Connor reminded, 'Dr. Linton, you're here to answer my questions, not ask your own.'
Sara leaned toward the Powells, tried to connect with them, make them see reason. 'Don't you know it won't get him back? None of this will get Jimmy back.'
'Mr. Conford, please instruct your client-'
'Do you know what I gave up to practice here? Do you know how many years I spent-'
'Dr. Linton, do not address my clients.'
'This is the reason why you had to go to Atlanta to find a specialist,' Sara told them. 'These lawsuits are why the hospital closed down, why there are only five doctors within a hundred miles of here who can afford to practice medicine.'
They would not look up at her, would not respond.
Sara sat back in her chair, spent. This couldn't just be about money. Beckey and Jimmy wanted something more, an explanation for why their son died. The sad fact was that there was no explanation. People died – children died – and sometimes, there was no one to blame, nothing that could stop it. All this lawsuit meant was that a year from now, maybe five years, another child would be sick, another family would be stricken, and no one would be able to afford to help them.
No one would be there to hold their hand, to explain what was happening.
'Dr. Linton,' Connor continued. 'As to your failure to bill the Powells for the lab work and office visits: isn't it a fact that you felt guilty for Jimmy's death?'
She knew the answer Buddy wanted her to give the question, knew that even Melinda Stiles, the silent advocate for Global Medical Indemnity, wanted her to deny this.
'Dr. Linton?' Connor insisted. 'Didn't you feel guilty?'
Sara closed her eyes, could see Jimmy lying in that hospital bed, talking to her about skateboarding. She could still feel the cold touch of his fingers in hers as he patiently explained to her the difference between a heelflip and an ollie.
Interphalangeal joints. Metacarpophalangeal joint. Capsule, distal, radioulnar joints…
'Dr. Linton?'
'Yes,' she finally admitted, tears flowing freely now. 'Yes. I felt guilty.'
Sara drove through downtown Heartsdale, the speedometer on her BMW 335ci barely reaching twenty-five. She passed the five-and-dime, the dress shop, the hardware store. At Burgess's Cleaners, she stopped in the middle of the empty street, debating whether or not to drive on.
Ahead of her, the gates of the Grant Institute of Technology stood open. Students walked down the main drive dressed as goblins and superheroes. Halloween had come and gone the night before, but the Grant Tech students tended to-stretch every holiday into a weeklong affair. Sara had not even bothered to buy candy this year. She knew that no parent would be sending their kid to knock on her door. Since the malpractice suit had been filed, the whole town had ostracized her. Even patients she had treated for years, people she had genuinely helped, avoided her gaze at the supermarket or the drugstore. Considering the atmosphere, Sara felt it would not have been wise to don her usual witch's costume and go to the church party as she had for the last sixteen years. Sara had been born and raised in Grant County. She knew that this was a town that burned witches.
She had spent eight and a half hours in the deposition, every aspect of her life being raked over the coals. Over a hundred parents had signed releases so that their children's medical charts could be combed through by Sharon Connor, most of them hoping that at the end of the day there would be some money in it for them. Melinda Stiles, who had turned surprisingly helpful once the room had emptied of witnesses, explained that this was fairly common. A malpractice suit turned patients into vultures, she explained, and more would start circling as the Powell case proceeded. Global Medical Indemnity would run the numbers, weigh the losses against the strength of Sara's defense, and then decide whether or not they would settle.
In which case, all of this – the humiliation, the degradation – would be for nothing.
One of the college students in the street screamed and Sara startled, letting her foot slip off the brake. It was just a young man wearing a Chiquita Banana costume, including blue Capri pants and a yellow tie-top that showed a hairy, round belly. It was always the burly ones who dressed up as women the first chance they got. Would Jimmy Powell have been that sort of silly young man? If he had lived, would he have developed his father's stooped posture and thin frame or his mother's rounded face and cheery disposition? Sara knew he'd had Beckey's quick wit, her love of practical jokes and bad puns. Anything else would be forever unknown.
Sara took a left into the clinic parking lot. Her clinic parking lot, the one she had bought from Dr. Barney all those years ago, working part-time as coroner so that she could afford the deal. The sign was faded, the steps needed a new coat of paint and the side door stuck on warm days, but it was hers. All hers.
She got out of the car and used her key to open the front door. Last week, she had closed the clinic, furious at the parents who had signed releases in hopes of cashing in, furious at her town for betraying her. They saw Sara as nothing more than a cash machine, as if she was merely a conduit through which to access the millions of dollars sitting in the insurance company's coffers. No one saw the consequences of this smash-and-grab, the fact that malpractice premiums would go up, doctors would go out of business, and healthcare, which was already unaffordable for many, would soon be unobtainable for most. No one cared about the lives they destroyed on their way to becoming millionaires.
Let them think about it while they drove an hour and a half over to Rollings, the closest town with a pediatrician.
Sara left the lights off as she walked through the clinic's front lobby. Despite the chill October air, the building was warm, and she took off her suit jacket and laid it on the front counter as she walked to the bathroom.
The water was freezing cold straight out of the faucet, and Sara leaned down to splash her face, to try to get rid of the grime that was clinging to her skin. She wanted a long bath, a glass of wine, but these were things that she would have to go home to find and right now, she didn't want to go home. She wanted to be alone, to regain her sense of self. At the same time, she wanted to be with her parents, who were at this moment somewhere in Kansas, exactly halfway in their long-planned quest to drive across America. Tessa, her sister, was in Atlanta, finally putting her college degree to use as she counseled homeless people. And Jeffrey… Jeffrey was at home, waiting for Sara to return from the deposition, to tell him everything that had happened. She wanted to be with him the most, and yet she didn't want to see him at all.
She stared at her reflection in the mirror, realizing with a shock that she did not recognize herself. Her hair was pulled back so tightly that she was surprised she hadn't developed a stress fracture. Carefully, she reached up and loosened the band, wincing from the pain as roots were yanked out. Her starched white shirt showed water spots, but Sara did not care. She felt ridiculous in the suit, which was probably the most expensive outfit she'd ever owned. Buddy had insisted she have the black cloth sharply tailored to her body so that during the deposition, she looked like a rich doctor instead of a small-town plumber's daughter turned pediatrician. She could be herself in the courtroom, Buddy had told her. Sara could show Sharon Connor her real side when it would do the most damage.
Sara hated this duplicity, hated having to transform herself into a masculine-looking, arrogant bitch as part of her defense strategy. Her entire career, she had resisted quashing her femininity in order to fit into the boys' club of medicine. And now one lawsuit had turned her into everything she despised.
'You okay?'
Jeffrey stood in the doorway. He was wearing a charcoal-colored suit with a dark blue shirt and tie. His cell phone was clipped to one side of his belt, his paddle holster to the
