Small Great Things (41 page)

O
N THE MORNING OF THE
trial, I oversleep. I shoot out of bed like a cannonball, throwing water on my face and yanking my hair into a bun at the nape and stuffing myself into my panty hose and my best navy trial suit. Literally three minutes of grooming, and I'm in the kitchen, where Micah is standing at the stove. “Why didn't you wake me up?” I demand.

He smiles and gives me a quick kiss. “I love you too, moon of my life,” he says. “Go sit down next to Violet.”

Our daughter is at the table, looking at me. “Mommy? You're wearing two different shoes.”

“Oh, God,” I mutter, pivoting to go back to the bedroom, but Micah grabs my shoulder and steers me to a seat.

“You're going to eat this while it's hot. You need energy to take down a skinhead and his wife. Otherwise, you're going to run out of steam, and I know from personal experience that the only option for food in that courthouse is something brown they are trying to pass off as coffee and a vending machine of granola bars from the Jurassic period.” He puts down a plate—two fried eggs, toast with jam, even hash browns. I am so hungry that I've already finished the eggs before he can set down the last of my breakfast—a steaming latte in his old Harvard Med School mug. “Look,” he jokes, “I even served you your coffee in the White Privilege cup.”

I burst out laughing. “Then I'll take it with me in the car for luck. Or guilt. Or something.”

I kiss Violet on the crown of her head and grab my matching shoe from the bedroom closet, along with my phone, charger, computer, and briefcase. Micah's waiting for me at the door with the mug of coffee. “In all seriousness? I'm proud of you.”

I let myself have this one moment. “Thanks.”

“Go forth and be Marcia Clark.”

I wince. “She's a prosecutor. Can I be Gloria Allred?”

Micah shrugs. “Just knock 'em dead.”

I am already walking toward the driveway. “Pretty sure that's the last thing you're supposed to say to someone who's about to try her first murder case,” I reply, and I slip into the driver's seat without spilling a drop of my coffee.

I mean, that's got to be a sign, right?

I
DRIVE AROUND
the front of the courthouse just to see what's happening, even though I've arranged to meet Ruth somewhere I know she won't be accosted. A circus, that's really the only way to describe it. On one end of the green, Wallace Freaking Mercy is broadcasting live, preaching to a crowd through a megaphone. “In 1691 the word
white
was used in court for the first time. Back then, this nation went by the one-drop rule,” I hear him say. “You needed only one drop of blood to be considered black in this country…”

On the other end of the green is a cluster of white people. At first I think they are watching Wallace's shenanigans, and then I see one hoisting the picture of the dead baby.

They begin to march through the group that is listening to Wallace. There are curses, shoving, a punch thrown. The police immediately join the fray, pushing the blacks and the whites apart.

It makes me think of a magic trick I did last year to impress Violet. I poured water into a pie pan and dusted the top with pepper. Then I told her the pepper was afraid of Ivory soap, and sure enough, when I dipped the bar of soap into the bowl, the pepper flew to the edges.

To Violet, it was magic. Of course I knew better—what caused the pepper to run from the soap was surface tension.

Which, really, is kind of what's going on here.

I drive around to the parish house on Wall Street. Immediately, I see Edison, standing lookout—but no Ruth. I get out of my car, feeling my heart sink. “Is she…?”

He points across the lot, to where Ruth is standing on the sidewalk, looking at the foot traffic across the street. So far, nobody has noticed her, but it's a risk. I go to drag her back, touching her arm, but she shakes me away. “I would like a moment,” she says formally.

I back off.

Students and professors pass, their collars turned up against the wind. A bicycle whizzes by, and then the dinosaur bulk of a bus sighs at the curb, belching out a few passengers before moving away again. “I keep having these…thoughts,” Ruth says. “You know, all weekend long. How many more times will I get to take the bus? Or cook breakfast? Is this the last time I'll write out a check for my electricity bill? Would I have paid more attention last April when the daffodils first came up, if I'd known I wasn't going to see them again?”

She takes a step toward a line of adolescent trees planted in a neat row. Her hands wrap around one narrow trunk as if she's throttling it, and she turns her face to the bare branches overhead.

“Look at that sky,” Ruth says. “It's the kind of blue you find in tubes of oil paint. Like color, boiled down to its essence.” Then she turns to me. “How long does it take to forget this?”

I put my arm around her shoulders. She's shaking, and I know it has nothing to do with the temperature. “If I have anything to say about it,” I tell her, “you'll never find out.”

W
HEN
E
DISON WAS LITTLE,
I
always knew when he was getting up to no good. I could sense it, even if I couldn't see it.
I've got eyes in the back of my head,
I would tell him, when he was amazed that even if I turned away, I knew he was trying to steal a snack before dinner.

Maybe that is why, even though I am facing forward like Kennedy told me to, I can feel the stares of everyone sitting behind me in the gallery.

They feel like pinpricks, arrows, tiny bug bites. It takes all my concentration to not slap at the back of my neck, swat them away.

Who am I kidding? It takes all my concentration not to stand up and run down the aisle and out of this courtroom.

Kennedy and Howard are bent together, deep in a strategy session; they don't have time to talk me down from the ledge. The judge has made it clear that he won't tolerate disruption from the gallery, and that he has a zero tolerance policy—first strike, you're out. Certainly that is keeping the white supremacists in check. But they are not the only ones whose eyes are boring into me.

There are a whole host of Black people, many faces I recognize from my mother's funeral, who have come to lift me up on their prayers. Directly behind me are Edison and Adisa. They are holding hands on the armrest between their seats. I can feel the strength of that bond, like a force field. I listen to their breathing.

All of a sudden I'm back in the hospital, doing what I did best, my hand on the shoulder of a woman in labor and my eyes on the screen that monitors her vitals. “Inhale,” I'd order. “Exhale. Deep breath in…deep breath out.” And sure enough, the tension would leach out of her. Without that strain, progress could be made.

It's time to take my own advice.

I draw in all the air I can, nostrils flaring, breathing so deeply I envision the vacuum I create, the walls bending inward. My lungs swell in my chest, full to bursting. For a second I hold time still.

And then, I let go.

O
DETTE
L
AWTON DOES
not make eye contact with me. She is completely focused on the jury. She is one of them. Even the distance she puts between herself and the defense table is a way of reminding the people who will decide my fate that she and I have
nothing
in common. No matter what they see when they look at our skin.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” she says, “the case you are about to hear is horrible and tragic. Turk and Brittany Bauer were, like many of us, excited to become parents. In fact the best day of their lives was October second, 2015. On that day, their son Davis was born.” She rests her hand on the rail of the jury box. “Unlike all parents, however, the Bauers have some personal preferences that led them to feel uncomfortable with an African American nurse caring for their child. You may not like what they believe, you may not agree with them, but you cannot deny their just due as patients in the hospital to make decisions about the medical care of their baby. Exercising that privilege, Turk Bauer requested that only certain nurses attend to his infant. The defendant was not one of them—and, ladies and gentlemen, that was a slight she could not stomach.”

If I weren't so terrified, I would laugh. That's it? That's the way Odette glossed over the racism that led to that damn Post-it note on the file? It's almost impressive, the way she so neatly flipped it so that before the jury got a glance at the ugliness, they were looking at something else entirely: patients' rights. I glance at Kennedy, and she shrugs the tiniest bit.
I told you so.

“On Saturday morning, little Davis Bauer was taken to the nursery for his circumcision. The defendant was alone in that room when the baby went into distress. So what did she do?” Odette hesitates. “Nothing. This nurse with over twenty years of experience, this woman who had taken an oath to administer care as best she could,
just stood there.
” Turning, she points to me. “The defendant stood there, and she watched that baby struggle to breathe, and she let that baby die.”

Now I can feel the jury picking me over, jackals at carrion. Some of them seem curious, some stare with revulsion. It makes me want to crawl under the defense table. Take a shower. But then I feel Kennedy squeeze my hand where it rests on my lap, and I lift my chin.
Do not let them see you sweat,
she'd said.

“Ruth Jefferson's behavior was wanton, reckless, and intentional. Ruth Jefferson is a murderer.”

Hearing the word leveled at me, even though I have been expecting it, still takes me by surprise. I try to build a levee against the shock of it, by picturing in quick succession all the babies I have held in my arms, the first touch they've had for comfort in this world.

“The evidence will show that the defendant stood there doing nothing while that infant fought for his life. When other medical professionals came in and prodded her into action, she used more force than was necessary and violated all the professional standards of care. She was so violent to this little baby boy that you will see the bruising in his autopsy photos.”

She faces the jury once more. “We have all had our feelings hurt, ladies and gentlemen,” Odette says. “But even if you don't feel that a choice was made correctly—even if you find it a moral affront—you don't retaliate. You don't cause harm to an innocent, to get back at the person who's wronged you. And yet this is exactly what the defendant did. Had she acted in accordance with her training as a medical professional, instead of being motivated by rage and retaliation, Davis Bauer would be alive today. But with Ruth Jefferson on the job?” She looks me square in the eye. “That baby didn't stand a chance.”

Beside me, Kennedy rises smoothly. She walks toward the jury, her heels clicking on the tile floor. “The prosecutor,” she says, “will have you believe this case is black and white. But not in the way that you think. I'm representing Ruth Jefferson. She is a graduate of SUNY Plattsburgh who went on to get a nursing degree at Yale. She has practiced as a labor and delivery nurse for over twenty years in the state of Connecticut. She was married to Wesley Jefferson, who died overseas serving in our military. By herself, she raised a son, Edison, an honor student who is applying to college. Ruth Jefferson is not a monster, ladies and gentlemen. She is a good mother, she was a good wife, and she is an exemplary nurse.”

She crosses back to the defense table and puts her hand on my shoulder. “The evidence is going to show that one day, a baby died during Ruth's shift. Not just any baby, though. The infant was the child of Turk Bauer, a man who hated her because of her skin color. And what happened? When the baby died, he went to the police and blamed Ruth. In spite of the fact that the pediatrician—who you will hear from—commended Ruth for the way she fought to save that infant during his respiratory arrest. In spite of the fact that Ruth's boss—who you will hear from—told Ruth not to touch this child, when the hospital had no right to tell her to abandon her duty as a nurse.”

Kennedy walks toward the jury again. “Here is what the evidence will show: Ruth was confronted with an impossible situation. Should she follow the orders of her supervisor, and the misguided wishes of the baby's parents? Or should she do whatever she possibly could to save his life?

“Ms. Lawton said that this case was tragic, and she is right. But again, not for the reason you think. Because nothing Ruth Jefferson did or didn't do would have made a difference for little Davis Bauer. What the Bauers—and the hospital—did not know at the time is that the baby had a life-threatening condition that had gone unidentified. And it wouldn't have mattered if it were Ruth in the room with him, or Florence Nightingale. There is simply no way Davis Bauer would have survived.”

She spreads her hands, a concession. “The prosecutor would have you believe that the reason we are here today is negligence. But it was not Ruth who was inattentive—it was the hospital and the state lab, which failed to promptly flag a severe medical condition in the infant that, if diagnosed sooner, might have saved his life. The prosecutor would have you believe that the reason we are here today is rage and retaliation. That's true. But it's not Ruth who was consumed by anger. It was Turk and Brittany Bauer, who, lost in grief and pain, wanted to find a scapegoat. If they could not have their son, alive and healthy, they wanted someone else to suffer. And so, they targeted Ruth Jefferson.” She looks at the jury. “There has already been one innocent victim. I urge you to prevent there being a second.”

I
HAVEN'T SEEN
Corinne in months. She looks older, and there are circles under her eyes. I wonder if she is with the same boyfriend, if she's been ill, what crisis has overtaken her life lately. I remember how when we got salads down in the cafeteria and ate them in the break room, she would give me her tomatoes and I would pass over my olives.

If the past few months have taught me anything, it's that friendship is a smoke screen. The people you think are solid turn out to be mirrors and light; and then you look down and realize there are others you took for granted, those who are your foundation. A year ago, I would have told you that Corinne and I were close, but that turned out to be proximity instead of connection. We were default acquaintances, buying each other Christmas gifts and going out for tapas on Thursday nights not because we had so much in common, but because we worked so hard and so long that it was easier to continue our shorthand conversation than to branch out and teach someone else the language.

Odette asks Corinne to give her name, her address. Then she asks, “Are you employed?”

From the witness stand, Corinne makes eye contact with me, and then her gaze slides away. “Yes. At Mercy–West Haven Hospital.”

“Do you know the defendant in this matter?”

“Yes,” Corinne admits. “I do.”

But she doesn't, not really. She never did.

To be fair, I guess, I didn't really know who I was, either.

“How long have you known her?” Odette asks.

“Seven years. We worked together as nurses on the L and D ward.”

“I see,” the prosecutor says. “Were you both working on October second, 2015?”

“Yes. We started our shift at seven
A.M
.”

“Did you care for Davis Bauer that morning?”

“Yes,” Corinne says. “But I took over for Ruth.”

“Why?”

“Our supervisor, Marie Malone, asked me to.”

Odette makes a big to-do about entering a certified copy of the medical record into evidence. “I'd like to refer you to exhibit twenty-four, in front of you. Can you tell the jury what it is?”

“A medical records folder,” Corinne explains. “Davis Bauer was the patient.”

“Is there a note in the front of the file?”

“Yes,” Corinne says, and she reads it aloud.
“No African American personnel to care for this patient.”

Each word, it's a bullet.

“As a result of this, the patient was reassigned from the defendant to you, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Did you observe Ruth's reaction to that note?” Odette asks.

“I did. She was angry and upset. She told me that Marie had taken her off the case because she's Black, and I said that didn't sound like Marie. You know, like, there must have been more going on. She didn't want to hear it. She said, ‘That baby means nothing to me.' And then she stormed off.”

Stormed off? I went down the staircase, instead of taking the elevator. It is remarkable how events and truths can be reshaped, like wax that's sat too long in the sun. There is no such thing as a fact. There is only how you saw the fact, in a given moment. How you reported the fact. How your brain processed that fact. There is no extrication of the storyteller from the story.