Concussion Read online

  Copyright © 2015 by Jeanne Marie Laskas

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  RANDOM HOUSE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to Cambridge University Press for permission to reprint an excerpt from “The Aftermath of Boxing” by J.A.N. Corsellis, C. J. Bruton, and Dorothy Freeman-Browne from Psychological Medicine, vol. 3, issue 3, August 1973, pp. 270–303, copyright © 1973 by Cambridge University Press. Reprinted by permission.

  Portions of this book have appeared, in different form, in GQ.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Laskas, Jeanne Marie

  Concussion / Jeanne Marie Laskas.

  pages cm

  “A Random House Trade Paperback Original”—T.p. verso.

  ISBN 978-0-8129-8757-7 (acid-free paper)—ISBN 978-0-8129-9808-5 (eBook)

  1. Brain—Concussion. 2. Sports injuries. 3. Head—Wounds and injuries. I. Title.

  RC394.C7L37 2015

  617.5'1044—dc23 2015020171

  eBook ISBN 9780812998085

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Victoria Wong, adapted for eBook

  The motion picture Concussion is based on the GQ article “Game Brain” by Jeanne Marie Laskas, published September 2009.

  Cover design: Fort

  Cover photograph: © Tom Pannell/Corbis

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1: Obscurity

  Chapter 2: Running

  Chapter 3: Spiral

  Chapter 4: America

  Chapter 5: Fancy

  Chapter 6: The Morgue

  Chapter 7: Discovery

  Chapter 8: Belonging

  Chapter 9: Attack

  Chapter 10: Scramble

  Chapter 11: Oddball

  Chapter 12: Comfort Zone

  Chapter 13: Word

  Chapter 14: Daddy

  Photo Insert

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  By Jeanne Marie Laskas

  About the Author

  Onye ji onye n’ani ji onwe ya.

  “He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.”

  —Igbo proverb (translation by Chinua Achebe, in The Education of a British-Protected Child)

  CHAPTER 1

  OBSCURITY

  The prosecutor approaches the witness box. He’s all in gray, beautifully tailored, sleek as a dolphin, cuff links, a half Windsor knot. One thing Bennet appreciates about the American legal system is that the attorneys always dress impeccably like this. The same cannot be said, by the way, about scientists. Half of why he couldn’t survive academia was because of the sartorial slobbery. Shirttails hanging out, moccasins, saggy-ass jeans. It was too much.

  “Good morning, Doctor.”

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Doctor, would you please state your name for the members of the jury?”

  “My name is Bennet Omalu, B-E-N-N-E-T, Omalu, O-M-A-L-U.”

  Already the jurors are exchanging glances. What did he say? His accent is thick. He needs to enunciate or something.

  “Dr. Omalu, I’m going to ask you to speak into the microphone so all the members of the jury will be able to hear you. If you’ll wait for just a moment, I’ll give you a bottle of water.”

  He waits for the water. The whites of his eyes pop like flashbulbs. His face is round, a perfect circle, like a smiley-face button on a teenager’s backpack. It might make him appear calmer than he is. Does he appear calm? Thank you, thank you. He tries to appear calm. He is almost never calm. He is a man who thinks in double exclamation points. Excitable!! Everyone tells him he looks much younger than his thirty-nine years. Maybe because he’s short, he’ll say. He’s short because they didn’t have much of anything to feed him during the war, he’ll joke. It’s not a joke, actually. His sisters think it’s funny. Anyway, he likes it when people say he looks young. Also he likes to talk about himself. I’m a Christian. I’m a humble man. I surrender to God’s mercy and love. There’s an inwardness about him, but also a happy-go-lucky veneer of innocence.

  He twists the cap off the bottle of water, sips.

  Honestly, right now he wouldn’t mind a cigarette. He hasn’t smoked in years, hasn’t even thought about it, but right now a cigarette might be a terrific help. Cigarettes and kola nuts were how he survived the stress of med school. The green nuts, he broke them with his thumbs, plucked the fleshy lobes, and chewed them like taffy. There is no quicker kick of caffeine than the one a man gets from kola nuts. His father and everyone in the village in Nigeria, they thought the nuts were holy. His father in his tall red hat, three feathers standing high as if touching the spirit world, saying the Ibo blessing: “Ihe dï mma onye n’achö, ö ga-afü ya.” Whatever good he is looking for, he will see it. The men washing fingers, peanut butter dip, prayers, elders in robes.

  Bennet doesn’t miss any of that business. Honestly, none of it. He never wanted anything to do with those tedious old-world village rituals. He would be a man of his time. In America. Everything back home in Nigeria was about busting loose from the pettiness, the corruption, the wicked tendencies of man.

  Now he’s in America, in 2008, stuck in a boiling hot courtroom in Pittsburgh, and it feels like everything is once again about busting loose from the pettiness, the corruption, and the wicked tendencies of man. The irony is not lost on him. Thank you, God. I’m grateful you got me to America. I am truly grateful. But the irony is not lost on me.

  “Dr. Omalu,” the lawyer says, “would you tell the members of the jury, please, how you are currently employed?”

  “I’m the chief medical examiner of San Joaquin County in the central wine valley region of California,” he says, turning then to the court reporter with that super-straight posture, typing madly. “S-A-N J-O-A-Q-U-I-N,” he says.

  “How long have you been the chief medical examiner in San Joaquin?”

  “My official appointment started September 1, 2007.”

  “Can you tell us, please, where San Joaquin County is located, give us a sense of where it is on the map?”

  “It’s about one hour east of San Francisco and about forty-five minutes south of Sacramento, which is the capital of the state of California. It’s located in the central wine valley. In San Joaquin. We produce the Zinfandel. Zinfandel red wine…Zinfandel grapes. You find wine in San Joaquin—”

  Oh my God, shut up about the wine! What are you, the Chamber of Commerce? That was so stupid. He’s nervous. He’s so angry. He does not want to be here. He looks down, taps his feet together, reaches down to yank at one sock, then the other, wipes a speck of dust off his shiny new shoe.

  He got these shoes for the trial. Black cap-toe oxfords, shiny as tar. He wanted them wider. He told the guy, he said, wider? The guy said no, they’ll stretch. But they’re not stretching. Tight, like a band across the cuneiform bones, the cuboid bone, the navicular bone. Everything feels so tight, oh my gosh! His collar. The span of pin-striped wool across his back. Everything should not feel so tight. He’s testified in court hundreds of times; he’s gotten guys off death row, for God’s sake. A courtroom is not unfamiliar territory—and this courtroom specifically, in Pittsburgh, this is the one he knows best. This is where he used to live. This is where he made his mark. He needs to just calm himself down and remember he is here because he has to be, not because he wants to be. Bennet, you are a child of God do
ing your imperfect best in an imperfect world.

  “Dr. Omalu,” the prosecutor says, “how long have you been living in the United States, sir, either as a student or working as a professional?”

  “I came to the United States in October 1994.”

  “Are you married, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have any children?”

  “I have a five-month-old daughter.”

  “Is that your only child?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “In what country were you born, Doctor?”

  “I was born in Nigeria, West Africa.”

  The prosecutor glances at his notes, as if planning to move on past the introductions. He has fat eyebrows. A turnip nose. The heat in the courtroom is cranked way too high, an old boiler system, so the windows are cracked and you can hear the February wind whistle.

  The prosecutor is not done with the introductions. “Can you outline very briefly for the members of the jury,” he says, “what your educational background was prior to coming to the United States?”

  “I attended medical school in Nigeria,” Bennet says. He explains how it works there, six years, then a clinical internship, then mandated paramilitary service—three years doctoring in a rural village in the mountains. “I was the only physician,” he says, leaning into the microphone. “My primary responsibility was to stop people from dying.”

  He reaches inside his collar, pulls where it pinches. He toggles his tie. This is a full Windsor knot. Many American presidents throughout history wore a full Windsor knot. Bennet thinks Barack Obama should at least try it. But instead Obama goes for the relaxed four-in-hand knot, a much less commanding statement. Bennet keeps all his ties already tied, loosened, in his closet, ready for action. That is the secret to always having a perfect, presidential full Windsor knot.

  “Dr. Omalu, correct me if I’m wrong, you’re board certified in four separate areas of pathology, is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Those are anatomic, clinical, forensic, and neuropathology.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Dutifully, he explains how all that happened, coming to America, the research scholarship, the second medical degree at Columbia University.

  Two medical degrees?

  “Yes, sir.” He chose forensic pathology as his specialty. “A specialist in death, why and how death occurs.”

  Becoming an expert in death would seem to be a counterintuitive move for a physician, a person committed to saving lives. He would need an entire afternoon to explain to the jury how he ended up doing autopsies for a living; none of this had been in his plan for his life. None of this.

  “Just to round out the academic picture here,” the prosecutor says, “you are also currently finishing up one other degree?”

  Two more, actually, for a total of seven. “I have a master’s in public health in epidemiology. I did that at the University of Pittsburgh. I’m also completing in May, thankfully, May of this year, a master’s in business administration at Carnegie Mellon University, which I’m happy about completing. That is it.”

  “You are not going to get any more degrees?”

  “No. My father said, Bennet, you should retire as a professional student when you turn forty, and I’m turning forty this year.”

  Heh. A little levity. He looks over at the jury—two rows of blank faces. Do they even understand him? He knows people sometimes have a hard time.

  There is one person in the courtroom who understands him. The defendant, his former boss, Dr. Cyril Wecht. He’s over there at the table, a ghost in Bennet’s peripheral vision. Bennet hasn’t even been able to look at Wecht. That is so juvenile. Come on, Bennet, just look at him.

  He summons the courage, turns toward him, is disappointed to find that Wecht looks like a raisin. Tiny and shriveled. Sitting there with his head hanging low, dangling, like a grape shriveling off a vine. It hurts. It hurts my heart to see him like this. Cyril Wecht used to rule the courtroom. Like the pope walking in. And now look. In 2008, he is a seventy-six-year-old man facing a jury that could send him to prison for the rest of his life. It’s like seeing your father go crazy and lose his bowels.

  Wecht won’t make eye contact, won’t even look at Bennet. That is so juvenile. Please, Dr. Wecht. I’m sorry, Dr. Wecht. You have to know I’m sorry.

  Bennet told the FBI no, a thousand times no, he would not testify against his former boss. He said please, no, please don’t make me testify. And now he’s here in this stupid witness box in a shiny new pair of cap-toe oxfords and a ready-made presidential full Windsor knot. I’m sorry, Dr. Wecht. They said they would deport me, Dr. Wecht.

  —

  In the autopsy business, Wecht was a rock star. Early in his career, Wecht keyed in to the fact that America’s love for murder mysteries, especially real ones, could mean a bonanza for the guy with access to the dead body. He was Pittsburgh’s medical examiner, but his private practice was where the action was in his forty years as a medical-legal and forensic pathology consultant. Wecht had performed tens of thousands of autopsies, testified in criminal cases throughout the United States and abroad. In 1972 he discovered that John F. Kennedy’s brain was missing from the evidence at the National Archives, and that’s what first put him on the national stage. He got placed on a nine-member forensic pathology panel reexamining the assassination of JFK. Everyone on the panel concurred with the Warren Commission and the single bullet theory—except Wecht. Kennedy was struck by two bullets, Wecht maintained, and would continue to maintain, to the delight of conspiracy theorists around the world. “Two shooters were involved!” He loved saying that, especially on TV. He became the media’s go-to forensic pathologist, and his own kind of crime fighter. He busted the coroner responsible for Elvis Presley’s autopsy. No, Elvis did not die of a heart attack, as the original report said; he died of a lethal drug cocktail, and Wecht exposed the cover-up. He got interested in Marilyn Monroe, raising suspicion that she was murdered. He inserted himself in virtually every famous case of his day: Sharon Tate and the Manson family, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the mystery behind Legionnaires’ disease, the Scarsdale diet guru, the Branch Davidians, Vincent Foster, Laci Peterson, Anna Nicole Smith, O.J. (he did it, Wecht said, but not alone), and JonBenet Ramsey, who, he claimed, died at the hands of her father while engaged in a sex game.

  To Bennet, a young forensic pathologist on the threshold of his career, Wecht embodied a particularly glamorous American dream, and that’s who Bennet wanted to study with and that’s who he wanted to work for and that’s how he ended up coming to Pittsburgh.

  Seven years he worked for Wecht. Seven transformative years. Wecht taught him things. How to stop being meek. How to project self-confidence like an American. How to be ruthless when it came to local politics. How to curse bombastically, slamming down the phone, motherfucking cocksucking ass-kissing bastard. That was simply incredible! Bennet would have had to stop and think like a kid reciting Homer to put a string of curse words together like that. Bennet copied Wecht like a kid copies a hero. He bought the same suits, followed Wecht to the finest tailor in town.

  “You’re a black guy,” Wecht would tell him. “It’s a lot to overcome. You have to give it that extra edge.”

  Wecht would talk frankly about race, prejudice, being a black guy, being a Jewish guy, or one of those gays. He was brash, arrogant, would throw a glass of water in your face if you didn’t get the point. He started to involve Bennet in his private-practice work, a little at first, then more. He would slap a file on Bennet’s desk, say, “Here, I need you to do this independent autopsy,” and Bennet would do it, whenever Wecht demanded it. Bennet did not do those private autopsies on county time. For the record, never on county time. He would do those autopsies on Sundays, after church, after brunch with his wife, Prema, the two of them then heading off to some godforsaken morgue in some godforsaken Rust Belt town. Then Bennet would hand in the report
and Wecht would put his own name on it, collect the substantial consulting fee, and then throw Bennet a few hundred bucks. Bennet did not complain. For the record, I never complained. He was building a career. He was paying his dues. They had a good gig going. Wecht got what he needed out of the arrangement, lots of cheap labor from Bennet, and Bennet got what he needed, too: the freedom to do his own private research. Wecht gave him room, the opportunity to follow scientific hunches—explore statistical patterns of suicide, study the impact of viruses on the brain. Bennet’s mind was brimming with ideas for scientific investigation, and he loved not having to answer to any big university or government-grant-type windbag who would tell you yes or no, what to research. He had certain things he wanted to study and he couldn’t stand having people looking over his shoulder. Wecht gave him room.

  It’s the individual that matters. That was probably the biggest thing Wecht taught Bennet. Wecht taught him lessons about the harsh reality of American individualism. “Save yourself. Promote yourself. It’s all about you.” This is a paradigm shift Bennet has come to understand intellectually but even now struggles to internalize. Agreeing to testify against Wecht certainly feels like movement in that regard.

  —

  In the courtroom, the prosecutor wants gory details. This is for shock value. Bennet gets that.

  “Now, I’d like you to describe for the members of the jury,” he says, “a little bit about the autopsy process. By that I mean, from when the body is brought into the autopsy suite, who works on the body, what are their responsibilities, and how long does the process typically take?”

  “An autopsy can take from sixty minutes to five hours,” Bennet says, expressionless, like a soldier. “Depending on how complicated it is. The sixty minutes is for the straightforward drug case. An individual who is shot thirty times by the cops could take eight hours. So, um, it varies. An autopsy is essentially a systematic and comprehensive examination of a dead body from the head to the toe, using every tool of technology that is available to you to document findings, to identify findings, and to complete the forensic value of those findings.”