September 26, 1995 was a Tuesday. As I was
showering for work that morning, I was replaying portions of an episode of
“Murphy Brown” we watched the night before. I dressed in a long-sleeved beige
and black tunic and black pants. It was cool already that late September.
My fiancé and I had had sex the night before
and he was already showered and dressed, making coffee in the kitchen. He wore
a forest green shirt and beige and green tie that was a gift from a coworker
the previous Christmas.
Not only was he my fiancé, but he was also
my employer. At the time he was also my dealer. We were both addicted to fentanyl;
actually any opiate would do. He was a doctor and had IV fentanyl and a litany
of other opiates at his office in addition to a cabinet full of Tylenol #3 with
codeine and Darvocet, an oral opiate pain reliever banned by the FDA in late
2010 due to risk of cardiac events in otherwise healthy patients.
This day began as any other. There was no
reason to suspect the day wouldn’t be like all the other days we’d strung
together, stashing away meds during the course of a workday to use ourselves.
Our thinking was so delusional we thought no body in the office knew a thing
about our diversion of narcotics. This, despite a new work policy that only he could reconcile the narc count at the
end of the day whereas until February of 1995, any staff person could complete
that task, as long as another coworker was watching, counting along, and also
signed the log indicating the count was correct: amounts of each drug we
started with in the morning minus what was documented as administered that day equaled
the total amounts left. That was the case until our addictions became so
overwhelming and ravenous at the start of ‘95 that a few doses stashed away
here and there was no longer sufficient. We were using amounts that would register
as “toxic” on urine drug screens and there was no hiding it by manipulating the
narc count. So the new policy of the doc completing the narc count was
established and he would go through the motions of counting, subtracting and
establishing an accurate drug count each afternoon.
All of it was fake. Made up patient case
numbers showed up on the log sheets. After that lie wasn’t expansive enough to
cover up what we were using, he stopped tracking the drugs all together,
although he continued the ritual of counting and entering false totals each
workday.
On our way to work that morning we laughed
and chatted. Of course we had shot up on the kitchen counter before leaving,
both of us at the point that we needed to use early each morning just to feel
normal and functional. We arrived at his office around 6:45am as usual. He
began seeing patients at seven.
There was a lull at 10:20 that morning which
gave us a desperately needed chance to “feed the beast”; we needed maintenance
doses to keep going until mid-afternoon. At 10:30am the receptionist called his
office and through the speaker phone said, “Umm, there are people here…legal
people from the medical board that want to see you…they want copies of the narcotic
logs too.”
Well, shit. Maybe in the deep recesses of
our brains we knew this day of reckoning would come, but we had not prepared
for it. That’s just one of the things addiction steals from you: your ability
to think like a reasonable human being. Drugs made us think we were invincible.
The drugs lied.
Being the good co-dependent I was, I walked to the front desk and faced a
representative from the state medical board, two U.S. Marshalls, and someone
from the Federal Dept of Justice. If he walked out to meet them, they would
arrest him instantly, he said. So while I stood across the counter from them
and collected business cards, he was shimming out the women’s restroom window
down to his Jeep Cherokee and driving to his business attorney’s office. They
asked if I was Kristine Porath (my maiden name) and I nodded yes. They asked me
to bring them the narcotic logs for the past six months and I told them they
were locked in the safe in his office and I didn’t know the combination. Then
they asked to speak with him and I said he was unavailable and his attorney
would contact them. (All of this I had been prepped with before leaving his
office.)
They left en masse as they had arrived. I went to the storage room, grabbed four
or five dull-red sharps containers and hid in his office, dumping every
pre-filled syringe and vial of whatever controlled substance we had stashed into
the sharps boxes and sealing them shut. Ten minutes into this his private line
rang. I told him what I was doing and he yelled at me, “Are you fucking crazy!?
Get that shit out of those sharps containers and bring it to the house. Someone
from (insert attorney’s office name here) will pick you up in ten minutes and
drive you home. I will already be there.”
Ok. I knew my thinking was just as impaired
as his, until he demanded I bring the drugs we were both accused of using
illegally by the Feds, (the Federal fucking government, man!!) to our home to
use later that afternoon. My first instinct was to throw the shit out. His was
to have me illegally transport it home so we could get fucked up later and
forget about all of this? You’d be surprised at how easy it is to open a sealed
medical waste container. Maybe it was adrenaline that fueled my power to rip
the covers off, or it could’ve been my own addiction that wasn’t ready to give
in, but I did it. I did exactly what he and my addiction demanded of me.
In the end our relationship was officially
over in September 1996. He went to residential treatment and stayed clean while
I was in and out of using. He was serious about getting his medical license
re-instated and couldn’t be with a woman who still used. I needed and got a
$5,000 check from my parents to put the “second best” defense attorney in
Milwaukee on retainer because he of course had “the best” defense attorney
representing him. I went into treatment that September and stayed clean for
four years. He eventually moved to Michigan and began a family practice
residency. It was weird though because for three or four years we still talked
on the phone, exchanged Christmas cards with each other’s parents, and my dad
went golfing with him on a business trip to Michigan.
I sold the two carat engagement ring and
spent a week in France in March of 1997. When I came home there was a message
on my answering machine from my attorney telling me the Feds knew our
relationship was over and would I now consider coming in to talk with them.
It’s creepy to know that the federal government had been watching me,
monitoring my personal comings and goings, possibly recording my phone calls, I
had no idea. But they were right, I was now willing to come in and tell my
story, answer their questions and was provided with immunity testifying to the
grand jury and at a criminal trial, should the grand jury indict him.
I was well prepared by my attorney and the
day I spent three and a half hours “talking” with the DEA and DOJ was achingly
slow. They asked me what the first thing I remembered about that day, September
26, 1995. I said I remember showering. I remember that he and I had made love
the night before. I recited what we were wearing on our way to work. I remember
talking to whomever it was that showed up at his office that morning. I told
them I remember it all.
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