The Doctor and Mr. Dylan (32 page)

“And so you came in to the hospital for this unplanned, emergency anesthetic. When you arrived at the operating room, what did you find?”

“I found Mr. Dylan in the operating room, attending to Alexandra, awaiting my arrival.”

“Did he have an opportunity to inject insulin into Alexandra Antone’s IV bag before you arrived?”

“Yes. I’ve thought about that question a thousand times, because Alexandra received an insulin injection from someone, and I wasn’t the one who gave it to her. Mr. Dylan had the opportunity to inject a very large dose of insulin into Alexandra’s one-liter IV bag of fluid before I got there. She was awake with a normal blood sugar before I anesthetized her. During the hour she was asleep, I infused the entire liter of IV fluid, which is standard anesthetic care to keep the patient hydrated. This liter of fluid must have contained the lethal dose of insulin. Mr. Dylan knew I was coming in. He knew how easy it was to set me up, to frame me.”

“Why? What would be his motivation to frame you?”

“He hated me. He was angry because I sleeping with his wife, even though they were separated and their marriage was over. He was angry because my son impregnated his 17-year-old daughter, and had in Dylan’s words ‘ruined her life.’ He was angry because we had similar jobs at the hospital, but because I’m a physician and he’s a nurse anesthetist, I got paid a lot more to do the same work. And Mr. Dylan was angry at my wife, who showed up in Hibbing hurling insults at his entire family and demanding that his daughter get an abortion, which Dylan was morally opposed to.”

“Did he ever display violent behavior toward you?”

“Yes. On a partridge hunting trip two days before Alexandra’s surgery, Mr. Dylan confronted me about my affair with his wife. He pointed a loaded shotgun at me, and said he’d taken me on the hunting trip out into the woods with the intention of shooting me.  Dylan said, ‘hunting accidents happen all the time. It would be that easy.’”

“And what did happen on that hunting trip?”

I looked over at Mr. Dylan in the gallery. He was still sporting that faraway smile, as if my entire testimony was a bizarre hoax dreamed up by a desperate defendant. His flippant body language made me more determined to pin the murder on him.

“Nothing happened. Dylan changed his mind, and he let me go. I got out of there as fast as I could, and I never saw him again until the day of Alexandra’s surgery.”

“Dr. Antone, did you kill your wife?”

I took a deep breath. “No. I did not.”

“Dr. Antone, did you inject a bolus of insulin into your wife while she was anesthetized?”

“No. I did not.”

Martinovich broke into a warm, fatherly smile, and said, “Thank you, Dr. Antone. I have no further questions.” He left the podium and took a full twenty seconds to walk back to his seat. I knew Martinovich wanted my last sentences to hang in the air like the final chords of a symphony. We needed the jury to believe those final sentences, and it was crucial those words had ample time to sink in.

I was feeling more relaxed now, as blissful as I’d felt in any minute since the legal proceedings began. It was therapeutic to tell my story to the jury. My guilt was drifting away like smoke from a bonfire. Every single juror must know that Mr. Dylan was the true suspect.

Compared to Martinovich’s languid exit, Mr. Hamilton’s jaunt to the podium was swift and agile. He began the cross-examination by asking, “Dr. Antone, were you planning on divorcing your wife?”

“I hadn’t made a decision. We were living apart, but no one had filed for divorce.”

“Did you have hopes to reconcile your marriage? To get back together?”

“No.”

“In fact, you had a serious girlfriend, correct?”

“I was dating someone. Yes.”

“And that someone was Lena Johnson, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And you were sleeping with Lena Johnson, correct?”

“Yes.”

“In fact, you were in bed with Lena Johnson just hours before you anesthetized your wife for her emergency surgery. Is that true?”

“Yes.” I wriggled in my seat, my bliss pulverized and my palms drenched with sweat.

“Did you and Lena Johnson ever talk about a future together?”

“Not much. We enjoyed each other’s company. We tried to stay in the present. To enjoy the friendship we had.”

“Dr. Antone, how much was your salary as an anesthesiologist in Hibbing?”

I sucked in a quick breath. I didn’t welcome this line of questioning. “My income varied,” I said. “It varied with how many cases I did each day, and on how many days I worked.”

“Can you give me an estimate, Doctor? An approximation of the income from your Hibbing job?”

“It would be in six figures. I might make $250,000 a year.”

“We’ve heard testimony that your wife’s business interests were very valuable. In fact, that her net worth was in excess of $90 million dollars. Do you recall that testimony?”

“Yes.”

“Did your wife start her company after she was married to you?”

“She did.”

“Were you aware that her company was community property, that is, that the company belonged to both of you?”

“Yes.”

“Were you aware that you would be sole owner of your wife’s property if your wife were to die?”

“I… I wasn’t sure about that. I’d have to ask a lawyer.”

“Ninety million dollars is a lot of money, isn’t it, Doctor?”

“Yes, it is.”

“It’s a lot more money than $250,000, your yearly salary, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I hissed. I hated Hamilton right now. I wanted to reach out and squeeze his doughboy neck until his bloodshot eyes bugged out of his head.

“We heard testimony that you are highly educated, Doctor. If I do the math correctly, I figure 13 years through high school, 4 years of college, 4 years of medical school, and 6 more years of internships, residencies, and fellowships after med school. I’ve got you down for 27 years of education. Does that sound right, Doctor?”

“That’s about right, yes.” At least he’d stopped grilling me with incriminating questions. He was acknowledging my intellect, and I warmed to it. Perhaps the worst was over.

“Would you say all that training made you a smart man? A highly educated doctor?”

“It did.”

“You learned a great deal about many diseases, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“You learned a great deal about diabetes, didn’t you?”

“I did.” My fists tightened. He was about to twist everything, and I had no alternative but to spar with him.

“You learned expertise about many drugs in your training, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“That would include an expertise in the drug insulin, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Anesthesiologists sometimes need to use insulin on their patients, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Why do anesthesiologists give insulin to patients?”

“When diabetic patients have elevated glucose levels, we give insulin to decrease the blood sugar.”

“When do you give this insulin?”

“It depends. Sometimes it’s before surgery, sometimes it’s after surgery, and sometimes it’s in the operating room during surgery.” I was trying my best not to let him trap me into damning admissions, but the questions were so simple that no anesthesiologist could lie in answering them.

“In your career, how many times have you administered insulin to a patient?”

“I don’t know. Too numerous to count.”

“So on any given day, if you were to inject insulin into a patient, it could be part of an anesthesiologist’s routine day.”

I leaned forward and barked at him, “I would never inject insulin unless the patient was diabetic. I would never inject insulin unless the blood sugar was significantly elevated. There’s no way I’d inject insulin into any other patient.” A bead of sweat rolled across the bridge of my nose. I wiped my sleeve across my face, and tried to steady myself.

A bemused smile crossed Hamilton’s face. He knew he was getting to me, and he was enjoying my ordeal.

“Where would you find vials of insulin at Hibbing General Hospital?” he said.

“They would be in the refrigerator at the nursing station. They always keep insulin refrigerated.”

“And do you have free access to that refrigerator?”

I sighed. “I do. But so do a lot of people. Every nurse and physician in the operating suite can go in and out of that room.”

“We’ve heard testimony that Lena Johnson’s daughter Echo is an insulin-dependent diabetic. We’ve heard testimony that there are vials of insulin in the refrigerator in the Johnson’s kitchen. Have you ever looked inside the refrigerator in the Johnson’s home?”

“Yes.”

Have you seen the insulin in their refrigerator?”

“I don’t recall.” My heart rate jumped. I’d just lied under oath. I slowed my breathing, and prayed I could hide my guilt.

“You never saw insulin vials at the Johnson house?”

“Correct.”

“Dr. Antone, when did you discover you were going to have the opportunity to give your wife anesthesia for her appendectomy?”

“When Alexandra called me from the hospital in the middle of the night and asked me to take care of her. And as I already testified, I refused to do the anesthetic. I didn’t want to take care of her.”

“But Alexandra called you back, right? She didn’t take no for an answer, right?”

“That’s right. She refused to let Bobby Dylan give her the anesthesia. Alexandra put Dr. Perpich, the surgeon, on the phone, and he pleaded with me to come in. So I did. It wasn’t my idea.”

“Where were you when you received that phone call?”

“I was at Lena’s house.”

“Did you sleep with Lena that night?”

“I did.”

“Could you have removed insulin from the Johnson refrigerator that morning?”

“I told you I never saw any insulin there.”

“But you were in the same house as Echo Johnson’s insulin supply? That morning?”

“I didn’t touch their insulin.” I was breathing fast and shallow. My heart was thumping. The faces in the courtroom behind Hamilton blurred into a blur of brown and gray. I couldn’t look at the jury at all.

Hamilton everted his lower lip in a doubtful pout. “Doctor Antone, how much time elapsed between that phone call, the phone call that established that you would have the opportunity to anesthetize your wife, and the actual beginning of the anesthetic?”

I bristled. “I wish you’d stop calling it an ‘opportunity.’  It wasn’t an opportunity, it was just an anesthetic. Only an anesthetic.”

“Very well. How much time elapsed between when Dr. Perpich convinced you to do the anesthetic, and the actual beginning of the anesthetic?”

"I talked to Perpich about 6 a.m. The anesthetic started at about 7:30, so it was about an hour and a half.”

“So you had ninety minutes. An hour and a half. What did you do with that time?”

“I got out of bed, got dressed, and went back to my house. I had breakfast with my son, then he and I drove to the hospital together.” I cringed. It all sounded so awful. What kind of father sleeps at his girlfriend’s house, and then goes home and has breakfast with his teenage kid, who had been at home alone?

“Was ninety minutes enough time to plan the anesthetic?”

“I guess so.”

“Was it enough time to plan an intentional insulin overdose?”

“Objection,” Martinovich bellowed. “Argumentative and badgering the witness.”

“Sustained,” said Judge Satrum.

Hamilton seemed unfazed. He let a full minute tick by before he offered up his next question. “Did you give your first wife an overdose of pills, Dr. Antone?”

“No. I did not.”

“We’ve heard testimony that the pill bottle was empty at the hour when she stopped breathing. Did you watch her take an overdose of pills?”

I ground my teeth together. Couldn’t they just let Angel sleep in her grave? “Yes. I was with her at the end.”

“So you were there with your wife as she took in the excesses of medication that ended her life?”

“I was there with her. Yes.”

Hamilton’s eyes narrowed. “So we agree that you were there with your wife as an excess of medication ended her life. Now which wife are we talking about, Dr. Antone? Angel, or Alexandra, or both of them?”

“I’m talking about Angel,” I said, leaning toward Hamilton. “Only Angel!”

“I have no further questions, Your Honor,” Hamilton said, and he retired to the prosecution table.

I stood from the chair and made my way across the courtroom. I tried to keep my head high, my shoulders back, and my countenance indifferent, but inside I felt like an abject failure. How could all my years of education culminate in this wretched mess?

Martinovich asked permission to approach the bench, and he and Hamilton conversed with Judge Satrum. After the attorneys stepped down, the judge said, “The defense has requested a recess and a break in the trial until Monday morning. I deplore delays, but I’ve heard their request and have acquiesced. This court will reconvene at 9 a.m. on Monday. I remind the jurors that they are not to discuss this case with anyone, or read anything about it.” He tapped his gavel once, and left the room.