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I stared at him in disbelief. ED was in my ear, reminding me that this was why Dad was anevilguy—he was trying to push his abusive behavior onto others.
“It’s you,” I told him.
He looked at me, stunned.
“You make me eat food because you want me to gain weight so I can be miserable like you. I know you’re sad Mom died, but that’s not my fault.”
The officers looked confused.
“You reported your father for abusing you because he makes you eat?” Officer Cho asked me.
“Itisabuse when I can’t fit into clothes that all the other girls at my school wear,” I answered.
She gave me a once-over. “I’m sure you’d be able to wear any of the clothes your classmates wear,” she said.
“I’m 5’3” and weigh ninety pounds,’ I said, waiting for the officers’ shocked responses, which never materialized. “That means I’m clinically obese. I should weigh eighty.”
“Eighty pounds?” she said in disbelief.
She was wearing my last nerve.
“I know how big I am, and I know he’s the one responsible,” I said, pointing to Dad. I stood up and returned to the bathroom, locking myself inside.
Dad continued to talk to them. I could hear their conversation. He was telling them how every day after school, I’d lock myself in the bathroom for hours at a time, how he was worried I might hurt myself, and that he didn’t know what to do.
“You need to remove her bedroom and bathroom doors,” Officer Cho told him. She also said he should throw out our scale, which he’d already done when I began obsessively weighing myself countless times a day.
After they finished speaking, Dad thanked them for their time, and they wished him good luck. He needed much more than that.
Because a couple of days later, I was hospitalized.
CHAPTER6
MY PATIENT,TOM, just left, and I have a ten-minute break before my next session starts, so I rush to call Eddie.
“After you left, I went to the funeral home where my mom’s memorial service was held. The undertaker was a family friend. He told me he never saw her body and was hedgy when I first asked him about it,” I tell him. “And a detective was just here. The woman that came to my office this morning is a primary suspect in a murder.”
“She’s also a fugitive,” Eddie says.
“What?” I say.
“Paul just called me. He has a contact in the FBI’s facial analysis eval unit who ID’d her. Her name’s Cristina Cadell.”
Cadell … why does that name ring a bell?
“Wait … as in the TriCPharma billionaire Cadell family?”
“Yes,” Eddie says. “She’s William Cadell Jr.’s daughter.”
“He’s one of the brothers the Feds are targeting in their case against TriCPharma,” I say.
“Exactly.”
I know about TriCPharma because it’s one of the biggest companies responsible for the opioid epidemic in thiscountry. Last month the justice department announced fraud charges against William Cadell Jr. and Quentin Cadell, the brothers who inherited the company from their late father, William Cadell Sr., for misbranding one of their addictive pain drugs—which had only been meant to be used in short-term hospital settings—for everyday use by the masses.
Many in my field who’ve witnessed firsthand how TriCPharma drugs have destroyed patients’ lives and their families feel these charges are a long time coming. When the charges were first announced, I immediately thought of my mom, who specialized in treating addiction in her private practice. The year before she died, she lost a patient to an accidental overdose who had suffered a sports-related back injury and was prescribed pain medication that led to a pain pill addiction.
As laid back as my mom was, I remember how his death hung over her. After she went to his funeral, I overheard her talking with Dad about it. “It didn’t have to be this way,” she said, choking up. Treating patients who suffered from addiction impacted her deeply. I never saw her drink alcohol in my life, not even once.
