, Charlie assumed he wasn’t trying hard enough. They were on shift together at least three nights a week, but Charlie wanted more. When he couldn’t get shifts, he’d come in anyway. On those nights he could follow Michelle full-time, cranking up the charm to high. One day he came in with a ring.

He told her, I love you. I’m in love with you, Michelle. But this didn’t have the effect he’d imagined, not at all. Suddenly, she was busy with her patients. She avoided the nurses’ station for the rest of the shift, didn’t say good-bye. He’d tried calling her house but only got the machine.
Maybe,
he thought,
I’ll see her at work tomorrow.

All that March he hurried through his routine, delivering death notices to family members with a told-you-so air. The clock turned, the sun rose, night shift handed over to day. Charlie grabbed his coat and sulked back to the car, the highway, squinting through a smudgy little hole in the frosted windshield and thinking only about how Michelle had turned off. A light had gone out in her; it wasn’t shining on him. The darkness in his soul mate could only mean one thing: she was depressed. He knew it. That was why
they were soul mates. Life had become too much for her. She still needed him, but was too far gone to say so.

Back at his apartment, Charlie dialed Michelle’s number without even taking off his coat. It was the machine, so he tried again, then again. He stopped after a few hours. Then Charlie’s phone rang. It was Jerry, Michelle’s on-again off-again sometimes-ex Jerry, telling Charlie, “Lay off, leave her alone.
¹

“Look,” Jerry continued. “Michelle is really upset—she’s hysterical after this.”

Charlie stuttered something and placed the wall phone back in the cradle. What had Jerry meant by “hysterical”? Michelle was hysterical? Charlie knew Michelle, he understood her, better than Jerry ever could. The phone call had been from Jerry, yes—but this whole thing was a cry for help, from his Michelle. She was in trouble, suicidal maybe. He could save her. He was a hero to her, Charlie knew that, even if Michelle had forgotten.

10

March 23, 1993

M
ichelle rented a condo. Charlie knew the address. He slowed at her address to scan her windows and, seeing nothing, took a left then another, boxing around and cruising the building again, then boxing it the other way, checking from different angles in case he’d missed something before driving back home to leave another phone message, just to be sure. Then, back in the car and over again, cruising slow, and this time seeing one light on and her car in the drive but nobody in the window. He looped her neighborhood again to be sure. Nothing. Just the car, no life inside. Then he had a chilling thought—what if she was trying to call him? Now? Each trip was forty minutes, at least. He should drive faster. How many times had she called?

Back home he stared down at the machine, still not blinking. He played the tape anyway, in case the light was broken. No message. He called again, dialing the glowing numbers in the dark, left a long message, telling her everything in his heart, then hung up and got back in the car. Drove back to Michelle’s apartment, saw the car still there, the light still on, nobody at the window. Why wasn’t she answering? He drove back to his apartment. The light wasn’t flashing but he checked the messages in case. Picked up the phone to call but then realized how late it was. He called. No answer. He drove back to her apartment, the rain precipitating out of the fog now as he killed the lights by the curb, stepped across the lawn, his white work shoes whipping wet through the grass. He stepped carefully on the gravel by the foundation by her porch and cupped his hands to the glass. No movement in the dark kitchen, only the steady red flash of a message machine. The glass door was locked, so Charlie tried a brick. He waited for something to happen from the noise. When nothing did he stepped inside.

The kitchen was lit only by the luminous moon of the stove clock. He
wiped his sneakers on the kitchen rugs, shedding bits of tracked glass, then stopped, listening. Just the tiny marching of the stove clock, the blood in his ears. No other sound. Not even his footsteps as he climbed the stairs. The bedroom door was closed. Charlie opened it.

Inside, the raw human smell, sound of sleeping breath, rough and regular. Charlie stood in the doorway, bathing in the intimacy. It is a tender thing, to watch over the sleeping. More tender still because the sleeping are unaware, like children blind to God’s attentions.

A
fterwards, Charlie drove to the minimart. He bought a jumbo coffee against the morning cold, and waited by the pay phone until the sun rose and he could finally call again. This time, Michelle answered. She sounded frazzled—somebody had broken into her apartment. They’d smashed the glass and come inside, with her and her son there, asleep. It felt like a sort of rape.

Charlie rested his arm on the metal cord. He said that he wanted Michelle to know—so much to tell her—first, that he had talked to Jerry. So he knew she and Jerry were back together, and that Charlie wasn’t supposed to bother her anymore. He’d gotten that straight, he was cool, no probs. Then Charlie told Michelle, “I was the one who did your house.”
¹

That stopped her. “Did” her house? She didn’t know where to go with that. What else had he done? Had he come inside? Well, yes, Charlie said, he had. “I wanted to check on you,” he said. “You know, to make sure you were okay. That you didn’t try anything—like suicide.”

Michelle did not say anything. “You know, I’m, um, feeling a little crazy right now,” Charlie said. He’d told her he’d totally understand if she wanted to call the police or something. He meant it as a gesture, showing her his sincerity.

Charlie knew he had unleashed yet another torrent, one already sweeping him forward like a leaf to the gutter. He crawled back into the car, feeling silly. Back home, he pulled a Coke from the fridge, found a half bag of chips, and sat in front of the TV until the phone rang again. It was an officer from the Palmer County Police. They’d issued a warrant for the arrest of C. Cullen, five foot eight, 150 pounds, brown hair and mustache. Yes, Charlie said, that was him. He promised to drive himself straight down to the police station and give himself up.

Normally, this would be the perfect moment for a suicidal gesture, but the necessity of showing up at the police station complicated things. With the proper timing, it was still possible to do both; in fact, as he thought it through, it was actually better this way. He’d collapse and fade, right in the jail cell, where he was sure to be seen and saved. He would be simultaneously both the criminal and a victim. Charlie popped a handful of the .05 mg Xanax the doctor at the psychiatric ward had prescribed for him, and added some narcotic Darvocets he had taken from his wife after her gallbladder operation, twenty pills in all. Then he drove straight to the police station.

This was him, an earnest health-care professional, lovesick and concerned, the sort of foolish heart who had told the policeman that he’d drive right over and did just that, on time. He figured that later, when the pills kicked in, he’d be Romeo, overwhelmed with love and poison, right on stage.

The drugs worked as planned. Xanax is a fast-acting antianxiety drug and kicked in first, delivering wave upon wave of
So What
while his wife’s opiates put a little gravity in his feet. Charlie answered the policeman’s questions, feeling high and loose. He offered his fingers, and the sergeant rolled each on an ink pad, then onto a corresponding square. They took his picture and sat him at a desk with a typewriter. But the Palmer police had no intention of holding Charlie in a jail cell. A complaint had been filed, and they had his address and number. They knew where to find him if he failed to show up for his court date.

Charlie was almost floppy by the time they released him back into the parking lot. The late winter sun was almost gone now, and a cold rain fell from a dirty nickel sky. He found his keys, sat in the driver’s seat, stared out the bleary windshield. He couldn’t stay here, with nobody to see. He skated out onto the main road, heard a horn, traced the white line. Brake lights blossomed across the glass, rain pounded the roof like congas. He needed a pay phone. He pulled off the strip at some motel lights and opened the door, slid halfway out, stopped. The rain was cold needles on the back of his neck, soaking his knees. Who to call? Michelle wasn’t an appropriate choice at this point, and this clearly wasn’t a call he could make to Adrianne. The only other number he could remember was the babysitter. Then he sat on the curb and waited for the ride to the hospital.