Authors: Elle Lothlorien
“Providing both a formal diagnosis and medication suggestions for her as a medical doctor, correct?”
“Yes.”
“In light of the fact that Ms. Beau was unable to remember your supposed relationship once she recovered from her KLS episode, wouldn’t you agree that your sexual relationship with her breached your Hippocratic Oath to refrain from sexual relations with your patients?”
Ben, Brendan and Lucinda all start shouting at the same time.
“Objection!” says Ben.
“That’s not what–” Brendan sputters.
“The question is withdrawn, Your Honor!” Lucinda thunders, effectively cutting him off. She paces back and forth for about twenty seconds before turning back to the witness box. “No further questions at this time.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Well, that was a total, fucking disaster,” Rev says cheerfully as he closes the door behind him.
Right after Lucinda finished skewering Brendan, the judge recessed for lunch. Rev had conveniently disappeared while Brendan, Ben and I gathered in one of the courthouse meeting rooms, where we’ve been sitting, silent and dazed, like refugees in a fallout shelter.
“Where’ve
you
been?” I say.
Rev ignores me. He plops down next to Ben. “I hate to tell you that I told you so, Benji,” says Rev, “but I told you so.”
“Yeah, you did,” says Ben with a sigh. “What choice did we have?”
“None at all,” says Rev, his merriment undiminished by the crash and burn catastrophe we’ve all just witnessed.
“‘I told you so?’” I turn to Ben. “What did he tell you?”
Bens sighs. “Rev advised against fighting for your brother’s hearsay testimony about the incident on the couch with Davin. The judge was giving us incredible latitude, and Rev knew the judge would have to return the favor to Lucinda at some point.” He clasps his hands together. “And he was right.”
Rev chuckles. “She came out of the judge’s chambers after the hearsay conference, and she wasn’t even out of breath. That’s when I knew she didn’t care about West’s testimony one way or the other. All she was doing was putting up with an inconvenient toothache for a couple of days so she could save up for a gold crown to flash at everyone when she was ready.”
“Well, that’s really great!” I yell. “What are we supposed to do now?”
“Do we rest our case now?” says Brendan to Ben. “Cut our losses, and hope that the jurors take our side into account during your closing argument?”
“Are you kidding me?” I say. “Even
I
want to convict you.”
Brendan’s smile is wan. “I’m just trying to throw out some options, Claire.”
“‘Options, plural?’” says Rev. “I don’t think you have any heat left, Doc.”
“Yeah,” says Brendan, looking down at the table. “The list was a lot shorter than I thought it would be.”
“So what do we do now?” I ask again.
Rev sighs. “The only thing you can do: Benji gets back out there and tries to make the jury forget that Doc was a pervy, lecherous, sex maniac when Claire-Bo rolled into the sleep lab in her platform heels and Daisy Duke shorts and parked herself next to a queen-sized bed, handed him her date rape drug, and asked him where he wanted her.”
We all stare at him like he’s lost his mind. Then, all at the same time, we explode into gales of laughter, wiping away tears and holding our stomachs, or collapsed over the table, like we’re the ones having the last laugh.
*****
“Dr. Charmant,” says Ben, looking respectable and capable, a million miles removed from the howling fool from the meeting room an hour ago. “Can you tell me how you were able to recall so vividly what Ms Beau was wearing the day she came to see you in the hospital clinic?”
“I remembered because I’d actually seen her briefly outside the hospital the morning of her appointment.”
“When she had a cataplexy attack on the sidewalk outside the hospital?”
“That’s right.”
“And why did this help you to remember?”
“Because when she stood up after she’d recovered, there was dirt from the sidewalk on the back of her white t-shirt. When I saw her in the clinic a short time later, I saw the same dirt on her shirt.”
“I see. And what about her flip-flops?”
“Like I testified earlier, when I first saw her in the exam room I thought she was nineteen. After she corrected me, I remember looking at her very childish flip-flops and wondering why a twenty-nine year old woman would wear those.”
Ben chuckles, like he hasn’t heard this story before. “I see. Now, how were you so certain what Ms. Beau was wearing on the day of the sleep lab?”
“I wasn’t sure.”
Ben raises an eyebrow. “You weren’t? It sounded to me like you described her outfit practically down to the shoe size and the names on the labels.”
“Well, that was because I’d seen the footage many times in the last few weeks. Otherwise I doubt I would’ve been able to tell you.”
“Fair enough. What about her makeup? The prosecution has insinuated that Ms. Beau’s makeup caught your particular attention.”
“It did.”
“It did? Why?’
“Like I say in the video, I needed her to take it off or the electrodes wouldn’t stick. That’s why patients are instructed to arrive with no makeup on.”
“I see, so you were taking note of her makeup because it had medical significance, is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“Dr. Charmant, you’ve testified that you got up from the bed with the intention of stopping the encounter that Ms. Beau had inadvertently initiated while exhibiting hypersexual behaviors, is this correct?”
“Yes.”
“And when you stood up, how did you plan to do this?”
“I didn’t have a plan. I wasn’t sure at first.”
“By the time you got to the bathroom, did you have a plan?”
“Yes. I was going to spray her with water.”
“How did you come up with this idea, to spray her with water that is?”
Brendan shrugs. “I don’t know. It all happened so fast. There wasn’t time to map out a plan.” He stops, thinking. “I’d seen a dog fight broken up that way when I was little. I don’t remember consciously thinking about that at the time, but maybe that’s where I dug the idea out of my subconscious.”
“A dog fight?”
“Yes?”
“You saw two dogs fighting, and someone sprayed them with water?”
“Yes. When I was a kid.”
“Did it work?”
Brendan frowns. “Which time?”
More laughter from the peanut gallery. Ben smiles. “I apologize. Did the water separate the fighting dogs?”
“Yes.”
“I see.” He walks towards the witness stand. “Dr. Charmant, were you aware that the camera was on in the sleep lab the day Ms. Beau arrived?”
“No.”
“You didn’t turn it on yourself?”
“No.”
“Do you know who did?”
“I believe it was the sleep tech.”
“The one who ran off to the cafeteria?”
“Yes. She arrived before I did.”
“Dr. Charmant, when patients are given tours of the sleep lab, are they told about the camera on the ceiling?”
“Yes, right away.”
“Are they told about where they have to go in the room to obtain privacy?”
“Yes. They’re told to go in the bathroom.”
“Is that all a patient needs to do to obtain absolute privacy from the roving camera? Go in the bathroom?”
“Well, no.”
“What else does a patient need to do?”
“They need to close the door.”
“Did you ever have a conversation with Ms. Beau about the camera, or where she could go to obtain privacy from the camera?”
“She already knew. It was her second time in the lab.”
“I see. Just to clarify: When you carried Ms. Beau into the bathroom, did you ever attempt to shut the door?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Brendan exhales, sounding exasperated. “Why would I? I wasn’t looking for privacy, I was looking for help, and if someone came in I needed them to be able to see me and help me.”
“You were hoping for assistance from the absent sleep tech, correct? The one buttering her toast in the cafeteria while she was supposed to be working?”
“Well, I wouldn’t have put it that way, but yes.”
“Thank you, Dr. Charmant.” He turns towards the front of the courtroom. “The defense calls Davin Wibbens to the stand.”
The courtroom erupts in pandemonium, which provides the perfect cover for my tantrum.
I twist sideways and put my face about half an inch away from Rev’s. “The defense does
what
?” I scream. “He can’t testify, Rev, and you know it! He’s in no physical condition to–”
“Quiet.” This comes from the judge, but she doesn’t bellow it like an episode of
Law and Order
. Still, the word is amplified by the acoustics of the room, so it’s loud enough to blow your hair back. “Quiet,” she warns again, not as loud this time. “There will be quiet in this courtroom, or I will ask the bailiff to remove you.”
“The prosecution objects, Your Honor,” says Lucinda Gaelic as she tries to stand.
Lucinda’s still working on achieving bipedalism when Ben responds. “On what grounds?”
“What is your difficulty, Ms. Gaelic?” says the judge.
From what I can see of Lucinda Gaelic from the side, she looks like she’s about to blow a gasket. I can hear her wet, COPD breathing from where I sit twenty feet away. She respires loudly for a few more breaths, like she’s trying to think of legal argument with more merit than, “I sure don’t like the look of that thar fella.”
“Mr. Wibbens was not on the defense witness list,” she says finally.
Ben rolls his eyes. “Mr. Wibbens was not on the defense witness list because he was very inconveniently presumed dead on the day we submitted our list.”
“He was only missing for two days!” says Lucinda. “The defense had two weeks to update their list once Mr. Wibbens was found to be alive and well.”
Ben snorts. “‘Alive and well?’ Mr. Wibbens almost died, Your Honor, which would have been very inconvenient for the defense. Even so, he was–again, very inconveniently for the defense–in intensive care in an artificial coma for ten days until November eleventh. It was our understanding that he would not be well enough to testify for another two or three weeks at the earliest, which is why we decided to present our case without him.”
“He hasn’t been made available to the prosecution for an interview,” Lucinda sulks.
“Nor has he been available to the defense,” says Ben. “Mr. Wibbens checked himself out of the hospital an hour ago at his own insistence and against the advice of his doctors. He contacted me exactly five minutes before we reconvened, and indicated that he wanted to make himself available immediately. Since he’s taken the trouble to return from death’s door, the state is more than welcome to ask their questions during the cross.”
“Agreed,” says the judge. “You may call your witness Mr. McCarthy.”
Lucinda purposely looks at me before she sits down, her mouth twisted into a snarl of fury. I unconsciously shrug my shoulders, no doubt to convey the message
Who, me
?
Blame my crazy attorney here
. I stare right through her as a bailiff at the back of the courtroom swings the door open.
Looking pale and diminutive, Davin appears, slumped to one side of a wheelchair pushed by Evan Tallant. His broken leg is still encased in the fixator, making it jut upward from the stainless steel leg rest at a strange and painful-looking angle. One of the wheels catches the side of the door, jerking the chair. Davin winces in pain.
I gasp like I’ve been shot. I lean forward to get to my feet so I can get to him, so I can help him somehow. That’s when I feel Rev’s iron hand clamping down on my leg. He twists his head slowly, once to the right, once to the left:
Don’t even think about it
, it says.
“Checking yourself out and being released from the hospital are
not
the same thing!” I hiss at him. “His doctor said he would be in the hospital for
weeks
. Weeks!”
Rev turns away. I watch helplessly as Evan rolls the wheelchair down the aisle. At the defense table, Brendan jumps up, scrambling to move his chair away to give them room to pass. A court clerk rushes to pull the regular chair out of the witness box to make a place for Evan to park the wheelchair.
I’m getting incredibly successful at reading body language, because when Brendan twists around in his chair at the defense table, I hear his questioning, concerned expression loud and clear:
I’m a doctor, and I can tell you that this man belongs in a hospital
.
I can’t watch anymore. “This is your fault!” I say, jabbing my finger in Rev’s face. You can’t get me my way at my expense
or
his, Rev! I never asked for that and neither did Brendan!”
“Shut it, dally,” he murmurs to me, his voice devoid of its usual edge.
I jump to my feet, enraged. “He can’t do this! Look at him! He needs to go back to the hospital! He’s too sick to do this! You’re going to kill him!”
Rev grabs my arm and pulls me down. “Shut up, Claire! Shut up before you get yourself kicked out of here.”
“There will be silence in the courtroom or you will be removed,” says the judge, looking directly at me.
The urge to rip Rev’s head off and stuff it down his bleeding, hemorrhaging neck hole is almost overpowering. I inhale, ready to go off on him again, consequences be damned. Then I see his face–really
see
it. He looks ashen and pained, and about as miserable as Davin. I close my mouth and sit down.
Rev leans his head down to my ear once the judge has ceased staring us down. “All I did was call him up with an update during the lunch break like I promised him I would do,” he whispers. “Like I’ve been doing every day.
He
checked himself out, okay? They couldn’t stop him, and I didn’t know he was going to do it. This crazy stunt is
his
choice, not mine, believe me. I told him that he’d never make it through this.”
So I shut it and I suffer as I watch Davin’s shrunken form pushed in the wheelchair to the witness box. Because despite everything, I can’t help but love Davin like I love my brother. Watching him suffer like this, no matter what he’s done–
we’ve
done– or what he’s about to say, it’s still torture. I inhale slowly and steadily, trying to steel myself, to stay strong for him. Because Davin’s not going to feel any better for a long, long time, not physically and definitely not emotionally.