“You weren’t certain what your course of action would be when you arrived at the hospital?”
“No. I was working my way through the situation.”
“Megan, the jury judging you is going to be made up of men—maybe a few women, God willing, because they hopefully know what it’s like to be a mom or an aunt or a big sister—who live on a daily basis prepared to make life-or-death decisions between heartbeats. Pull the trigger; don’t pull the trigger. And with everything going on in the world right now, those men are tuned directly into that mind-set: Take charge and make a difference. They may very well feel that you didn’t take appropriate action. That ‘working your way through a situation’ wasn’t what was needed to save Gerry.”
“Because I didn’t take Gerry out of his home?”
“Exactly.”
“Then why wouldn’t they blame Boyd Fletcher? He’s the one who created the situation. He came into the ER in a drunken rampage that night. It took two MPs to subdue him, and both of them had to be treated for injuries. Gerry was scared of his father. That’s why he ran and that’s why he ended up on that building.”
“They will blame Boyd Fletcher,” Benbow agreed. “But they’ll only blame him for his part in this. Trust me, Boyd Fletcher isn’t going to get off scot-free in the eyes of the military men he serves with. At least, not with most of them. And probably not with the army. I’m willing to bet his career is over, one way or another. But that court and that jury are going to hold you accountable too, Megan.”
“For what?”
Without flinching, Doug answered, “For allowing the situation to come to that. For not notifying the parents their son was in the ER. For failure to act.”
“I was acting.”
“You just told me you didn’t know what your course of action was going to be.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Megan had to rein in her anger before she exploded all over the young lieutenant.
Benbow held up both his hands in supplication. “Easy. I’m just pointing things out. Better now than on the stand in a courtroom, don’t you think?”
Megan took a deep breath and nodded.
“There’s a lot of blame to pass around on this,” Benbow said. “The people who are going to serve as your jury are soldiers, not counselors. Their world is more black and white than yours. Their whole existence is keyed into things that they can do and can’t do. And they know exactly what those things are every minute of every day. If they don’t know, they can ask. Usually before they have to ask, someone has already told them. If things change, if situations change, they’re told that, too. It’s easy for them to forget that a lot of us have to make decisions for ourselves. And that we’re fallible.”
“I did everything I could do. Keeping Gerry with me that night, that was part of what I could do.”
“Keeping him there without telling his parents he was in the hospital was dereliction of duty. They had a right to know. You were derelict in that regard. So was the hospital. But none of the hospital staff involved are available to press charges against. Boyd Fletcher is after you. His statement says he feels that Gerry’s stay there, without his knowledge, was directly your responsibility.”
“In a way, it was,” Megan said. “Over the last few weeks, I couldn’t get his mother to come forward about the abuse issues, but I hoped I could talk Gerry into telling the truth that night. Then we could have acted.”
Benbow nodded agreeably. “We can’t start with that night because that depends too much on your testimony. The jury may see that as prejudiced.”
“Prejudiced?”
“They may think you’re trying to cover your own complicity in this.” Benbow shook his head. “We have to lead the jury up to that point. We have to start before then to develop the history you were acting on. We’re going to have to train those people to think like counselors, to understand what the constraints of your job are, and to put them into context with the situation that night.”
Megan felt familiar frustration. She knew most counselors dealt with that feeling on a daily basis. So many things should be simple when dealing with clients, but they weren’t because many individuals didn’t want to deal with those issues and had long since built up personal support groups among family and friends to help them avoid those issues.
She let out a long breath. “All right. I can see where you’re coming from.”
“Not me. Where Boyd Fletcher and opposing counsel are going to be coming from. That’s a big difference. You need to keep that in mind. I’m on your side, Megan.”
“I know.”
“Prior to that night, did you feel Gerry was in danger in his home?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you have him removed from the home?”
“For two reasons.”
“Two is good,” Benbow said, smiling a little. “I’d prefer a dozen, but I’ll settle for two. It’s twice as good as one.”
“Primarily,” Megan said, “I didn’t try to have Gerry removed from the home because—before that night—I felt like we had the situation under control.”
“‘We?’”
“The family and I. And the counseling office.”
“Other counselors were aware of the situation in the Fletcher household?”
“Yes. We always have a peer we can use as a sounding board.”
Benbow nodded. “What do you mean when you say you felt you had the Fletcher situation ‘under control’?”
“I’d been seeing Gerry for fourteen months. Since PFC Boyd Fletcher got transferred to Fort Benning. During that time, Gerry ended up in the hospital twice. The first time was nine months ago. His ribs were heavily bruised.”
Benbow reached into his uniform pocket, took out a spiral-bound deck of index cards, and flipped through them. “On June sixteenth of last year. The injury was due to a fall.”
“That’s
