Chapter 8
The weeks before Christmas were insanely busy for Alex.
Every woman he had treated for the last year, even before he moved his practice to Bel Air, wanted some kind of treatment or tune-up before the holidays.
Word of mouth, particularly in the Hollywood community, had grown his practice rapidly in the past six months since he had opened his offices in Bel Air and expanded his practice into Bellissima.
His new and old patients loved it, and Mickie was a familiar face there now.
Her photograph was blown up on his office wall.
She circulated among the patients as they left and arrived and chatted with them, and knew many of them.
They thought her an enchanting young woman and enjoyed talking to her.
She wore mostly Chanel now, and had bought lots of white pants and white sweaters, and white Chanel jackets to blend into the décor.
Sometimes she just wore a white bodysuit, to show off her incredible figure.
Alex had instructed her to tell patients she had had either body contouring or cool sculpting if they asked for specifics.
And that she’d had both Thermage and regular mesotherapy on her face.
She knew just what to say now. Alex was particularly fond of mesotherapy because it was a combination of pharmaceuticals by injection, which allowed him to mix his own blend of secret ingredients and experiment on patients.
Most of the time the results were remarkable.
There was risk involved because it was not FDA approved, which he glossed over when describing it to patients, and since they trusted him implicitly most of them let him try it.
Only the most skeptical or skittish hesitated or decided against it.
He was so convincing when he told them about a treatment tailored specifically to them, and seeing Mickie’s gorgeous face usually reassured them.
It was his favorite treatment, because he could combine so many different elements in the injections.
He could add vitamins, use homeopathics, hormones, or enzymes to get different results tailored to each patient.
He had a natural talent for his specialty, like an artist. He made women more beautiful.
And just about everyone wanted Botox and bigger lips for Christmas. Some days it felt like an assembly line as he saw as many as fifteen to twenty patients a day, nearly double his usual caseload. He stayed late every night in order to fit them all in before the holidays.
He was doing a delicate collagen thread lift when Wendy came to tell him that he had a registered letter he needed to sign for.
There was no way he could leave the procedure to do it.
They had hired two more women in the office just to deal with increased billing since June.
He had never expected the volume of patients to increase as fast as it had.
He had been right to leave Florida and come to L.A.
It had taken two years to open his new offices, and the gamble had paid off.
“Can’t you sign for me?” he said to Wendy.
“It’s registered, no, I can’t,” she said firmly.
The mail carrier said he would wait. He had to wait forty minutes until Alex finished the procedure, apologized to the patient, and left Wendy with her while he went to sign for the letter.
He tossed it on his desk unopened, and came back to chat with the patient until she left, as he always did.
Bedside manner was everything in alternate esthetic medicine, as he called it.
He refused to call it surgery, since he never used a scalpel.
He had four patients back-to-back after the collagen thread lift, and it was almost eight o’clock that night before he remembered the registered letter on his desk.
Wendy hadn’t opened it, since it was registered to his name and handwritten and she thought it might be personal, so she had left it where he tossed it.
He read it in a short stack of other letters.
Some were just Christmas wishes, a few were bills for Mickie’s clothes.
He opened the registered letter last and sat staring at it for a long time.
It was from a patient whom he vaguely remembered.
He had seen her in July for Botox injections and silicone injections, and never again.
Liquid silicone was not approved by the FDA, but he had used it successfully several times.
And there was counterfeit Botox on the market, but he was careful about his suppliers.
The woman said that she had spent four months in the hospital due to his treatments and nearly died.
He had injected her with liquid silicone without warning her it was not approved.
She had had to have surgery to remove it.
She was now facially disfigured. The silicone had entered her lungs and nearly killed her.
She had had an embolism as a result, and she was filing suit against him civilly, but more important, she had turned her medical files over to an attorney to bring criminal charges against him for attempted murder.
The civil suit was frightening enough, but could be settled.
Mistakes happened sometimes if a patient had an allergic reaction, and he engaged in delicate procedures.
But criminal charges would end his career if he was found guilty.
His mesotherapy injections often contained non-FDA approved substances, although some were quite harmless.
The liquid silicone was potentially a major problem in a criminal case.
The woman had sent him a handwritten letter so that he would know from her personally, and not just through the courts or the police or lawyers, that he had ruined her life.
She had attempted suicide twice since being released from the hospital in November, but had now decided to live at least long enough to see him put behind bars.
She had included a photograph of her face and what he saw there made him want to cry, not for what he had done to her, but what it would do to him if the case went to criminal trial.
She looked like the Elephant Man. He put it back in the envelope with the letter and put it in a locked drawer in his desk.
He hoped that the police would believe she was a crackpot and would drop the case.
It was all he could hope for. He didn’t dare tell anyone about the letter.
He didn’t even dare call a lawyer. He was too terrified to think.
He just wanted to ignore it and will it away.
He poured himself a stiff drink from the bar in his office, a straight double Scotch, neat. Everyone had gone home by then, and he turned off the lights and went up to the apartment.
Mickie noticed immediately how pale he was, and she could smell the Scotch on his breath when she kissed him.
“Are you okay? You’re very pale.”
“I’m just tired, long day. Everyone wants something before Christmas.
” He tried smiling at her but it felt like a rictus, and he felt nauseous and dizzy.
He was half terrified the police would show up any minute.
His mesotherapy injections were sometimes very creative.
He believed in them, but an accident could happen to any doctor, even with a simple procedure if a patient had an adverse reaction.
He went through the motions of sex with Mickie that night but she could barely arouse him. He threw up afterward, and she put him to bed, sure he had the flu.
He was better in the morning, and had sex with her to prove he was, but he felt like a robot all day.
He could barely get through the patients he had to see, and was much more cautious than usual with his mesotherapy patients, making their treatments up of mostly vitamins and hormones, and he didn’t use liquid silicone all day.
He was haunted by the registered letter locked in his desk, not for the patient’s sake, but for his own.
It took him four days to stop expecting to see the police at the door.
He felt like he could breathe again, and told himself nothing would come of it.
And on the fifth day, he got another registered letter.
At first he thought it was from the same woman, but it wasn’t.
It was from another woman who had almost died from a counterfeit Botox injection he had given her, and liquid silicone too.
He suddenly realized he must have bought a bad lot months ago, and it was a miracle no one had died.
But the second woman was even more severely disfigured than the first one, and she was threatening to hand over her files to the police, and sue him civilly for ten million dollars.
She was a flight attendant and could no longer work.
She had been in the hospital for months, fighting for her life, and some of the silicone damage had to be surgically removed.
The second letter almost did him in. He didn’t know what to do.
He knew he had to call a lawyer, but no one had brought charges yet, the police hadn’t shown up, and there were things in his past he didn’t wish to share even with a lawyer, let alone with the press or all the patients in his practice.
All he could hope was that the police wouldn’t bother to press charges.
He was terrified that more women like them would surface.
They had waited a long time to hire lawyers and contact him, because they’d been too sick to do so, had been hospitalized, and had wanted to see the extent of the damage after a few months and if it would improve.
It hadn’t. There were before and after photographs of the second woman, and it was tragic.
He sobbed when he looked at them, and locked the second letter up with the first one.
He felt like there was a time bomb ticking in the drawer and didn’t know what to do with it.