Jodi Picoult - Small Great Things

“What response did you get?”

“Mr. Bauer told me to get away from his wife. Then he said he wanted to speak to my supervisor.”

“How did that make you feel, Ruth?”

“I was shocked,” she admits. “I didn’t know what I’d done to upset them.”

“What happened next?”

“My boss, Marie Malone, put a note in the baby’s file, stating that no African American staff should come in contact with the infant. I questioned her about it, and she said it was done at the request of the parents, and that I would be reassigned.”

“When did you next see the baby?”

“Saturday morning. I was in the nursery when Corinne-the baby’s new nurse-brought him in for a circ.”

“What were your responsibilities that morning?”

She frowns. “I had two-no, three patients. It had been a crazy night; I’d worked a shift I wasn’t supposed to work because another nurse was out sick. I had gone into the nursery to grab clean linens, and to scarf down a PowerBar, because I hadn’t eaten at all during my shift.”

“What happened after the baby was circumcised?”

“I wasn’t in the room, but I assumed it all went normally. Then Corinne grabbed me and asked me to watch over him because another one of her patients had to be rushed to the OR, and protocol required that a postcirc baby be monitored.”

“Did you agree?”

“I didn’t really have a choice. There was literally no one else to do it. I knew Corinne or Marie, my charge nurse, would be back quickly to take over.”

“When you first saw the baby, how did he look?”

“Beautiful,” Ruth says. “He was swaddled and fast asleep. But a few moments later I looked down and saw that his skin was ashen. He was making grunting noises. I could see he was having trouble breathing.”

I walk toward the witness box, and set my hand on the rail. “What did you do in that instant, Ruth?”

She takes a deep breath. “I unwrapped the swaddling. I started touching the baby, tapping his feet, trying to get him to respond.”

The jury looks puzzled. Odette sits back in her chair, arms crossed, a smile breaking over her face.

“Why did you do that? When you’d been told by your supervisor to not touch that baby?”

“I had to,” Ruth confesses. I can see it, the way she breaks free, like a butterfly from a chrysalis. Her voice is lighter, the lines bracketing her mouth soften. “It’s what any good nurse would do in that situation.”

“Then what?”

“The next step would have been to call a code, to get a whole team in to resuscitate. But I heard footsteps. I knew someone was coming and I didn’t know what to do. I thought I’d get in trouble if someone saw me interacting with the baby, when I had been told not to. So I wrapped him up again, and stepped back, and Marie walked into the nursery.” Ruth looks down at her lap. “She asked me what I was doing.”

“What did you say, Ruth?”

When she glances up, her eyes are wide with shame. “I said I was doing nothing.”

“You lied?”

“Yes.”

“More than once, apparently-when you were later questioned by the police, you stated that you did not engage in any resuscitative efforts for that baby. Why?”

“I was afraid I was going to lose my job.” She turns to the jury, pleading her case. “Every fiber of my being told me I had to help that infant…but I also knew I’d be reprimanded if I went against my supervisor’s orders. And if I lost my job, who would take care of my son?”

“So you basically faced either assisting in malpractice, or violating your supervisor’s order?”

She nods. “It was a lose-lose situation.”

“What happened next?”

“The code team was called in. My job was to do compressions. I did my best, we all did, but in the end it wasn’t enough.” She looks up. “When the time of death was called, and when Mr. Bauer took the Ambu bag out of the trash and tried to continue efforts himself, I could barely hold it together.” Like an arrow searching for its mark, her eyes hone in on Turk Bauer, in the gallery. “I thought: What did I miss? Could I have done anything different? ” She hesitates. “And then I thought: Would I have been allowed to? ”

“Two weeks later you received a letter,” I say. “Can you tell us about it?”

“It was from the Board of Health. Suspending my license to practice as a nurse.”

“What went through your mind when you received it?”

“I realized that I was being held responsible for the death of Davis Bauer. I knew I’d be suspended from my job, and that’s what happened.”

“Have you been employed since?”

“I went on public assistance, briefly,” Ruth says. “Then I got a job at McDonald’s.”

“Ruth, how has your life changed in the aftermath of this incident?”

She takes a deep breath. “I don’t have any savings anymore. We live from week to week. I’m worried about my son’s future. I can’t use my car because I can’t afford to register it.”

I turn my back, but Ruth isn’t finished speaking.

“It’s funny,” she says softly. “You think you’re a respected member of a community-the hospital where you work, the town where you live. I had a wonderful job. I had colleagues who were friends. I lived in a home I was proud of. But it was just an optical illusion. I was never a member of any of those communities. I was tolerated, but not welcomed. I was, and will always be, different from them.” She looks up. “And because of the color of my skin, I will be the one who’s blamed.”

Oh God, I think. Oh God, oh God, shut up, Ruth. Don’t go here. “Nothing further,” I say, trying to cut our losses.

Because Ruth is no longer a witness. She’s a time bomb.

–

WHEN I SIT back down at the defense table, Howard is gaping. He pushes me a piece of paper: WHAT IS GOING ON???

I write back on the bottom: That was an example of what you NEVER want a witness to do.

Odette strides toward the witness stand. “You were instructed not to touch that baby?”

“Yes,” Ruth says.

“And until today you said that you had not touched that baby until you were expressly told to by your charge nurse?”

“Yes.”

“Yet now you testified on your direct examination that you in fact did touch that baby while he was in distress?”

Ruth nods. “That’s true.”

“So which is it?” Odette presses. “Did you or didn’t you touch Davis Bauer when he initially stopped breathing?”

“I did.”

“So let me get this straight. You lied to your supervisor?”

“Yes.”

“And you lied to your colleague Corinne?”

“Yes.”

“You lied to the risk management team at Mercy-West Haven, didn’t you?”

She nods. “Yes.”

“You lied to the police?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Even though you realize they have a duty and a moral obligation to try to find out what happened to that dead infant?”

“I know but-”

“You were thinking of saving your job,” Odette corrects, “because deep down you knew you were doing something shady. Isn’t that right?”

“Well-”

“If you lied to all these people,” Odette says, “why on earth should this jury believe anything you say right now?”

Ruth turns to the men and women crammed into the jury box. “Because I’m telling them the truth.”

“Right,” Odette says. “But that’s not your only secret confession, is it?”

Where is she going with this?

“At the moment that the baby died-when the pediatrician called the time of death-deep down, you didn’t really give a damn, right, Ruth?”

“Of course I did!” She sits up in her chair. “We were working so hard, just like we would for any patient-”