'The cell loses apoptosis.'
Another smile, another point scored. 'And this disease has a fifty percent survival rate.'
Sara held her tongue, waiting for the ax to fall.
'And timing is critical for treatment, is that correct? In such a disease – a disease that literally turns the body's cells against themselves, turns off apoptosis, according to you, which is the normal genetic process of cell death – timing is critical.'
Forty-eight hours would not have saved the boy's life, but Sara was not going to utter those words, have them transcribed into a legal document and later thrown in her face with all the callousness Sharon Connor could muster.
The lawyer shuffled through some papers as if she needed to find her notes. 'And you attended Emory Medical School. As you so graciously corrected me earlier, you didn't just graduate in the top ten percent, you graduated sixth in your class.'
Buddy sounded bored with the woman's antics. 'We've already established Dr. Linton's credentials.'
'I'm just trying to put it all together,' the woman countered. She held up one of the pages, her eyes scanning the words. Finally, she put it down. 'And, Dr. Linton, you got this information – this lab result that was almost certainly a death sentence -the morning of the seventeenth, and yet you chose not to share the information with the Powells until two days later. And that was because…?'
Sara had never heard so many sentences starting with the word 'and.' She imagined grammar wasn't high up on the curriculum at whatever school had churned out the vicious lawyer.
Still, she answered, 'They were at Disney World for Jimmy's birthday. I wanted them to enjoy their vacation, what I thought might be their last vacation as a family for some time. I made the decision to not tell them until they came back.'
'They came back the evening of the seventeenth, yet you did not tell them until the morning of the nineteenth, two days later.'
Sara opened her mouth to respond, but the woman talked over her.
'And it didn't occur to you that they could return for immediate treatment and perhaps save their child's life?' It was clear she didn't expect an answer. 'I would imagine that, given the choice, the Powells would rather have their son alive today instead of empty photographs of him standing around the Magic Kingdom.' She slid the picture in question across the table. It glided neatly past Beckey and Jim Powell, past Sara's two lawyers, and stopped a few inches from where Sara was sitting.
She shouldn't have looked, but she did.
Young Jimmy stood leaning against his father, both of them wearing Mickey Mouse ears and holding sparklers as a parade of Snow White's dwarfs marched behind them. Even in the photo, you could tell the boy was sick. Dark circles rimmed his eyes and he was so thin that his frail little arm looked like a piece of string.
They had come back from vacation a day early because Jimmy had wanted to be home. Sara did not know why the Powells had not called her at the clinic, brought in Jimmy that day so she could check on him. Maybe his parents had known even without the test, even without the final diagnosis, that their days of having a normal, healthy child were over. Maybe they had just wanted to keep him to themselves one more day. He had been such a wonderful boy – kind, smart, cheerful – everything a parent could hope for. And now he was gone.
Sara felt tears well into her eyes, and bit her lip so hard that the tears fell from pain instead of grief.
Buddy snatched away the picture, irritated. He slid it back to Sharon Connor. 'You can practice your opening statement in front of your mirror at home, sweetheart.'
Connor's mouth twisted into a smirk as she took back the photograph. She was living proof that the theory that women were nurturing caretakers was utter bullshit. Sara half-expected to see rotting flesh between her teeth.
The woman said, 'Dr. Linton, on this particular date, the date you got James's lab results, did anything else happen that stood out for you?'
A prickling went up Sara's spine, a spark of warning that she could not suppress. 'Yes.'
'And could you tell us what that was?'
I found a woman who had been murdered in the bathroom of our local diner.'
'Raped and murdered. Is that correct?'
'Yes.'
'That brings us to your part-time job as coroner for the county. I believe your husband – then ex-husband, when this rape and murder occurred – is chief of police for the county. Both of you work closely together when cases arise.'
Sara waited for more, but the woman had obviously just wanted to get that on the record.
'Counselor?' Buddy asked.
'One moment, please,' the lawyer murmured, picking up a thick folder and leafing through the pages.
Sara looked down at her hands to give herself something to do. Pisiform, triquetrum, hamate, capitate, trapezoid, trapezium, lunate, scaphoid… She listed all the bones in her hand, then started on the ligaments, trying to distract herself, willing herself not to walk into the trap the lawyer was so skillfully setting.
While Sara was in her residency at Grady, headhunters had pursued her so relentlessly that she had stopped answering her phone. Partnerships. Six-figure salaries with year-end bonuses. Surgical privileges at any hospital she chose. Personal assistants, lab support, full secretarial staff, even her own parking space. They had offered her everything, and yet in the end, she had decided to return home to Grant, to practice medicine for considerably less money and even less respect, because she thought it was important for doctors to serve rural communities.
Was part of it vanity, too? Sara had seen herself as a role model for the girls in town. Most of them had only ever seen a male doctor. The only women
in authority were nurses, teachers, and mothers. Her first five years at the Heartsdale Children's Clinic, Sara had spent at least half of her time convincing young patients – and frequently their mothers – that she had, in fact, graduated medical school. No one believed a woman could be smart enough,
All for this.
Sharon Connor finally looked up from her papers. She frowned. 'Dr. Linton, you yourself were raped. Isn't that correct?'
Sara felt all of the saliva in her mouth dry up. Her throat tightened and her flesh turned hot as she struggled with an unwelcome shame that she had not felt since the last time a lawyer had deposed her about being raped. Just like then, Sara's vision tunneled and blurred in such a way that she saw nothing, just heard the words ringing in her ears.
Buddy shot to his feet, arguing something, stabbing his finger at the lawyer, at the Powells. Beside him, Melinda Stiles from the Global Medical Indemnity said nothing. Buddy had told Sara this would happen, that Stiles would sit silently by, letting opposing counsel tear into Sara, speaking only when she thought Global might be exposed. Another woman, another failed role model.
'And I want that on the goddamn record!' Buddy finished, pushing his
