Small Great Things(82)

Kennedy reaches across me and points to a number. “What’s that mean?”

“The baby’s blood sugar was low. He hadn’t nursed. The mom had gestational diabetes, so that wasn’t particularly surprising.”

“Is that your handwriting?” she asks.

“No, I wasn’t the delivery nurse. That was Lucille; I took over for her after her shift ended.” I flip the page. “This is the newborn assessment—the form I filled out. Temperature of ninety-eight point one,” I read, “nothing concerning about his hair whorls or fontanels; Accu-Chek at fifty-two—his sugar was improving. His lungs were clear. No bruising or abnormal shaping of the skull. Length nineteen point five inches, head circumference thirteen point five inches.” I shrug. “The exam was perfectly fine, except for a possible heart murmur. You can see where I noted it in the file and flagged the pediatric cardiology team.”

“What did the cardiologist say?”

“He never got a chance to diagnose it. The baby died before that.” I frown. “Where are the results of the heel stick?”

“What’s that?”

“Routine testing.”

“I’ll subpoena it,” Kennedy says absently. She starts tossing around papers and files until she finds one labeled with the seal of the medical examiner. “Ah, look at this…Cause of death: hypoglycemia leading to hypoglycemic seizure leading to respiratory arrest and cardiac arrest,” Kennedy says. “Cardiac arrest? As in: a congenital heart defect?”

She hands me the report. “Well, I was right, for what it’s worth,” I say. “The baby had a grade-one patent ductus.”

“Is that life-threatening?”

“No. It usually closes up by itself the first year of life.”

“Usually,” she repeats. “But not always.”

I shake my head, confused. “We can’t say the baby was sick if he wasn’t.”

“The defense doesn’t have the burden of proof. We can say anything—that the baby was exposed to Ebola, that a distant cousin of his died of heart disease, that he was the first kid to be born with a chromosomal abnormality inconsistent with life—we just have to lay out a trail of bread crumbs for the jury and hope they’re hungry enough to follow.”

I sift through the medical file again until I find the photocopy of the Post-it note. “We could always show them this.”

“That does not create doubt,” Kennedy says flatly. “That, in fact, makes the jury think you might have a reason for being pissed off in the first place. Let it go, Ruth. What really matters here? The pain from just a little bruise to your ego? Or the guillotine hanging over your head?”

My hand tightens on the paper, and I feel the sting of a paper cut. “It was not a little bruise to my ego.”

“Great. Then we’re in agreement. You want to win this case? Help me find a medical issue that shows the baby might still have died, even if you’d taken every single measure possible to save it.”

I almost tell her, then. I almost say that I tried to resuscitate that child. But then I would have to admit that I had lied to Kennedy in the first place, when here I stand, telling her it’s wrong to lie about a cardiac anomaly. So instead, I stick my finger in my mouth and suck at the wound. In the kitchen, I find a box of Band-Aids and carry them back to the table, wrap one around my middle finger.

This is not a case about a heart murmur. She knows it, and I know it.

I look down at my kitchen table, and run my thumbnail against the grain of the wood. “You ever make your little girl peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?”

“What?” Kennedy glances up. “Yes. Sure.”

“Edison, he was a picky eater when he was little. Sometimes he decided he didn’t want the jelly, and I’d have to try to scrape it off. But you know, you can’t ever really take the jelly off a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, once it’s there. You can still taste it.”

My lawyer is looking at me as if I’ve lost my mind.

“You told me this lawsuit isn’t about race. But that’s what started it. And it doesn’t matter if you can convince the jury I’m the reincarnation of Florence Nightingale—you can’t take away the fact that I am Black. The truth is, if I looked like you, this would not be happening to me.”

Something shutters in her eyes. “First,” Kennedy says evenly, “you might very well have been indicted no matter what race you were. Grieving parents and hospitals that are trying to keep their insurance premiums from going through the roof create a perfect recipe for finding a fall guy. Second, I am not disagreeing with you. There are definite racial overtones in this case. But in my professional opinion, bringing them up in court is more likely to hinder than to help you secure an acquittal, and I don’t think that’s a risk you should take just to make yourself feel better about a perceived slight.”

“A perceived slight,” I say. I turn the words over in my mouth, running my tongue across the sharp edges. “A perceived slight.” I lift my chin and stare at Kennedy. “What do you think about being white?”

She shakes her head, her face blank. “I don’t think about being white. I told you the first time we sat down—I don’t see color.”

“Not all of us have that privilege.” I reach for the Band-Aids and shake them across all her charts and folders and files. “Flesh color,” I read on the box. “Tell me, which one of these is flesh color? My flesh color?”