Small Great Things(120)
I manage to jerk my head a few degrees and see that there are several women in the jury box who are doing the same thing. But me, there are no tears left in me.
I am drowning in everyone else’s tears.
Odette walks toward Marie and hands her a box of tissues. The soft sound of sobs surrounds me, like cotton batting on all sides. “What happened next?” the prosecutor asks.
Marie dabs at her eyes. “I wrapped Davis Bauer in a blanket. I put his hat back on. And I gave him to his mother and father.”
I am wooden.
I close my eyes. And I sink, I sink.
—
IT TAKES ME a few minutes to focus on Kennedy, who has already started the cross-examination of Marie when I clear my head. “Did any patient ever complain to you about Ruth’s expertise as a nurse, prior to Turk Bauer?”
“No.”
“Did Ruth provide substandard care?”
“No.”
“When you wrote that note in the infant’s chart, you knew there would only be two nurses working at any given time, and that there might be a possibility the patient might be left without supervision at some point during his hospital stay?”
“That’s not true. The other nurse on duty would have covered.”
“And what if that nurse was busy? What if,” Kennedy says, “she got called away on an emergency C-section, for example, and the only nurse remaining on the floor was in fact African American?”
Marie’s mouth opens and closes, but no sound emerges.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Malone—I didn’t quite get that.”
“Davis Bauer was not left unsupervised at any point,” she insists. “Ruth was there.”
“But you—her supervisor—you had prohibited her from ministering to this particular patient, isn’t that right?”
“No, I—”
“Your note barred her from actively treating this particular patient—”
“In general,” Marie explains. “Obviously not in the case of emergency.”
Kennedy’s eyes flash. “Was that written in the patient’s chart?”
“No, but—”
“Was that written on your Post-it note?”
“No.”
“Did you advise Ruth that in certain circumstances her Nightingale pledge as a nurse should supersede what you’d ordered?”
“No,” Marie murmurs.
Kennedy folds her arms. “Then how,” she asks, “was Ruth supposed to know?”
—
WHEN COURT BREAKS for lunch, Kennedy offers to get us a bite to eat, so that Edison and I don’t have to run a gauntlet of press. I tell her I’m not hungry. “I know it doesn’t feel like it,” she tells me. “But this was a good start.”
I give her a look that tells her exactly what I’m thinking: there is no way that jury isn’t going to be thinking of Turk Bauer trying to resuscitate his own son.
After Kennedy leaves us, Edison sits down beside me. He loosens his tie. “You all right?” I ask him, squeezing his hand.
“I can’t believe you’re the one asking me that.”
A lady walks by us and sits beside Edison on the bench outside the courtroom. She is deeply involved in a text conversation on her phone. She laughs and frowns and tsks, a human opera of one. Then finally she looks up as if she’s just realized where she is.
She sees Edison beside her, and shifts just the tiniest bit, to put a hair of space between them. Then she smiles, as if this will make everything all right.
“You know,” I say, “I’m sort of hungry.”
Edison grins. “I’m always hungry.”
We rise in tandem and sneak out the back of the courthouse. I don’t even care at this point if I run into the entirety of the media, or Wallace Mercy himself. I wander down the street with my arm tucked into Edison’s until we find a pizza place.
We order slices and sit down, waiting to be called. In the booth, Edison hunches over his Coca-Cola, sucking hard on the straw until he reaches the bottom of the glass and slurps. I, too, am lost in my thoughts and my memories.
I guess I didn’t realize that a trial is not just a sanctioned character assassination. It is a mind game, so that the defendant’s armor is chipped away one scale at a time, until you can’t help but wonder if maybe what the prosecution is saying is true.
What if I had done it on purpose?
What if I’d hesitated not because of Marie’s Post-it note but because, deep down, I wanted to?
I am distracted by Edison’s voice. Blinking, I come back to center. “Did they call our name?”
He shakes his head. “Not yet. Mama, can I…can I ask you something?”
“Always.”
He mulls for a moment, as if he is sifting through words. “Was it…was it really like that?”
There is a bell at the front counter. Our food is ready.
I make no move to retrieve it. Instead I meet my son’s gaze. “It was worse,” I say.
—
THE ANESTHESIOLOGIST WHO is called that afternoon as a witness for the State is someone I do not know very well. Isaac Hager doesn’t work on my floor unless a code is called. Then, he arrives with the rest of the team. When he came to minister to Davis Bauer I did not even know his name.