july was a prestigious honor for a grad student like michelle. even though mark begged her not to go, she went anyway. and things started to change while i was in hawaii. he called me and said lawyers were claiming that he was doing unnecessary surgery and he was afraid it was going to become a class action suit, at which point he jumps ten steps ahead and assumes that his insurance company would settle, his license would be taken away, and everything would be destroyed. so his life is flashing before his eyes. uh-huh. one of those former patients now had terminal cancer, and she was suing him for not diagnosing it sooner. michelle says that for mark the malpractice suit was more than just a blemish on his reputation. it was a blow to his vanity. and though michelle assured him of her love and support, she said she could feel her husband
filed for bankruptcy. the person that i fell in love with, the person that i knew for five years, that person certainly was a soul mate and a best friend to me. this person who would leave behind such devastation in his wake, i don t know who he is. with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, michelle told us she should have seen the signs of trouble coming. mark was sometimes distant. he could be rude, even abusive to people he deemed his social inferiors. but the summer of 2004, a few months before mark disappeared, seemed to be the real turning point. michelle was pregnant. both of us could not have been happier at that moment. those good feelings lasted for a couple weeks. and then i had to go to hawaii for an apa conference that i was presenting at. presenting at the american psychological association that
pulling away. i knew he was stressed out about the lawsuits, but i really believed in my heart it was something we could fight against. a few weeks later, it was michelle who was devastated and needed support when she suffered a miscarriage and had to be hospitalized. and he promised, he swore that he would be there before i went under anesthesia. and he insisted that he had to go into his office to take care of some things, and he didn t show up. and i was shocked. whatever mark weinberger was doing in the office those days was also a mystery to employees like suzette dennington, weinberger s top medical assistant at the sinus clinic. he started to be one of the first people in the office and last people to leave every day. what was he doing in his office? i don t know. the door was closed. it was very quiet. we would have to knock on the door and let him know that there was another patient ready to be
mark had never allowed her to see the bills before or even have her own checking account. it s almost laughable in a way when i get faxes from banks saying i owe $3.5 million because i don t even have a concept in my head of what $3 million is. eventually, michelle learned that mark weinberger had left her $6 million in debt. we first met michelle in february 2005. five months after her husband had vanished. at that time, michelle s home was in foreclosure and she had realized she had no choice but to file for divorce. i don t know how ready to say i am filing for divorce, but financially it s a necessity right now so it s something that has to be done in order to try to separate myself from the debt that he s accrued. in october 2005, a little over a year after her husband literally jumped ship, michelle
her husband had deliberately deceived, humiliated and abandoned her, michelle continued to defend him. he was an excellent doctor. that s why it really infuriated me to see his name dragged through the mud. the real culprits, michelle felt, were former patients egged on by greedy lawyers who were suing him for malpractice. i think it s a big opportunistic, but that s the state of our legal system in this country. that s what doctors have to face every day. how can you stand up for him now? because i know how much he cared about his patients. in the end, i think that he was a very scared man. had it actually been one of those patients who caused mark weinberger to flee, forfeiting all he worked for? michelle was sure of it. she had often heard mark mention a former patient in the weeks and months before he left. a woman with terminal cancer. she had a cough that wouldn t