Gray Mountain: A Novel(61)

“Good point.”

“I’m going home. I’m tired and I think Chester said we’re having leftovers. See you in the morning.”

“Good night, Mattie.”

Long after she left, Samantha sat in the dimly lit conference room and thought about the Ryzers. Occasionally, she looked at the shopping bags filled with the sad history of their fight to collect what was due. And there she sat, a perfectly capable and licensed attorney with the brains and resources to render real assistance, to come to the aid of someone in need of representation.

What was there to fear? Why was she feeling timid?

The Brady Grill closed at eight. She was hungry and went out for a walk. She passed Donovan’s office and noticed every light was on. She wondered how the Tate trial was going but knew he was too busy to chat with her. At the café she bought a sandwich, took it back to the conference room, and carefully unloaded the Ryzers’ shopping bags.

She hadn’t pulled an all-nighter in several weeks.





19


Samantha skipped the office on Wednesday morning and left town as the school buses were making their rounds, which was not a good idea. Traffic on the twisting highway crept along, stopping and waiting while oblivious and sleep-deprived ten-year-olds, sagging under bulky backpacks, took their sweet time boarding. Across the mountain and into Kentucky, the buses disappeared and the coal trucks clogged the roads. After an hour and a half, she approached the small town of Madison, West Virginia, and stopped, as directed, at a country store under a faded Conoco sign. Buddy Ryzer was at a table in the rear, sipping coffee and reading a newspaper. He was thrilled to see Samantha and introduced her to one of his buddies as “my new lawyer.” She accepted this without comment and produced a file with authorizations allowing her to obtain all of his medical records.

In 1997, before he filed his claim against Lonerock Coal, Buddy went through a routine physical exam. An X-ray revealed a small mass on his right lung. His doctor was certain it was benign, and he was right. In a two-hour operation, he removed the mass and sent Buddy and Mavis home with the good news. Since the operation had nothing to do with his subsequent claim for black lung benefits, it was not mentioned again. Mattie felt it was imperative to gather all medical records, thus Samantha’s trip to Madison. Her destination was the hospital in Beckley, West Virginia, a town of twenty thousand.

Buddy followed her to her car, and when they were finally alone she politely informed him that they were still just investigating. No decision had been made about accepting him as a client. They would review the file, and so forth. Buddy said he certainly understood, but he was clearly on board. Telling him no would be painful.

She headed to Beckley, an hour’s drive through the heart of coal country and ground zero for mountaintop removal. There was so much dust in the air she wondered if a motorist passing through might contract black lung. Without too much trouble, she found the hospital in Beckley, and worked her way through its layers until she found the right clerk in Records. She filled out request forms, handed over authorizations signed by Mr. Ryzer, and waited. An hour passed as she e-mailed everyone she could think of. She was in a cramped, windowless room with no ventilation. Another half hour passed. A door opened, and the clerk pushed a cart through it. A small box was on the cart, and this was a relief. Maybe it wouldn’t take forever to review the records.

The clerk said, “Mr. Aaron F. Ryzer, admitted on August 15, 1997.”

“That’s it. Thank you.” The clerk left without another word. Samantha removed the first file and was soon lost in an incredibly mundane hospital stay and surgery. It appeared that the pathologist who wrote the reports was not aware the patient was a miner, nor did he look for signs of black lung. In its early stages, the disease is not readily apparent, and at that point, in August 1997, Buddy was showing symptoms but had not filed his claim. The doctor’s job had been straightforward—remove the mass, make sure it was benign, sew him up, and send him home. There was nothing remarkable about the surgery or Buddy’s stay in the hospital.

Two years later, after Buddy had filed his black lung claim, the attorneys for Casper Slate entered the picture as they were combing through his medical history. She read their initial letters to the pathologist in Beckley. They had stumbled across the 1997 surgery, where they found a collection of slides of the lung tissue. They asked the doctor to send the slides to two of the firm’s favorite experts, a Dr. Foy in Baltimore and a Dr. Aberdeen in Chicago. For some reason, Dr. Foy copied the pathologist in Beckley with a finding that the tissue revealed pneumoconiosis, or complicated black lung disease. Since the pathologist was no longer involved in Buddy’s treatment, he did nothing with this information. And because Buddy did not have a lawyer at the time, no one working on his behalf had ever reviewed the records that Samantha was now holding.

Samantha took a deep breath. She sat down with the report, and slowly walked through it again. At that moment, it looked as though Casper Slate lawyers, in early 2000, learned from at least one of their own experts that Buddy had had black lung disease since 1997, yet they fought his claim and eventually prevailed.

He did not receive benefits, but went back to the mines while Casper Slate lawyers buried their crucial evidence.

She roused the clerk, who reluctantly agreed to make a few copies, at half a dollar a page. After three hours in the bowels of the hospital, Samantha saw sunlight and made her escape. She drove around town for fifteen minutes before spotting the federal building, where, seven years earlier, Buddy Ryzer had presented his case to an administrative law judge. His only advocate had been Mavis. Across the room, they had faced a phalanx of expensive Castrate lawyers who toiled daily in the murky world of the federal black lung system.