Jodi Picoult - Small Great Things

She spreads her hands, a concession. “The prosecutor would have you believe that the reason we are here today is negligence. But it was not Ruth who was inattentive-it was the hospital and the state lab, which failed to promptly flag a severe medical condition in the infant that, if diagnosed sooner, might have saved his life. The prosecutor would have you believe that the reason we are here today is rage and retaliation. That’s true. But it’s not Ruth who was consumed by anger. It was Turk and Brittany Bauer, who, lost in grief and pain, wanted to find a scapegoat. If they could not have their son, alive and healthy, they wanted someone else to suffer. And so, they targeted Ruth Jefferson.” She looks at the jury. “There has already been one innocent victim. I urge you to prevent there being a second.”

–

I HAVEN’T SEEN Corinne in months. She looks older, and there are circles under her eyes. I wonder if she is with the same boyfriend, if she’s been ill, what crisis has overtaken her life lately. I remember how when we got salads down in the cafeteria and ate them in the break room, she would give me her tomatoes and I would pass over my olives.

If the past few months have taught me anything, it’s that friendship is a smoke screen. The people you think are solid turn out to be mirrors and light; and then you look down and realize there are others you took for granted, those who are your foundation. A year ago, I would have told you that Corinne and I were close, but that turned out to be proximity instead of connection. We were default acquaintances, buying each other Christmas gifts and going out for tapas on Thursday nights not because we had so much in common, but because we worked so hard and so long that it was easier to continue our shorthand conversation than to branch out and teach someone else the language.

Odette asks Corinne to give her name, her address. Then she asks, “Are you employed?”

From the witness stand, Corinne makes eye contact with me, and then her gaze slides away. “Yes. At Mercy-West Haven Hospital.”

“Do you know the defendant in this matter?”

“Yes,” Corinne admits. “I do.”

But she doesn’t, not really. She never did.

To be fair, I guess, I didn’t really know who I was, either.

“How long have you known her?” Odette asks.

“Seven years. We worked together as nurses on the L and D ward.”

“I see,” the prosecutor says. “Were you both working on October second, 2015?”

“Yes. We started our shift at seven A.M.”

“Did you care for Davis Bauer that morning?”

“Yes,” Corinne says. “But I took over for Ruth.”

“Why?”

“Our supervisor, Marie Malone, asked me to.”

Odette makes a big to-do about entering a certified copy of the medical record into evidence. “I’d like to refer you to exhibit twenty-four, in front of you. Can you tell the jury what it is?”

“A medical records folder,” Corinne explains. “Davis Bauer was the patient.”

“Is there a note in the front of the file?”

“Yes,” Corinne says, and she reads it aloud. “No African American personnel to care for this patient.”

Each word, it’s a bullet.

“As a result of this, the patient was reassigned from the defendant to you, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Did you observe Ruth’s reaction to that note?” Odette asks.

“I did. She was angry and upset. She told me that Marie had taken her off the case because she’s Black, and I said that didn’t sound like Marie. You know, like, there must have been more going on. She didn’t want to hear it. She said, ‘That baby means nothing to me.’ And then she stormed off.”

Stormed off? I went down the staircase, instead of taking the elevator. It is remarkable how events and truths can be reshaped, like wax that’s sat too long in the sun. There is no such thing as a fact. There is only how you saw the fact, in a given moment. How you reported the fact. How your brain processed that fact. There is no extrication of the storyteller from the story.

“Was Davis Bauer a healthy baby?” the prosecutor continues.

“It seemed that way,” Corinne admits. “I mean, he wasn’t nursing a lot, but that wasn’t particularly significant. Lots of babies are logy at first.”

“Were you at work on Friday, October third?”

“Yes,” Corinne says.

“Was Ruth?”

“No. She wasn’t supposed to come in at all, but I’m pretty sure we were shorthanded and she got pulled in to do a double-seven P.M., running straight into Saturday.”

“So you were Davis’s nurse all day Friday?”

“Yes.”

“Did you perform any routine procedures on the infant?”

Corinne nods. “At around two-thirty I did the heel stick. It’s a standard blood test-it wasn’t done because the baby was sick or anything. All newborns get it, and it goes off to the state lab for analysis.”

“Did you have any concerns about your patient that day?”

“He was still having trouble latching on for breast feeding, but again, that’s not extraordinary for a first-time mom and a newborn.” She smiles at the jury. “Blind leading the blind, and all that.”

“Did you have any conversation with the defendant about Davis Bauer when she came on shift?”

“No. In fact she seemed to ignore him completely.”

It is like an out-of-body experience-sitting right here, in plain sight, and hearing these people discuss me as if I am not present.

“When did you next see Ruth?”

“Well, she was still on duty when I came back on shift at seven A.M. She’d pulled an all-nighter, and was scheduled to leave at eleven A.M.”

“What happened that morning?” Odette asks.

“The baby was being circumcised. Usually the parents don’t like to see that happen in front of them, so we take the infant to the nursery. We give them a little bit of sweeties-basically sugar water-to calm them down a little, and the pediatrician does the procedure. When I wheeled in the bassinet, Ruth was waiting in the nursery. It had been a crazy morning, and she was taking a breather.”

“Did the circumcision go as planned?”

“Yes, no complications. The protocol is to monitor the baby for ninety minutes to make sure there’s no bleeding, or any other sort of issue.”

“Is that what you did?”

“No,” Corinne admits. “I was called for an emergency C-section for one of my other patients. Our charge nurse, Marie, accompanied me to the OR, which is her job. That meant Ruth was the only nurse left on the floor. So I grabbed her and asked her to watch over Davis.” She hesitates. “You have to understand, we’re a tiny hospital. We have a skeletal staff. And when a medical emergency happens, decisions are made quickly.”

Beside me, Howard scribbles a note.

“A stat C-section takes twenty minutes, tops. I assumed I’d be back in that nursery before the infant even woke up.”

“Did you have any concern about leaving Davis in Ruth’s care?”

“No,” she says firmly. “Ruth’s the best nurse I’ve ever met.”

“How long were you gone?” Odette asks.

“Too long,” Corinne says softly. “By the time I got back, the baby was dead.”

The prosecutor turns to Kennedy. “Your witness.”

Kennedy smiles at Corinne as she walks toward the witness stand. “You say you worked with Ruth for seven years. Would you consider yourself friends?”

Corinne’s eyes dart to me. “Yes.”

“Have you ever doubted her commitment to her career?”

“No. She has pretty much been a role model for me.”

“Were you in the nursery for any of the time that a medical intervention was taking place with Davis Bauer?”

“No,” Corinne says. “I was with my other patient.”