A Very Merry Bromance (Bromance Book Club #5) (5)
“Your honor, my client is ill. She has a fever of 102 degrees and can barely sit up.”
Judge Wilford raised an eyebrow and looked at Assistant U.S. Attorney Justin McQuistan. “It would seem Ms. Winthrop is correct. Why is the defendant in court sick?”
“Your honor, it is my understanding that—”
Gretchen cut him off. “My client cannot possibly be expected to contribute to her own hearing without proper healthcare. I request a postponement until Ms. Fuentes can be treated properly.”
The judge waved them back to their tables. A moment later, he spoke into the record. “The court grants defendant’s request for a postponement pending proper medical treatment for Ms. Fuentes.”
He banged the gavel, and Gretchen let out the first full breath in over a half hour. She sat down next to her client, Carla, a fifty-six-year-old woman who’d crossed the southern border with her parents at the age of seventeen. Carla’s parents had already been deported, and the court had denied her request to stay even though she’d lived in the United States nearly all her life. But she had children now. And grandchildren. A boy and a girl, both under three. An American family who loved and needed her.
Gretchen squeezed her hand. “It’s going to be okay. A postponement is good. We’re going to get you healed up, and I will bring you proper clothes and shoes.”
Tears leaked down Carla’s cheeks. “My babies . . .”
“I will request a visitation.”
Too quickly, deputies took her away through the door at the side of the courtroom. Back to the detention facility where countless others waited their fate. People who came to the United States out of desperation and found the Land of the Free did not always live up to its ideals. The clerk called the next case as Gretchen shoved her files back into her bag. As she walked out, another lawyer waiting for another client took her place. An endless cycle of cruelty that tore parents from their children, wives from husbands, friends from friends. And for what reason? Because they weren’t lucky enough to win the lottery of birth? Because they wanted a better life for the people they loved? Because they were too desperate to stand in the impossibly long line for legal entry while they watched celebrities and athletes and supermodels cut to the front of the line?
Gretchen paused outside the courtroom and leaned against the wall, letting her overloaded bag fall to her feet. She closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath. She’d been practicing as an immigration attorney for nearly ten years, and it never got easier. If anything, it had gotten harder. When she’d started, she’d had the benefit of idealism, that naive hope that she could make a difference. Now she knew better. The only thing that never changed was how hard certain Americans would fight to wall out the most vulnerable, who simply wanted a chance at a better life. Sometimes she wondered if she was doing any good at all, if maybe she’d be better off using her experience and expertise to push for better laws. But who was she kidding? She was never leaving Nashville, and the reasons had nothing to do with her career.
Gretchen peeled away from the wall and headed toward the lobby of the courthouse. She had a three-hour drive back to Nashville, her hometown and the location of her law clinic. The federal immigration court in Memphis was the only one in the entire state of Tennessee—just one more hurdle for her deportation clients, who barely had reliable transportation to get to work, much less the other side of the state. After waving at the security guards, she pushed open the heavy, thick glass door and braced herself against the blast of wintry air. People up north would laugh at what southerners like her considered cold, but she was a Tennessee girl to the bone. Anything under fifty degrees was an assault.
As she drove, she dictated notes into her phone for the next steps in Carla’s case, stopping only when she reached the exit that would take her back to the office. December had puked its merry contents all over the city’s streets and buildings. Massive wreaths hung from streetlamps, their red bows flapping wildly in the wind. If she opened her window, the scent of roasted pecans from the nearby Christmas market would soften the earthy tang of the river. Orange road barricades blocked entire lanes to direct the masses of tourists in town for the annual Christmas on the Cumberland display, where more than a million lights were strung along the famous Cumberland River Pedestrian Bridge and the two parks it connected.
Few cities did Christmas as big as Nashville.
Few people despised it as much as Gretchen.
Which is why her office was the only one on its block without a wreath on the door or a string of lights outlining the front window. She had a no-decoration rule at her clinic, which was located on the first floor of a three-story building in the city’s east side, an eclectic neighborhood of artsy stores, quaint restaurants, and historic brick buildings. In the ten years since Gretchen had opened her doors, the neighborhood had undergone a revitalization that bordered on gentrification. But she couldn’t afford to keep up with the revival. Immigration was a civil matter, not criminal, which meant that the defendants were not guaranteed the right to counsel. The vast majority of deportation defendants never sought attorneys to help them, and the ones who did rarely had the money to pay. Gretchen’s cases were nearly all pro bono, which meant she couldn’t afford a fancy office. At least her friend Alexis owned a café up the street, so quick lunches and hits of caffeine were just a block away.
Gretchen parked in the small lot behind her building, grabbed her things, and walked in the back door. Her assistant, Addison, pounced the minute she saw Gretchen coming up the hallway toward the front. “It’s freezing in here. Can’t we please turn the heat up today?”