Scott Pratt - Injustice for all

I lean over and kiss Caroline gently on the cheek. She’s been battling breast cancer, along with the sickness and mutilation that comes with the treatment, for a year and a half. I love her so much it almost hurts, and I can’t imagine how I’d go on if she were the one being lowered into the ground.

“Oh death, where is thy sting?” the preacher says. “Oh grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”

I look around at the men and women who work in my profession, men and women who make judgments each day about the lives of others, who decide what is right and what is wrong and what punishment is to be doled out for violations of our laws, and I’m reminded of how futile the endeavor is. A man like Ray commits a minor transgression, at worst, and ultimately pays with his life, while so many others who do so much more harm walk away unscathed. How do I reconcile that? Why do I want to continue on this path?

At last, the preacher delivers his final prayer and dismisses the crowd. I hook my arm in Caroline’s as Jack drapes his arm around Lilly, and we walk up the hill away from the grave, leaving Toni and Tommy to grieve in private.

That evening, I walk up the stairs toward the kitchen after spending a couple of hours in my study. Rio, my German shepherd, tries to slip past me and nearly sends me sprawling. It’s close to ten o’clock, and the emotion of the last few days has drained me. I hear voices talking as I approach, but as I round the corner and enter the room, they fall silent. Jack, Lilly, and Caroline are sitting at the table.

“Okay, I’m paranoid,” I say. “What were you talking about?”

“We were talking about Ray,” Caroline says.

She’d lost her beautiful auburn hair during chemotherapy but it has grown back now and is shimmering beneath the light above the table. The glow is back, too, that aura that surrounds her like a halo. She still has a long way to go with her treatment, but she no longer looks like a dead woman walking.

“Mom said you were in the courtroom when he killed himself,” Jack says.

I nod my head, not wanting to relive those awful moments.

“So you saw it? You were looking at him when he pulled the trigger?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

I sit down at the table and look at the three of them. “He was talking to Judge Green about Green’s ruining his life, and then Green said he was in contempt, and the next thing I knew, he pulled the pistol out and took a couple of shots at the judge.”

“Too bad he missed,” Lilly says.

“Lilly!” It’s Caroline, but the tone is more of surprise and amusement than anger.

“I mean it,” Lilly says. “What Judge Green did was cruel. He had no right.”

I’m grateful for the interruption. I didn’t want to tell them I was the last person on this earth Ray spoke to. I didn’t want to tell them about his good-bye.

“Ray would be in jail if he hadn’t shot himself,” I say. “As much as I hate to say it, he’s probably better off.” I look at Jack. “Have you talked to Tommy?”

“I’ve called him five or six times, sent a few text messages, but I haven’t heard anything back. I thought about going over there, but if he doesn’t want to talk to me on the phone, he probably doesn’t want to talk to me in person.”

“When are you going back to school?”

“Day after tomorrow. I have to leave early.”

“Try to get him on the phone tomorrow and if he doesn’t answer, go over there. I’m sure he could use a friend right now.”

We talk for a while and I lose myself in the conversation, happy to be able to speak to my children face-to-face. They were such an intimate part of my life for so long, and now I’m lucky to see them thirty days a year. I marvel at their intelligence, their outlook, their honesty and maturity, and I’m humbled to think I played a part in creating them.

Around eleven, Lilly stretches her slender arms toward the ceiling and lets out a yawn.

“I’m tired,” she says. “I hear my bed calling.” She gets up, kisses me on the cheek, and wanders out of the room. Jack follows her lead, and a couple of minutes later Caroline and I find ourselves alone.

“Something’s bothering you,” Caroline says.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I know you.”

So much for the mystery in our relationship. When I was younger, there were things I didn’t tell her. I’d rationalize by telling myself she didn’t need to know, probably didn’t want to know; that she was somehow better off staying clear of the deepest recesses of my mind. But she’d broken through a few years earlier, and now, at only forty-three years old, I feel almost naked in her presence, as though she can see everything. I believe she only makes inquiries to test my honesty.

“It keeps running through my mind,” I say.

“What? Ray?”

“It was surreal. It happened so fast. I keep thinking I should have gotten to him quicker, but after he fired the first shot, I froze for a split second.”

“There you go again,” Caroline says, “blaming yourself for something you couldn’t have changed.”

“I keep seeing the back of his head explode.”

The image of Ray’s suicide has now been added to the long list of digital clips in my subconscious mind. I’ve rerun the scene a hundred times in the past few days.

Caroline stands and walks around the table. She puts her arms around me and pulls me close.

“I thought about you today at the funeral,” I whisper. “About the cancer, about what it would have been like if you hadn’t-”

“Shhh,” Caroline says, putting a finger to my lips. “I told you when I was diagnosed that I wasn’t going to leave you. I meant it.”

The touch of her finger is soothing, and I close my eyes and kiss her hand.

“We need to clean it,” she says.

“Okay.”

A few minutes later, I’m sitting on the edge of our bed. Caroline is on her back. She’s removed her shirt to reveal the mangled mess that was once a breast. The surgeon who attempted to reconstruct the breast originally transplanted a flap of skin and fat from Caroline’s abdomen. She was in surgery for twelve hours. It seemed to work, but as soon as she began her radiation treatments, the flap began to develop large, open wounds. They leaked constantly and gradually enlarged. Then the flap began to shrink.

The surgeon explained that the radiation was destroying the tissue in the flap. Fat necrosis, he called it. Three months later, he took her back into surgery, this time removing a large portion of muscle from her back and moving it to the breast site. The result of that surgery was a staph infection that nearly killed her. When she finally recovered from the staph, a large blister began to rise on the edge of the new flap. It, too, developed into a large, open wound.

The responsibility for cleaning the wound has fallen to me. Caroline lies back and closes her eyes while I pull on a pair of latex gloves. I remove the bandage and reach into the wound carefully-it’s about the circumference of a quarter on the surface-and begin to pull out a long, thin strip of medicated gauze tape that I’d packed into the wound earlier in the day. The tape is slimy, covered with a mixture of blood and dead fat that smells like rotten eggs. I place it in a small trash bag that I’ll carry outside when we’re finished.

Each time we do this I ask her whether she’s okay, and each time her answer is running down her cheeks. I reach over and pull a tissue out of a box on the mini- trauma center I’ve set up next to the bed and wipe the tears away.