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“After Amelia’s accident, I left my job at Bell and became an accountant. I took the tapes with me. The hospital didn’t want the interviews. They knew the dangers holding onto them posed and told the Cadells I had them. I considered contacting the press, but I was worried the Cadells might target Amelia’s parents, who were devastated after their precious daughter died. So I kept them and built this compartment to hide the interviews. I figured the mold would be a good deterrent if they ever came by looking for them.”
“Did they?” I ask.
He nods. “More times than I can count. They hired people to break in when I wasn’t home and ransacked my place over and over again, searching for the tapes. I filed multiplepolice reports, even though I knew nothing would ever come of them. Eventually, they gave up and stopped breaking in. I thought maybe one day after I died, someone might discover the tapes and release them to the world, and the Cadells would finally get what they deserve.”
“Thank you for protecting them,” I say. “May I take a look?”
“Go ahead.”
I get down on my knees and sift through the tapes. They’re labeled with patient names, patients whose lives were destroyed by TriCPharma drugs. I go through several dozen tapes and come across Esther Hermes’s, but I don’t see Mom’s. I keep looking until I spot one wedged in the back corner. It’s stuck. I have to jimmy it to get it out. When I pick it up, I see the name—Irene Mayer.
“This is my mom’s,” I say.
“I’m not sure what kind of condition it’s in,” Dr. Siegel says. “After I left Bell, I became an accountant. I haven’t watched these interviews since. I have a VHS player downstairs. We can try playing it.”
“Okay,” I say, standing up, patting the attic’s dust off my hands and knees. I follow Dr. Siegel back downstairs into his study, where there’s a desk, chair, small sofa, and an old television on a stand with a VHS recorder delicately balanced on top of it.
I hand Dr. Siegel the tape. My hand shakes, and Mom’s bracelet with the lima bean and its engravings and scratch tremble on my wrist. I’ve barely eaten the last few days, and I’m on the precipice of possibly learning what the Cadells are so nervous about me uncovering—the only possible leverage I’ll have to reclaim my life.
Dr. Siegel inserts the tape into his VHS player and presses the play button. The film quality is grainy with light streaks on it.
A much younger Dr. Siegel is seated at a small table in a nondescript room, speaking into the camera, which is shaky at first but quickly steadies.
“Today’s interview is with Irene Mayer, who was admitted to the hospital three weeks ago. How are you doing today, Irene?” he says.
The camera clumsily moves to my very young mom, dressed in a mint green hospital gown, seated across from Dr. Siegel behind the same table.
“Okay,” she says.
“Can you tell us what brought you to Bell?”
“I’m a freshman at NYU. I’ve always had anxiety. A friend, well, a boyfriend, told me there was this pain medication that might help me, so I tried it and got addicted,” she says.
This is the boyfriend that she also mentioned in her congressional testimony.
“What has the detox process been like for you so far?” Dr. Siegel continues.
“Like someone pulled out the insides of my body, hammered them over and over again, and then stuffed them back inside of me. I wouldn’t wish this experience on my worst enemy,” she says.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“But I’m also grateful to be here, for a chance at recovery,” she says.
So far, I don’t understand why the Cadells would be worried or care about me seeing any of this. If anything, Mom seems less intent on personally hanging them in this interview than she did in her congressional testimony.
I pause the tape and turn to Dr. Siegel. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” he says.
“Why do you think the Cadells would care about this interview now?”
“An old lawyer friend of mine once told me these interviews establish decades-old misconduct on the company’s part, which could impact sentencing if the Cadells are ever brought to justice.”
Claire mentioned that, too, about the congressional testimony. But if that were the case, why aren’t they worried about all the other patients Dr. Siegel interviewed at Bell, like Esther? They never went after her. Why are they focused on Mom and what she said? Maybe there’s still something to come in the interview.
“Let’s keep going,” I say, turning it back on and focusing my attention on the television.
“Can you tell me what this experience has meant to you as a freshman in college?” Dr. Siegel asks Mom.
