'No, I have not. Of course, I've had patients die, but it's always
been from either natural causes or from some sort of weapon.' Then he
looked at the jury as if he'd been trained to do this. 'But, as little
sleep as I sometimes catch during my work in the ER, I had trouble
sleeping after I treated Kendra Martin. Without a gun, without a
knife, someone had physically ruined this child with his bare hands.'
Several years from now, after tending to and losing scores of other
patients to the hands of sadists, Dr. Malone might be able to offer
unbiased, affect less testimony in a case like this. But, for now, he
had crossed over from a detached observer into our side of things, and
he wanted Frank Derringer to go away. I felt confident enough to
wander into un ventured territory with him as my witness.
'In your experience as an ER physician, do you develop a sense of a
patient's chances for survival when they come to you for treatment?'
'Sure. The hardest part of being a doctor in the emergency room is
that we often get patients for whom it's too late to do anything. We
lose a lot of people whose chances have passed before they even come to
us.'
'And, in your opinion, in light of your review of Kendra Martin's
condition when she arrived for treatment, what would have happened to
her if she had not been found in the Gorge and brought to you at
Emanuel?'
He paused before responding. 'I remind myself daily that I'm not God,
that I don't know this world's truths any more than anyone else. But
in my medical opinion, Kendra Martin's lucky those kids happened across
her. Another couple of hours out there would have killed her. She was
crazy high on heroin, but that, in and of itself, would not have killed
her. It did, however, decrease her chances of surviving. She was
losing a lot of blood from her anal injuries. Her blood pressure and
pulse were low, which further reduced the rate of oxygen distribution
through her body. And it was cold outside. I'm confident that if she
were left overnight, she would have died.'
I needed to write myself a reminder to keep this guy's name and number
for future testimony.
When we were done talking about Kendra's physical injuries, I directed
his attention to the effects of drug use. He started out by explaining
that, although Kendra may have used heroin frequently enough to develop
a physical addiction, she did not have the track marks that give away
any hard-core addict.
'We've heard testimony earlier, Doctor, that Kendra Martin was
'popping' heroin when she used it voluntarily. Are you familiar with
that term?'
He indicated that he was and explained that popping was the street name
for shooting up with a subcutaneous injection. Relative newcomers to
heroin could inject the dope just beneath the skin and still get a good
high from it. Once they were hooked and needed a bigger high, they'd
need to inject straight into a vein.
He explained that, on the night she was attacked, Kendra was under the
influence of heroin that had been injected directly into a vein. To
prevent her from overdosing, he had injected her with Narcan, a
narcotic antagonist. Within a few minutes of injection, Narcan
completely reversed the narcotic effects of heroin. Used on someone
dependent on the narcotic, an antagonist could trigger extreme symptoms
similar to withdrawal. It helped explain the severe mood swings and
general nastiness that Kendra displayed toward the police that night.
Finally, Lisa had a cross-examination ready. It wasn't unexpected.
Malone had to concede that heroin had adverse effects upon a user's
memory. It was an obvious point, but jurors always listened more
carefully when it came from a doctor. Fortunately, I had plenty of
evidence to back up Ken-dra's ID, so I wrote the day off as a win for
our team.
To reward myself for my great day in trial, I picked up some Pad Thai
at Orchid Garden on my way home. Two hours later, I was lacing up my
New Balances. The peanuts weighed me down for the first mile or so,
but after ten minutes I started to work out my stride and could feel
the endorphins kicking in. Seventeen minutes after I started, I
finally reached my two-mile turnaround point at the Rose Quarter, home
of the Trailblazers. I know a lot of runners who claim to reach a
meditative state when they run. I'm not one of them. I get bored, and
my mind wanders. As I finished my lap around the stadium and began
heading back up Broadway toward my neighborhood, I was laughing to
myself about the joke at work that the DA's office needed a separate
sports celebrity unit. A better name for Portland's NBA team would be
the Jail Blazers.
And it wasn't just the basketball team. After the local ice skating
princess gained infamy for having had her rival slugged in the thigh
with a stick by a very fat bodyguard, she supposedly settled back into
her hometown for a quiet and humble retirement, disturbed only by the
occasional bout of celebrity boxing. The reality is that she partied
like hell and had restraining orders against her ex-husband and the
four ex-boyfriends she'd gone through since him. Apparently all these
people hung out at the same handful of cowboy clubs and trailer-park
bars, and the princess called the police to enforce the restraining
orders every time she happened to run into one of her exes. Throw in
the state's mandatory arrest law for restraining-order violations, and
you've pretty much got yourself a case to be reviewed every Monday
