Richard Mabry - Code Blue

The door opened, and the stenographer entered. She took her seat before a strange-looking machine, added a fresh stick of gum to the wad already in her mouth, and stared at the wall with a blank expression.

Will leaned in and whispered in Cathy's ear. "Remember. Pause before you answer. That gives me time to stop you. If you have any questions, you can whisper them to me."

"What if you object to something they ask?"

"My objections will simply be to get them on the record. There's no judge here to rule on them. But anytime I object, you clam up. Okay?"

Cathy nodded. Her mouth felt as dry as the sands of West Texas. She poured a glass of water and sipped from it, but it didn't seem to help much.

"Sorry to keep you waiting." Sam Lawton, Nix's lawyer, ambled into the room. He took a seat at the head of the table, nodded to Will and Cathy, and asked, "Is the court reporter ready?"

"Yes, Judge."

Will responded to Cathy's quizzical look with a whispered explanation. "Even though he was voted out years ago, Lawton's like most judges. He wants that title for life. Don't let it throw you. "

Lawton's gray hair spilled over the collar of a wrinkled dress shirt. He wore a blue suit that was five years out of style, accented by a slightly askew red polka-dot tie. Smeared reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. He reminded Cathy of a fine home gone to seed. But Will had warned her that, despite his age and appearance, Lawton's mind was sharp, his legal skills honed by years on the bench.

"Dr. Sewell, let's get started." Lawton's disarming smile was akin to what the snake must have displayed as he approached Eve.

Cathy placed her left hand on the Bible held by the court reporter, raised her right, and was sworn in.

"Now, Dr. Sewell, tell us about your medical training."

Cathy detailed her education, her residency training, and her postgraduate courses.

Lawton nodded in satisfaction, as though he'd just proven something important. She remembered Will's warnings. Don't try to read the man's expression. This was part fact-finding, part mind game.

Lawton led her on through a series of benign questions, and she concentrated on answering truthfully, careful not to volunteer information. Then, out of the blue, the lawyer asked, "And did you deliberately try to poison Milton Nix, or was it an accident?"

Will's voice never rose. "Sam, I'll object to that question and ask my client not to answer." He turned to the stenographer."Offthe record."

The woman took her hands offthe keyboard and rubbed them together.

Will shook his head. "Sam, do you take me for a secondyear law student?"

Lawton grinned like a fox. "Never hurts to ask, Will. Never hurts to ask."

The questioning seemed to go on and on. Finally, Lawton asked Cathy about her decision to switch Nix from Lanoxin to generic digoxin. She answered without pausing to think."I thought it would be nice to save him a few dollars."

"Had you been visited by a detail man from one of the pharmaceutical companies that makes this form of digitalis just before you saw Mr. Nix?"

Cathy bristled. "I never let pressure by pharmaceutical companies influence my prescribing. And for your information, generic drugs aren't detailed to doctors like brand name drugs. Maybe that's why they're cheaper."

Will's hand touched her arm and knew she'd violated one of the rules he'd stressed. Answer the question, don't volunteer information, and don't lose your temper.

"Never mind." Lawton pushed his glasses up offthe tip of his nose. He reached into a thin manila envelope resting on the table beside him. "This is a photocopy of the prescription you wrote for Milton Nix. Does the dosage appear correct?"

"I didn't-."

"Just answer the question I asked. Is the dosage correct?"

"No."

Cathy looked at Will, expecting him to say something about the prescription being altered. Instead, he turned away and appeared to study the crown molding across the room. For a moment, Cathy flashed back to the credentials committee meeting-men sitting in a room deciding issues that would affect her life, while she sat helpless. Was Will hesitant to go up against Judge Lawton because he didn't want to upset a local power broker? She ground her teeth as she prepared to answer the next question.

After the deposition, Will shook hands with Judge Lawton and said, "Sam, I'll be in touch about deposing your client."

"Just give my secretary a call, Will." Lawton picked up his briefcase. "You know, I was surprised that you're handling this case instead of a lawyer from the insurance company."

"They're willing to let me be the local presence. And I might as well be involved from the start. After all, I'll be filing the countersuit against your client."

To his credit, Lawton showed no surprise except a faint twitch of his bushy eyebrows. "Oh?"

"Sure, for malicious prosecution, tampering with evidence, and a few other violations. We'll be asking for five million." Will butted a stack of papers together and shoved them into his briefcase. "See you, Sam."

"Will, what was-?"

Will gave his head a single vigorous shake, his meaning clear. They stepped into the elevator and rode in silence to the ground floor. When they finally slid into Will's pickup and shut the doors, he turned to Cathy. "I guess I surprised you."

"You mean the way you let him accuse me of malpractice without objecting? The way you allowed him to imply that I'm guilty without uttering a word in my defense? Why, yes. You surprised me."

"A deposition isn't necessarily about getting information. It's mainly sparring, seeing if you can get the witness to lose their temper, say something rash so it's on the record under oath. That way, if that information comes up at trial, the witness can't back out of any corner they've painted themselves into without committing perjury. As for what we did today, I doubt that it will affect the trial-if there is one. He might ask you some of those same questions, but if he does, now you're prepared for them."

Cathy thought about that. "So you don't want to argue about anything he brought up?"

Will's eyes never left the road. "Why should I tip our hand? We know what our defense is, but they don't. Let's keep it that way."

"What about the countersuit. We never talked about that."

"Oh, if you want to go to the expense and trouble of filing one, we can do it after we discover who altered that prescription and why, but you'd never win it. Nix surely didn't change the directions so that he'd almost die, so there's no use suing him. He actually filed this suit in good faith. What we can do, after we get to the bottom of this, is see that whoever's responsible is prosecuted for what they did. But we're not about to file any civil suit. I just wanted to throw Sam off balance." He grinned. "He may be old and crafty, but I'm no slouch myself."

She knew he couldn't see her smile, but she hoped her voice showed it. "No, Will. No, you aren't."

"So, next we subpoena our own deponents."

"Pardon?"

"We serve subpoenas to the people we want to depose. Nix, his wife, the two pharmacists. Who else?"

"Let me think." Cathy nibbled on her thumb, a habit she thought she'd broken in her teens. Suddenly, she saw Robert's face in her mind's eye. The rumors? That would be his style. And he wouldn't be above paying someone to run her offthe road and frighten her. But arranging the alteration of a prescription-almost killing a patient? Despite his arrogance, Robert was a good doctor. She couldn't believe that of him.

"Well?" Will asked.

"I'm sorry, Will. I'm blank. I can't imagine how anyone else could have altered that prescription. It's got to be one of those people."

Will stopped at a traffic light. He turned to Cathy. "Don't forget to think outside the box."