Mortal Danger

nude body and become skilled enough to give her husband home massage treatments.
    Sexual battery, as defined in California statutes, means that a person must intentionally cause harmful or offensive contact with an intimate part of another person. Those parts were listed as “…sexual organ, anus, groin, or buttocks of any person, or the breast of a female.”
    The Lakhvirs stated that Tamara Branden was at fault, too, as she knew—or should have known—that her father was not licensed to massage, draw blood, perform vaginal exams, or prescribe medicine.
    He had also given them nutritional counseling—which he was adequately trained to do.
    The case dragged on until 1993, but Kate knew none of the specifics. She felt sorry for John, because even though he tried to reassure her, she knew he was worried—perhaps even frightened. He went to great lengths to avoid being served papers on the lawsuit. He seemed to be extremely concerned over the suit, which, as he explained to Kate, was over things too minor to even consider. In the end, he gave up his practice, turning it over to his daughter Tamara for a few cents on the dollar. He no longer went into his office at all.
    “He changed his appearance,” Kate recalled. “He grew a beard, and he let his hair grow so long that he was able to wear it in a ponytail.”
    Although he didn’t live in Florida, John asked Kate’s sister and brother-in-law in Sarasota, Florida, to resend all the mail he sent to them, so that it appeared that he was aFlorida resident. With that ruse and his disguise, he felt safe. John was gleeful when people who knew him well walked right by him without recognizing him. He looked nothing like the clean-shaven, well-coiffed doctor he had been.
    Of course eventually he had to face up to the accusations of an enraged husband who thought he’d been cuckolded. The case ended in April 1993, almost two years after the Lakhvirs’ complaint was filed. It was dismissed with prejudice, meaning that it could not be refiled in the future.
    It never was.
    “John told me that he made that all go away by spending twenty-five thousand dollars,” Kate said. “I’m still not sure whether he paid that to lawyers or to the woman—but we never heard any more about it. He said it was all a misunderstanding anyway, and I believed him.”
    John was ultimately believable, especially to a woman who loved him and trusted his vows to help people—his vows that both of them would help a lot of people. And the very idea that he might force himself on another woman in any sexual way was unthinkable to her. Not John. He was an honorable and concerned doctor, and simply wasn’t like that.
    Shortly after they began their relationship, at John’s suggestion, Kate invited his best friend—Dr. Stanley Szabo,* a doctor of dental surgery who was also an expert in nutrition—to rent the empty room and bath in her condominium. He was going through a difficult divorce, and it seemed an ideal answer for all three of them. It helped pay her rent until John was able to move in with her and shareexpenses, and it helped John’s good friend, who was working for John at the time.
    Kate had never before detected a whisper of jealousy in John, but she caught her first glimpse of his capacity for rage because of this living situation—or, more accurately, as an adjunct to it.
    John and Kate had a date one night, and when he walked in the door, he was very angry. He was furious that his best friend, now living in the condo, had parked in the driveway in John’s usual spot. John couldn’t understand Kate’s thoughtlessness in allowing that to happen. How could she expect him to park on the street?
    Kate was dumbfounded that such a trivial thing would set him off. John called off their evening and drove away, still angry. But Kate made sure he had his parking space after that, and she put his reaction that night in the back of her mind. John apologized, explaining that his blood sugar had been low and that had made him lose his temper. They resumed their relationship the next day and never spoke of his “parking tantrum” again. It was only an aberration.
    She knew John was a perfectionist, even about things that shouldn’t matter that much. Kate learned that he dressed so well because he had a personal shopper who bought all his clothes for him. It was one of the more benign things she hadn’t known about him.
    Early on, she was a little surprised to find that John drank