WHEN EDISON WAS LITTLE, I always knew when he was getting up to no good. I could sense it, even if I couldn’t see it. I’ve got eyes in the back of my head, I would tell him, when he was amazed that even if I turned away, I knew he was trying to steal a snack before dinner.
Maybe that is why, even though I am facing forward like Kennedy told me to, I can feel the stares of everyone sitting behind me in the gallery.
They feel like pinpricks, arrows, tiny bug bites. It takes all my concentration to not slap at the back of my neck, swat them away.
Who am I kidding? It takes all my concentration not to stand up and run down the aisle and out of this courtroom.
Kennedy and Howard are bent together, deep in a strategy session; they don’t have time to talk me down from the ledge. The judge has made it clear that he won’t tolerate disruption from the gallery, and that he has a zero tolerance policy—first strike, you’re out. Certainly that is keeping the white supremacists in check. But they are not the only ones whose eyes are boring into me.
There are a whole host of Black people, many faces I recognize from my mother’s funeral, who have come to lift me up on their prayers. Directly behind me are Edison and Adisa. They are holding hands on the armrest between their seats. I can feel the strength of that bond, like a force field. I listen to their breathing.
All of a sudden I’m back in the hospital, doing what I did best, my hand on the shoulder of a woman in labor and my eyes on the screen that monitors her vitals. “Inhale,” I’d order. “Exhale. Deep breath in…deep breath out.” And sure enough, the tension would leach out of her. Without that strain, progress could be made.
It’s time to take my own advice.
I draw in all the air I can, nostrils flaring, breathing so deeply I envision the vacuum I create, the walls bending inward. My lungs swell in my chest, full to bursting. For a second I hold time still.
And then, I let go.
ODETTE LAWTON DOES not make eye contact with me. She is completely focused on the jury. She is one of them. Even the distance she puts between herself and the defense table is a way of reminding the people who will decide my fate that she and I have nothing in common. No matter what they see when they look at our skin.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” she says, “the case you are about to hear is horrible and tragic. Turk and Brittany Bauer were, like many of us, excited to become parents. In fact the best day of their lives was October second, 2015. On that day, their son Davis was born.” She rests her hand on the rail of the jury box. “Unlike all parents, however, the Bauers have some personal preferences that led them to feel uncomfortable with an African American nurse caring for their child. You may not like what they believe, you may not agree with them, but you cannot deny their just due as patients in the hospital to make decisions about the medical care of their baby. Exercising that privilege, Turk Bauer requested that only certain nurses attend to his infant. The defendant was not one of them—and, ladies and gentlemen, that was a slight she could not stomach.”
If I weren’t so terrified, I would laugh. That’s it? That’s the way Odette glossed over the racism that led to that damn Post-it note on the file? It’s almost impressive, the way she so neatly flipped it so that before the jury got a glance at the ugliness, they were looking at something else entirely: patients’ rights. I glance at Kennedy, and she shrugs the tiniest bit. I told you so.
“On Saturday morning, little Davis Bauer was taken to the nursery for his circumcision. The defendant was alone in that room when the baby went into distress. So what did she do?” Odette hesitates. “Nothing. This nurse with over twenty years of experience, this woman who had taken an oath to administer care as best she could, just stood there.” Turning, she points to me. “The defendant stood there, and she watched that baby struggle to breathe, and she let that baby die.”
Now I can feel the jury picking me over, jackals at carrion. Some of them seem curious, some stare with revulsion. It makes me want to crawl under the defense table. Take a shower. But then I feel Kennedy squeeze my hand where it rests on my lap, and I lift my chin. Do not let them see you sweat, she’d said.
“Ruth Jefferson’s behavior was wanton, reckless, and intentional. Ruth Jefferson is a murderer.”
Hearing the word leveled at me, even though I have been expecting it, still takes me by surprise. I try to build a levee against the shock of it, by picturing in quick succession all the babies I have held in my arms, the first touch they’ve had for comfort in this world.
“The evidence will show that the defendant stood there doing nothing while that infant fought for his life. When other medical professionals came in and prodded her into action, she used more force than was necessary and violated all the professional standards of care. She was so violent to this little baby boy that you will see the bruising in his autopsy photos.”
She faces the jury once more. “We have all had our feelings hurt, ladies and gentlemen,” Odette says. “But even if you don’t feel that a choice was made correctly—even if you find it a moral affront—you don’t retaliate. You don’t cause harm to an innocent, to get back at the person who’s wronged you. And yet this is exactly what the defendant did. Had she acted in accordance with her training as a medical professional, instead of being motivated by rage and retaliation, Davis Bauer would be alive today. But with Ruth Jefferson on the job?” She looks me square in the eye. “That baby didn’t stand a chance.”
Beside me, Kennedy rises smoothly. She walks toward the jury, her heels clicking on the tile floor. “The prosecutor,” she says, “will have you believe this case is black and white. But not in the way that you think. I’m representing Ruth Jefferson. She is a graduate of SUNY Plattsburgh who went on to get a nursing degree at Yale. She has practiced as a labor and delivery nurse for over twenty years in the state of Connecticut. She was married to Wesley Jefferson, who died overseas serving in our military. By herself, she raised a son, Edison, an honor student who is applying to college. Ruth Jefferson is not a monster, ladies and gentlemen. She is a good mother, she was a good wife, and she is an exemplary nurse.”
She crosses back to the defense table and puts her hand on my shoulder. “The evidence is going to show that one day, a baby died during Ruth’s shift. Not just any baby, though. The infant was the child of Turk Bauer, a man who hated her because of her skin color. And what happened? When the baby died, he went to the police and blamed Ruth. In spite of the fact that the pediatrician—who you will hear from—commended Ruth for the way she fought to save that infant during his respiratory arrest. In spite of the fact that Ruth’s boss—who you will hear from—told Ruth not to touch this child, when the hospital had no right to tell her to abandon her duty as a nurse.”
Kennedy walks toward the jury again. “Here is what the evidence will show: Ruth was confronted with an impossible situation. Should she follow the orders of her supervisor, and the misguided wishes of the baby’s parents? Or should she do whatever she possibly could to save his life?
“Ms. Lawton said that this case was tragic, and she is right. But again, not for the reason you think. Because nothing Ruth Jefferson did or didn’t do would have made a difference for little Davis Bauer. What the Bauers—and the hospital—did not know at the time is that the baby had a life-threatening condition that had gone unidentified. And it wouldn’t have mattered if it were Ruth in the room with him, or Florence Nightingale. There is simply no way Davis Bauer would have survived.”
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.”
“So you didn’t see Ruth take action.”
“No.”
“And,” Kennedy adds, “you didn’t see Ruth not take action.”
“No.”
She holds up the piece of paper Howard has passed to her. “You stated, and I quote, When a medical emergency happens, decisions are made quickly. Do you remember saying that?”
“Yes…”
“Your stat C-section was a medical emergency, right?”
“Yes.”
“Wouldn’t you also say that a newborn suffering a respiratory seizure qualifies as a medical emergency?”
“Um, yes, of course.”
“Were you aware that there was a note in the file that said Ruth was not to care for this baby?”
“Objection!” Odette says. “That’s not what the note said.”
“Sustained,” the judge pronounces. “Ms. McQuarrie, rephrase.”
“Were you aware that there was a note in the file that said no African American personnel could care for the baby?”
“Yes.”
“How many Black nurses work in your department?”
“Just Ruth.”
“Were you aware when you grabbed Ruth to fill in for you that the baby’s parents had expressed the desire to prohibit her from caring for their newborn?”
Corinne shifts on the wooden seat. “I didn’t think anything was going to happen. The baby was fine when I left.”
“The whole reason for monitoring a baby for ninety minutes after a circumcision is because with neonates, things can change on a dime, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“And the fact is, Corinne, you left that baby with a nurse who was forbidden from ministering to him, correct?”
“I had no other choice,” Corinne says, defensive.
“But you did leave that infant in Ruth’s care?”
“Yes.”
“And you did know that she wasn’t supposed to touch that baby?”
“Yes.”
“So you screwed up, essentially, two times over?”
“Well—”
“Funny,” Kennedy interrupts. “No one accused you of killing that baby.”
LAST NIGHT, I dreamed about Mama’s funeral. The pews were full, and it wasn’t winter, but summer. In spite of the air-conditioning and people waving fans and programs, we were all slick with sweat. The church wasn’t a church but a warehouse that looked like it had been repurposed after a fire. The cross behind the altar was made of two charred beams fitted together like a puzzle.
I was trying to cry, but I didn’t have any tears left. All the moisture in my body had become perspiration. I tried to fan myself, but I didn’t have a program.
Then the person sitting beside me handed me one. “Take mine,” she said.
I looked over to say thank you, and realized Mama was in the chair next to me.
Speechless, I staggered to my feet.
I peered into the coffin, to see who—instead—was inside.
It was full of dead babies.
MARIE WAS HIRED ten years after I was. Back then she was an L & D nurse, just like me. We suffered through double shifts and complained about the lousy benefits and survived the remodeling of the hospital. When the charge nurse retired, Marie and I both threw our names into the ring. When HR went with Marie, she came to me, devastated. She said that she was hoping I’d get the job, just so she didn’t have to apologize for being the one who was chosen. But really, I was okay with it. I had Edison to watch after, in the first place. And being charge nurse meant a lot more administrative work and less hands-on with patients. As I watched Marie settle into her new role, I thanked my lucky stars that it had worked out the way it had.
“The baby’s father, Turk Bauer, had asked to speak to a supervisor,” Marie says, replying to the prosecutor. “He had a concern about the care of his infant.”
“What were the contents of that conversation?”
She looks into her lap. “He did not want any Black people touching his baby. He told me that at the same time he revealed a tattoo of a Confederate flag on his forearm.”
There is actually a gasp from someone in the jury.
“Had you ever experienced a request like this from a parent?”
Marie hesitates. “We get patient requests all the time. Some women prefer female doctors to deliver their babies, or they don’t like being treated by a med student. We do our best to make our patients comfortable, whatever it takes.”
“In this case, what did you do?”
“I wrote a note and stuck it in the file.”
Odette asks her to examine the exhibit with the medical file, to read the note out loud. “Did you speak to your staff about this patient request?”
“I did. I explained to Ruth that there had been a request to have her step down, due to the father’s philosophical beliefs.”
“What was her reaction?”
“She took it as a personal affront,” Marie says evenly. “I didn’t mean it that way. I told her it was just a formality. But she walked out and slammed the door of my office.”
“When did you see the defendant again?” Odette asks.
“Saturday morning. I was in the ER with another patient, who had suffered a complication during delivery. As nurse supervisor, I’m required to make that transfer with the attending nurse, who happened to be Corinne. Corinne had left Ruth watching over her other patient—Davis Bauer—postcircumcision. So as soon as I possibly could, I ran back to the nursery.”
“Tell us what you saw, Marie.”
“Ruth was standing over the bassinet,” she says. “I asked her what she was doing, and she said, Nothing.”
The room closes in on me, and the muscles of my neck and arms tighten. I feel myself frozen again, mesmerized by the blue marble of the baby’s cheek, the stillness of his small body. I hear her instructions:
Ambu bag.
Call the code.
I am swimming, I am in over my head, I am wooden.
Start compressions.
Hammering with two fingers on the delicate spring of rib cage, attaching the leads with my other hand. The nursery too cramped for all the people suddenly inside. The needle inserted subcutaneous into the scalp, the blue barrage of swear words as it slips out before striking a vein. A vial rolling off the table. Atropine, squirted into the lungs, coating the plastic tube. The pediatrician, flying into the nursery. The sigh of the Ambu bag being tossed in the trash.
Time? 10:04.
“Ruth?” Kennedy whispers. “Are you all right?”
I cannot get my lips to move. I am in over my head. I am wooden. I am drowning.
“The patient developed wide complex bradycardia,” Marie says.
Tombstones.
“We were unable to oxygenate him. Finally, the pediatrician called the time of death. We didn’t realize that the parents were in the nursery. There was just so much going on…and…” She falters. “The father—Mr. Bauer—he ran to the trash can and took the Ambu bag out. He tried to put it on the tube that was still sticking out of the baby’s throat. He begged us to show him what to do.” She wipes a tear away. “I don’t mean to…I’m…I’m sorry.”
I manage to jerk my head a few degrees and see that there are several women in the jury box who are doing the same thing. But me, there are no tears left in me.
I am drowning in everyone else’s tears.
Odette walks toward Marie and hands her a box of tissues. The soft sound of sobs surrounds me, like cotton batting on all sides. “What happened next?” the prosecutor asks.
Marie dabs at her eyes. “I wrapped Davis Bauer in a blanket. I put his hat back on. And I gave him to his mother and father.”
I am wooden.
I close my eyes. And I sink, I sink.
IT TAKES ME a few minutes to focus on Kennedy, who has already started the cross-examination of Marie when I clear my head. “Did any patient ever complain to you about Ruth’s expertise as a nurse, prior to Turk Bauer?”
“No.”
“Did Ruth provide substandard care?”
“No.”
“When you wrote that note in the infant’s chart, you knew there would only be two nurses working at any given time, and that there might be a possibility the patient might be left without supervision at some point during his hospital stay?”
“That’s not true. The other nurse on duty would have covered.”
“And what if that nurse was busy? What if,” Kennedy says, “she got called away on an emergency C-section, for example, and the only nurse remaining on the floor was in fact African American?”
Marie’s mouth opens and closes, but no sound emerges.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Malone—I didn’t quite get that.”
“Davis Bauer was not left unsupervised at any point,” she insists. “Ruth was there.”
“But you—her supervisor—you had prohibited her from ministering to this particular patient, isn’t that right?”
“No, I—”
“Your note barred her from actively treating this particular patient—”
“In general,” Marie explains. “Obviously not in the case of emergency.”
Kennedy’s eyes flash. “Was that written in the patient’s chart?”
“No, but—”
“Was that written on your Post-it note?”
“No.”
“Did you advise Ruth that in certain circumstances her Nightingale pledge as a nurse should supersede what you’d ordered?”
“No,” Marie murmurs.
Kennedy folds her arms. “Then how,” she asks, “was Ruth supposed to know?”
WHEN COURT BREAKS for lunch, Kennedy offers to get us a bite to eat, so that Edison and I don’t have to run a gauntlet of press. I tell her I’m not hungry. “I know it doesn’t feel like it,” she tells me. “But this was a good start.”
I give her a look that tells her exactly what I’m thinking: there is no way that jury isn’t going to be thinking of Turk Bauer trying to resuscitate his own son.
After Kennedy leaves us, Edison sits down beside me. He loosens his tie. “You all right?” I ask him, squeezing his hand.
“I can’t believe you’re the one asking me that.”
A lady walks by us and sits beside Edison on the bench outside the courtroom. She is deeply involved in a text conversation on her phone. She laughs and frowns and tsks, a human opera of one. Then finally she looks up as if she’s just realized where she is.
She sees Edison beside her, and shifts just the tiniest bit, to put a hair of space between them. Then she smiles, as if this will make everything all right.
“You know,” I say, “I’m sort of hungry.”
Edison grins. “I’m always hungry.”
We rise in tandem and sneak out the back of the courthouse. I don’t even care at this point if I run into the entirety of the media, or Wallace Mercy himself. I wander down the street with my arm tucked into Edison’s until we find a pizza place.
We order slices and sit down, waiting to be called. In the booth, Edison hunches over his Coca-Cola, sucking hard on the straw until he reaches the bottom of the glass and slurps. I, too, am lost in my thoughts and my memories.
I guess I didn’t realize that a trial is not just a sanctioned character assassination. It is a mind game, so that the defendant’s armor is chipped away one scale at a time, until you can’t help but wonder if maybe what the prosecution is saying is true.
What if I had done it on purpose?
What if I’d hesitated not because of Marie’s Post-it note but because, deep down, I wanted to?
I am distracted by Edison’s voice. Blinking, I come back to center. “Did they call our name?”
He shakes his head. “Not yet. Mama, can I…can I ask you something?”
“Always.”
He mulls for a moment, as if he is sifting through words. “Was it…was it really like that?”
There is a bell at the front counter. Our food is ready.
I make no move to retrieve it. Instead I meet my son’s gaze. “It was worse,” I say.
THE ANESTHESIOLOGIST WHO is called that afternoon as a witness for the State is someone I do not know very well. Isaac Hager doesn’t work on my floor unless a code is called. Then, he arrives with the rest of the team. When he came to minister to Davis Bauer I did not even know his name.
“Prior to responding to the code,” Odette asks, “had you ever met this patient?”
“No,” Dr. Hager says.
“Had you ever met his parents?”
“No.”
“Can you tell us what you did when you reached the nursery?”
“I intubated the patient,” Dr. Hager replies. “And when my colleagues couldn’t get an IV in, I tried to help.”
“Did you make any comments to Ruth during this process?” Odette asks.
“Yes. She was doing compressions, and I instructed her at several times to stop so that we could see if the patient was responding. At one point, when I felt she was a little aggressive with her chest compressions, I told her so.”
“Can you describe what she was doing?”
“Chest compressions on an infant involve pressing the sternum down a half inch, about two hundred times a minute. The complexes on the monitor were too high; I thought Ruth was pushing down too hard.”
“Can you explain what that means to a layperson?”
Dr. Hager looks at the jury. “Chest compressions are the way we manually make a heart beat, if it’s not doing it by itself. The point is to physically push the cardiac output…but then let up on your thrust long enough to let blood fill the heart. It’s not unlike plunging a toilet. You have to push down, but if you keep doing that and don’t pull up, creating suction, the bowl won’t fill with water. Likewise, if you do compressions too fast or too hard, you’re pumping, pumping, pumping, but there’s no blood circulating in the body.”
“Do you remember what you said to Ruth, exactly?”
He clears his throat. “I told her to lighten up.”
“Is it unusual for an anesthesiologist to suggest a modification to the person who is doing compressions?”
“Not at all,” Dr. Hager says. “It’s a system of checks and balances. We’re all watching each other during a code. I might just as well have been watching to see if both sides of the chest were rising, and if they weren’t, I would have told Marie Malone to bag harder.”
“How long was Ruth overly aggressive?”
“Objection!” Kennedy says. “She’s putting words in the witness’s mouth.”
“I’ll rephrase. How long was the defendant aggressive with her chest compressions?”
“It was only slightly aggressive, and for less than a minute.”
“In your expert medical opinion, Doctor,” Odette asks, “could the defendant’s actions have caused harm to the patient?”
“The act of saving a life can look pretty violent, Ms. Lawton. We slice open skin, we crack ribs, we shock with extreme voltage.” Then he turns to me. “We do what we have to do, and when we are lucky, it works.”
“Nothing further,” the prosecutor says.
Kennedy approaches Dr. Hager. “Emotions were running very high in that nursery, weren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“Those compressions that Ruth was doing—were they adversely affecting the infant’s life?”
“On the contrary. They were keeping him alive while we attempted medical intervention.”
“Were they contributory to the infant’s death?”
“No.”
Kennedy leans on the railing of the jury box. “Is it fair to say that in that nursery, everyone was trying to save that baby’s life?”
“Absolutely.”
“Even Ruth?”
Dr. Hager looks right at me. “Yes,” he says.
THERE IS A recess after the anesthesiologist’s testimony. The judge leaves, and the jury is removed from their box. Kennedy spirits me away to a conference room, where I am supposed to stay, so that I remain safely sequestered from the media.
I want to talk to Edison. I want a hug from Adisa. But instead I sit at a small table in a room with hissing fluorescent lights, trying to untangle this chess game in my head.
“You ever wonder?” I ask. “What you’d do, if you weren’t a lawyer?”
Kennedy glances at me. “Is this your way of telling me I’m doing a shitty job?”
“No, I’m just thinking. About…starting over.”
She unwraps a piece of gum and passes me the rest of the packet. “Don’t laugh, but I wanted to be a pastry chef once.”
“Really?”
“I went to culinary school for three weeks. I was eventually conquered by phyllo. I just don’t have the patience for it.”
A smile dances over my face. “Go figure.”
“What about you?” Kennedy asks.
I look up at her. “I don’t know,” I admit. “I’ve wanted to be a nurse since I was five. I feel like I’m too old to start over, and even if I had to, I wouldn’t know where else to go.”
“That’s the problem with having a calling,” Kennedy says. “It doesn’t just pay the rent.”
A calling. Is that why I unwrapped Davis Bauer’s blanket when he wasn’t breathing? “Kennedy,” I begin, “there’s something—”
But she interrupts. “You could go back to school. Get a medical degree or become a PA,” she suggests. “Or work as a private caregiver.”
Neither of us says the truth that squeezes into the small room with us: convicted felon doesn’t look good on a résumé.
When she sees my face, her eyes soften. “It’s going to work out, Ruth. There’s a grand plan.”
“What if?” I say softly. “What if the grand plan doesn’t come to pass?”
She sets her jaw. “Then I will do whatever I can to get your sentence minimized.”
“I’d have to go to prison?”
“Right now the State’s leveled several charges against you. At any time if they decide they don’t have the evidence to support them, they might drop a greater charge in favor of conviction on a lesser one. So if they can’t prove murder, but they think they have negligent homicide locked up, Odette may play it safe.” She meets my gaze. “Murder has a minimum sentence of twenty-five years. But negligent homicide? Less than a year. And to be honest, they’re going to have a very hard time proving intent. Odette’s going to have to tiptoe through her questioning of Turk Bauer or the jury’s going to hate him.”
“You mean as much as I do?”
Kennedy’s eyes sharpen. “Ruth,” she warns, “I never want to hear you say those words out loud again. Do you understand?”
In an instant, I realize Kennedy is not the only one thinking six moves ahead. So is Odette. She wants the jury to hate Turk Bauer. She wants them outraged, offended, morally disgusted.
And that’s exactly how she will prove motive.
I’VE ALWAYS ADMIRED Dr. Atkins, the pediatrician, but after hearing her list her credentials and rattle off her CV, I’m even more impressed. She is one of those rare individuals who has more awards and honors than you’d ever expect, because she’s humble enough to not mention it herself. She is also the first witness to take the stand who looks directly at me and smiles before turning her attention to the prosecutor.
“Ruth had already done the newborn exam,” Dr. Atkins says. “She was concerned about a potential heart murmur.”
“Was that a significant concern?” Odette asks.
“No. A lot of babies are born with an open patent ductus. A teensy little hole in the heart. It usually closes up by itself, the first year of life. However, to be safe, I scheduled a pediatric cardiology consult prior to patient discharge.”
I know, from Kennedy, that Odette will be assuming the medical issue Kennedy referenced in her opening statement is this heart murmur. That she’s downplaying it, already, for the jury.
“Dr. Atkins, were you working on Saturday, October third—the day of Davis Bauer’s death?”
“Yes. I came in to do the patient’s circumcision at nine A.M.”
“Can you explain that procedure?”
“Of course, it’s a very simple operation during which the foreskin of a male infant’s penis is removed. I was running a little late because I had another patient with an emergency.”
“Was anyone else present?”
“Yes, two nurses. Corinne and Ruth. I asked Ruth if the patient was ready, and she said she was no longer his nurse. Corinne confirmed that the infant was ready for the procedure, and I performed it without incident.”
“Did Ruth say anything to you about the circumcision?”
Dr. Atkins pauses. “She said maybe I should sterilize the baby.”
Behind me, in the gallery, someone whispers: Bitch.
“How did you respond?”
“I didn’t. I had work to do.”
“How did the procedure go?”
The pediatrician shrugs. “He was crying afterward, like all infants do. We swaddled him tight, and he drifted off.” She looks up. “When I left, he was sleeping…well…like a baby.”
“Your witness,” Odette says.
“Doctor, you’ve worked at the hospital for eight years?” Kennedy begins.
“Yes.” She laughs a little. “Wow. Time flies.”
“During that time, have you worked with Ruth before?”
“Frequently, and joyously,” Dr. Atkins says. “She is a terrific nurse who goes above and beyond for her patients.”
“When Ruth made the comment about sterilizing the infant, how did you perceive her statement?”
“As a joke,” Dr. Atkins says. “I knew she was kidding. Ruth isn’t the type to be malicious about patients.”
“After Davis Bauer’s circumcision, were you still working in the hospital?”
“Yes, on a different floor, in the pediatric clinic.”
“Were you made aware of an emergency in the nursery?”
“Yes. Marie had called the code. When I arrived, Ruth was compressing the chest.”
“Did Ruth do everything according to the highest standards of care?”
“As far as I could see, yes.”
“Did she indicate any animus or bias against this child?” Kennedy asks.
“No.”
“I’d like to jump back a bit,” Kennedy says. “Did you order any blood work to be done on Davis Bauer after his birth?”
“Yes, the newborn screening that’s done by the state of Connecticut.”
“Where does the blood work go?”
“The state lab in Rocky Hill tests it. We don’t do it in-house.”
“How is it transported to the state lab?”
“By courier,” Dr. Atkins says.
“When was Davis Bauer’s blood taken for the screening?”
“At two-thirty P.M., on Friday, October third.”
“Did you ever receive the results of the newborn screening test from the Connecticut state lab?”
Dr. Atkins frowns, considering this. “Actually, I don’t remember seeing them. But of course by then it was a moot point.”
“What is the purpose of the test?”
She lists a series of rare diseases. Some are caused by genetic mutation. Some are issues with not having enough of an enzyme or protein in the body. Others result from not being able to break down enzymes or proteins. “Most of you have never heard of these conditions,” Dr. Atkins says, “because most babies don’t have them. But the ones that do—well, some of the disorders are treatable if caught early. If we make accommodations through diet or medicine or hormone therapy, we can often prevent significant growth delays and cognitive impairment by starting immediate treatment.”
“Are any of these conditions fatal?”
“Some, if they’re left untreated.”
“You did not have the benefit of the results of this test when Davis Bauer had a seizure, did you?” Kennedy asks.
“No. The state lab is closed on weekends. We usually don’t get Friday’s results back until Tuesday.”
“What you’re saying,” Kennedy mulls, “is that it takes almost twice as long to get the test results back if the baby has the misfortune to be born at the end of the workweek.”
“That’s true, unfortunately.”
I can see the jury perking up, writing down notes, listening intently. Behind me, Edison shifts. Maybe Kennedy is right. Maybe all they need is science.
“Are you aware of a disorder called MCADD?” Kennedy asks.
“Yes. It’s a fatty acid oxidation disorder. Basically, an infant who has it will have trouble breaking down fats, and that means the blood sugar drops to dangerously low levels. It can be managed with early detection—a careful diet, frequent feedings.”
“Let’s say it isn’t detected. What happens?”
“Well, infants who have MCADD have a significant risk of death during the first clinical episode of hypoglycemia—when that blood sugar goes south.”
“What would that look like?”
“They’d be sleepy, logy. Irritable. They wouldn’t nurse well.”
“Let’s say, hypothetically, a baby with undiagnosed, untreated MCADD was about to be circumcised. Is there anything about that procedure that might have exacerbated the disease?”
The pediatrician nods. “Normally there would be fasting after six A.M., because of the upcoming surgery. For a baby with MCADD, that would lead to low blood sugar—a potential episode of hypoglycemia. Instead, ten percent dextrose would have been given to the baby prior and afterward.”
“You drew blood from Davis Bauer during the code, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell the jury the results of his blood sugar at that time?” Kennedy asks.
“Twenty.”
“At what level is a newborn considered hypoglycemic?”
“Forty.”
“So Davis Bauer’s blood sugar was dangerously low?”
“Yes.”
“Would it have been enough to cause a child with untreated, undiagnosed MCADD to go into respiratory failure?”
“I can’t say for sure. But it’s possible.”
Kennedy lifts a file. “I’d like to enter this as exhibit forty-two,” she says. “It’s the newborn screening result of Davis Bauer, which was subpoenaed by the defense.”
Odette stands like a shot. “Your Honor, what is this stunt? Defense hasn’t shared this with the prosecution—”
“That’s because I received these results just days ago. They were conveniently missing from the discovery, however, for months,” Kennedy replies. “Which I could claim as obstruction of justice…”
“Approach.” The judge calls both lawyers to the bench. A machine is turned on so that I cannot hear what they’re saying, and neither can the jury. When they finish, though, it’s after much hand waving and a dark flush on Kennedy’s face. But the record is handed to the clerk to be entered as evidence.
“Dr. Atkins, can you tell us what you’re looking at?” Kennedy asks.
“It’s a newborn screening test result,” the pediatrician says, sifting through the pages. Then she stops. “Oh, my God.”
“Is there any particular finding of interest in the results, Dr. Atkins? The results that didn’t get processed because the state lab was closed all weekend? The results you didn’t receive until after the death of Davis Bauer?”
The pediatrician looks up. “Yes. Davis Bauer screened positive for MCADD.”
KENNEDY IS HIGH on herself when court is dismissed that first day. She’s talking fast, like she’s had four big cups of coffee, and she seems to feel like we won our case, even though the prosecution has only just begun and we haven’t started the defense. She tells me I should drink a big glass of wine to celebrate a phenomenal day of testimony, but honestly, all I want to do is go home and crawl into bed.
My head is aching with images of Davis Bauer, and with the look on Dr. Atkins’s face when she realized what the test results said. True, Kennedy had shared them with me two nights ago, but this was even more devastating. To see someone else from the hospital—someone I liked and trusted—silently thinking, If only…It recentered me a little.
Yes, this is a trial against me.
Yes, I was blamed for something I shouldn’t have been blamed for.
But at the end of the day, there’s still a dead baby. There’s still a mama who doesn’t get to watch him grow up. I could be acquitted; I could become a shining light for Wallace Mercy’s message; I could sue in civil court for damages and get a payout that makes my nerves about Edison’s college bills disappear—and still, I would know that nobody had really won this case.
Because you can’t erase the colossal, tragic loss of a life at its very beginning.
That’s what’s running through my mind as I wait for the hallways to clear, so that Edison and I can go home without attracting attention. He is waiting for me on a bench outside the conference room. “Where’s your aunt?”
He shrugs. “She said she wanted to get home before the snow really started.”
I glance out the window, where flakes are falling. I’ve been turned inward so much, I hadn’t even noticed an oncoming storm. “Let me just use the restroom,” I tell Edison, and I walk down the empty hall.
I go into the stall and do my business, flush, and come out to wash my hands. Standing at the sink is Odette Lawton. She glances at me in the mirror, puts the cap on her lipstick. “Your lawyer had a good first day,” she concedes.
I don’t know what to say, so I just let the hot water run over my wrists.
“But if I were you, I wouldn’t get too complacent. You may be able to convince Kennedy McQuarrie you’re Clara Barton, but I know what you were thinking after that racist put you in your place. And they were not healing thoughts.”
It is too much. Something bubbles up inside me, a geyser, a realization. I shut the faucet, dry my hands, and face her. “You know, I have spent my life doing everything right. I have studied hard and smiled pretty and played by the rules to get where I am. And I know you have too. So it is really hard for me to understand why an intelligent, professional African American woman would go out of her way to put down another intelligent, professional African American woman.”
There is a flicker in Odette’s eyes, like a breath on a flame. Just as quickly, it’s gone, replaced by a steel stare. “This has nothing to do with race. I’m just doing my job.”
I throw my paper towel into the trash, put my hand on the door handle. “Aren’t you lucky?” I say. “No one told you you couldn’t.”
THAT NIGHT I am sitting at the kitchen table, just lost in my thoughts, when Edison brings me a cup of tea. “What’s this for, baby?” I say, smiling.
“I thought you could use it,” he tells me. “You look tired.”
“I am,” I confess. “I am so damn tired.”
We both know I’m not talking about the first two days of testimony, either.
Edison sits down beside me, and I squeeze his hand. “It’s exhausting, isn’t it? Trying so hard to prove that you’re better than they expect you to be?”
He nods, and I know he understands what I’m saying. “Court’s different than I thought it would be, from what I’ve seen on TV.”
“Longer,” I say, at the same time he says, “Boring.”
We both laugh.
“I was talking a little to that Howard dude, during one of the recesses,” Edison says. “It’s pretty cool, his job. And Kennedy’s. You know, the whole idea that everyone has the right to a good attorney, even if they can’t pay for it.” He looks at me, a question wreathed around his features. “You think I’d be a good lawyer, Mama?”
“Well, you’re smarter than me, and Lord knows you know how to argue,” I tease. “But, Edison, you’ll be a star at whatever you choose to do.”
“It’s funny,” he says. “I’d want to do what they do—work for people who can’t afford legal representation. But it’s kind of like my whole life has prepared me for the other side, instead—the prosecution.”
“How do you mean?”
He shrugs. “The State’s got the burden of proof,” Edison says. “Kind of like we do, every day.”
THE SNOW FALLS hard and fast that night, so that the plows can’t keep up, and the world becomes completely white. I wear my winter boots with the same skirt I’ve worn all week—I’ve been changing up the blouse—and stuff my dress shoes into a Stop & Shop bag. The radio is full of school closings, and the bus Edison and I have been taking breaks down, so we have to hurry to a different line and transfer twice. As a result, we reach the courthouse five minutes late. I’ve texted Kennedy, and know we don’t have time to sneak in through the back. Instead, she meets me on the steps of the courthouse, where immediately microphones are shoved at me and people call me a killer. Edison’s arm comes around me and I duck against his chest, letting him form a barrier.
“If we’re lucky Judge Thunder had trouble digging his car out today,” she mutters.
“It was the public transport sys—”
“I don’t care. You don’t give the court any extra reasons to dislike you.”
We race into the courtroom, where Odette is sitting smugly at the prosecution table, looking like she arrived at 6:00 A.M. For all I know, she sleeps here. Judge Thunder enters, bent at the waist, and we all rise. “I was rear-ended by a cretin on the way to work, and as a result, my back is officially out,” he says. “My apologies for the delay.”
“Are you all right, Your Honor?” Kennedy says. “Do you need to call a doctor?”
“As much as I appreciate your display of sympathy, Ms. McQuarrie, I imagine you’d prefer I was incapacitated somewhere in a hospital. Preferably without painkillers available. Ms. Lawton, call your witness before I forgo this judicial bravery and take a Vicodin.”
The first witness for the prosecution today is the detective who interviewed me after my arrest. “Detective MacDougall,” Odette begins, after walking him through his name and address, “where are you employed?”
“In the town of East End, Connecticut.”
“How did you become involved in the case we’re examining today?”
He leans back. He seems to spill over the chair, to fill the entire witness stand. “I got a call from Mr. Bauer, and I told him to come down to the station so I could take his complaint. He was pretty distraught at the time. He believed that the nurse who had been taking care of his son had intentionally withheld emergency care, which led to the baby’s death. I interviewed the medical personnel involved in the case, and had several meetings with the medical examiner…and with you, ma’am.”
“Did you interview the defendant?”
“Yes. After securing an arrest warrant, we went to Ms. Jefferson’s house and knocked on the door—loudly—but she didn’t come.”
At that, I nearly rise out of my chair. Howard and Kennedy each put a hand on my shoulder, holding me down. It was 3:00 A.M. They did not knock, they pounded until the doorjamb was busted. They held me at gunpoint.
I lean toward Kennedy, my nostrils flaring. “This is a lie. He is lying on the stand,” I whisper.
“Ssh,” she says.
“What happened next?” asks the prosecutor.
“No one answered the door.”
Kennedy’s hand clamps tighter on my shoulder.
“We were concerned that she might be fleeing through the back door. So I advised my team to use the battering ram to gain entrance to the home.”
“Did you in fact gain entrance and arrest Ms. Jefferson?”
“Yes,” the detective says, “but first we were confronted with a large Black subject—”
“No,” I say under my breath, and Howard kicks me under the table.
“—whom we later determined to be Ms. Jefferson’s son. We were also concerned about officer safety, so we conducted a cursory search of the bedroom, while we handcuffed Ms. Jefferson.”
They tossed aside my furniture. They broke my dishes. They pulled my clothes off hangers. They tackled my son.
“I advised her of her rights,” Detective MacDougall continues, “and read her the charges.”
“How did she react?”
He grimaces. “She was uncooperative.”
“What happened next?”
“We brought her to the East End station. She was fingerprinted and photographed and put in a holding cell. Then my colleague, Detective Leong, and I brought her into a conference room and again advised her she had the right to have her lawyer there, to not say anything, and that if she wanted to stop answering questions at any time she was free to do so. We told her that her responses could and would be used in court. And then I asked her if she understood all that. She initialed every paragraph, saying that she did.”
“Did the defendant request an attorney?”
“Not at that time. She was very willing to explain her version of events. She maintained that she did not touch the infant until he started to code. She also admitted that she and Mr. Bauer did not—how did she put it?—see eye to eye.”
“Then what happened?”
“Well, we wanted to let her know that we were looking out for her. If it was an accident, we said, just tell us, and then the judge would go easy on her and we could straighten out the mess and she could get on with raising her boy. But she clammed up and said she didn’t want to talk anymore.” He shrugs. “I guess it wasn’t an accident.”
“Objection,” Kennedy says.
Judge Thunder winces, trying to pivot toward the court reporter. “Sustained. Strike the witness’s last comment from the record.”
But it hangs in the space between us, like the glow of a neon sign after the plug has been pulled.
I feel negative pressure on my shoulder and realize Kennedy has released me. She stands in front of the detective. “You had a warrant?”
“Yes.”
“Did you call Ruth to tell her you’d be coming? Ask her to come voluntarily to the station?”
“That’s not what we do with murder warrants,” MacDougall says.
“What time was your warrant issued?”
“Five P.M. or so.”
“And what time did you actually get to Ruth’s house?”
“About three A.M.”
Kennedy looks at the jury as if to say, Can you believe this? “Any particular reason for the delay?”
“It was fully intentional. One of the tenets of law enforcement is to go when someone is least expecting you. That disarms the suspect and moves the process along.”
“When you knocked on Ruth’s door, then, and she didn’t immediately welcome you with a coffee cake and a big hug, is it possible that was because she was fast asleep at three in the morning?”
“I can’t speak to the defendant’s sleep habits.”
“The cursory search you did…in fact didn’t you actually empty the drawers and cabinets and knock over furniture and otherwise destroy Ms. Jefferson’s home when she was handcuffed and unable to access any weapon?”
“You never know when a weapon might be within someone’s reach, ma’am.”
“Isn’t it also true that you pushed her son to the ground and pulled his arms behind his back to subdue him?”
“That’s standard procedure for officer safety. We didn’t know that was Ms. Jefferson’s son. We saw a large, angry Black youth who was visibly upset.”
“Really?” Kennedy says. “Was he wearing a hoodie too?”
JUDGE THUNDER STRIKES that comment from the record, and when Kennedy sits down, she looks just as surprised by her outburst as I am. “Sorry,” she murmurs. “That just slipped out.” The judge, though, is furious. He calls counsel up for a sidebar. There is a noise machine again that prevents me from hearing what he says, but from the color of his face, and the full-throttle anger as he laces into my lawyer, I know he didn’t ask her up there to praise her.
“That,” Kennedy tells me, a little white around the gills when she returns, “is why you don’t bring up race in a courtroom.”
Judge Thunder decides that his back spasm merits adjournment for the rest of the day.
Because of the snow, it takes us longer to get home. When Edison and I turn the corner on our block, we are damp and exhausted. A man is trying to dig out his car using only his gloved hands. Two neighborhood boys are in the thick of a snowball fight; one missile smacks against Edison’s back.
There is a car sitting in front of our house. It’s a black sedan with a driver, which isn’t something you see very often around here, at least not once you get off the Yale campus. As I approach, the rear door opens and a woman stands up. She is wearing a ski parka and furry boots and is buried under a layer of wool—a hat, a scarf. It takes me a moment to realize that this is Christina.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, truly surprised. In all the years I’ve been in East End, Christina has not come to visit. In all the years, I haven’t invited her.
It’s not that I’m ashamed of my home. I love where I live, how I live. It’s that I did not think I could handle the excessive way she’d exclaim about how cute the space was, how cozy, how me.
“I’ve been in court for the last two days,” she admits, and I’m shocked. I’ve scanned that gallery. I haven’t noticed her there, and Christina is very hard to overlook.
She unzips her coat, revealing a ratty flannel shirt and baggy jeans, as far away from her couture sheaths as possible. “I wore camouflage,” she says, smiling shyly. She looks over my shoulder, to Edison. “Edison! My God, I haven’t seen you since you were shorter than your mother…”
He jerks his chin, an awkward hello.
“Edison, why don’t you go inside?” I suggest, and when he does, I meet Christina’s gaze. “I don’t understand. If the press found out that you were here—”
“Then I’d tell them to go screw themselves,” she says firmly. “The hell with Congress. I told Larry I was coming, and that it wasn’t negotiable. If anyone from the press asks, I’m just going to tell them the truth: that you and I go way back.”
“Christina,” I ask again, “what are you doing here?”
She could have texted. She could have called. She could have simply sat in the courtroom to lend moral support. But instead, she has been waiting in front of my door for God knows how long.
“I’m your friend,” she says quietly. “Believe it or not, Ruth, this is what friends do.” She looks up at me, and I realize she has tears in her eyes. “What they said happened to you—the police breaking in. The handcuffs. The way they attacked Edison. I never imagined…” She falters, then gathers up the weeds of her thoughts and offers me the saddest, truest bouquet. “I didn’t know.”
“Why would you?” I reply—not angry, not hurt, just stating a fact. “You’ll never have to.”
Christina wipes at her eyes, smearing her mascara. “I don’t know if I ever told you this story,” she says. “It’s about your mother. It was a long time ago, when I was in college. I was driving back home from Vassar for Thanksgiving break, and there was a hitchhiker on the side of the road on the Taconic Parkway. He was a Black man, and he had a bum leg. He was literally walking on crutches. So I pulled over and asked if he needed a ride. I took him all the way to Penn Station, so that he could get on a train to visit his family in D.C.” She folds her coat more tightly around her. “When I got home, and Lou came into my room to help me unpack, I told her what I’d done. I thought she’d be proud of me, being a Good Samaritan and all. Instead, she got so angry, Ruth! I swear, I’d never seen her like that. She grabbed my arms and shook me; she couldn’t even speak at first. Don’t you ever, ever do that again, she told me, and I was so shocked I promised I wouldn’t.” Christina looks at me. “Today I sat in that courtroom and I listened to that detective talk about how he busted in your door in the middle of the night and pushed you down and held back Edison and I kept hearing Lou’s voice in my head, after I told her about the Black hitchhiker. I knew your mama reacted that way to me because she was scared. But all these years, I thought she was trying to keep me safe. Now, I know she was trying to keep him safe.”
I realize that for years, I’ve made the assumption that Christina looks at me as someone from her past to be tolerated, an unfortunate to be helped. As children I felt like we were equals. But as we got older, as we became more aware of what was different about us, instead of what was similar, I felt a wedge drive between us. I secretly criticized her for making judgments about me and my life without asking me questions directly. She was the diva and I was the supporting player in her story. But I conveniently forgot to point out to myself that I was the one who’d cast her in that role. I’d blamed Christina for building that invisible wall without admitting I’d added a few bricks of my own.
“I left the money under your welcome mat,” I blurt out.
“I know,” Christina says. “I should have superglued it to your palm.”
There’s a foot of space, and a world of contrast, between Christina and me. Yet I, too, know how hard it is to peel back the veneer of your life, and to peek at the real. It’s like waking up in a room and getting out of bed and realizing the furniture has been completely rearranged. You will eventually find your way out, but it’s going to be slow going, and you’re bound to get some bruises along the way.
I reach out and squeeze Christina’s hand. “Why don’t you come inside?” I say.
THE NEXT DAY is frigid and clear. The memory of yesterday’s snowstorm has been scraped off the highways and the temperature keeps some of the crowd away from the front steps of the courthouse. Even Judge Thunder seems settled, made complacent by either whatever drugs he got for his sore back or the fact that we are nearing the end of the prosecution’s witnesses. Today, the first person called is the state medical examiner, Dr. Bill Binnie, who studied under the famous Henry Lee. He is younger than I would have imagined, with delicate hands that flutter during his responses, like trained birds sitting in his lap; and he has movie-star looks, so the ladies in the jury are hanging on his responses, even when they are simply the boring litany of all the accomplishments on his CV. “When did you first hear about Davis Bauer, Doctor?” the prosecutor asks.
“My office received a phone message from Corinne McAvoy, a nurse at Mercy–West Haven Hospital.”
“Did you respond?”
“Yes. After retrieving the infant’s body, we did an autopsy.”
“Can you tell the court what that entails?”
“Sure,” he says, turning to the jury. “I perform both an external and an internal examination. During the external exam, I look over the body for bruises and to see if there are any marks. I take measurements of the body, and the circumference of the head, and photograph the body. I take blood and bile samples. Then, to perform the internal examination, I make a Y incision in the chest, pull back the skin, and examine the lungs and the heart and the liver as well as other organs, checking for rupture, for gross abnormalities. We weigh and measure the organs. We take tissue samples. And then we send the samples to toxicology and await the results, in order to make a reasonable and factual conclusion about the cause of death.”
“What were your findings of note during the autopsy?” Odette asks.
“The liver was slightly enlarged. There was slight cardiomegaly and a minimal grade one patent ductus, but other congenital defects were absent—there were no valvular or plumbing abnormalities.”
“What does that mean?”
“The organ was a little large, and there was a small hole in the heart. However, the vessels weren’t hooked up wrong,” he says. “There were no septal defects.”
“Were any of these findings something that suggested the cause of death?”
“Not really,” the medical examiner says. “There was good reason for them. According to the patient’s medical records, the mother had gestational diabetes during the pregnancy.”
“What’s that?”
“A condition that leads to high blood sugar for a mother during pregnancy. Unfortunately, that high blood sugar in mothers also has an effect on their infants.”
“How so?”
“Infants who are born to mothers with diabetes are often bigger than other babies. Their livers, hearts, and adrenal glands may be enlarged. These infants are also often hypoglycemic after birth because of increased insulin levels in the blood. Again, based on the medical records I studied, the patient’s postnatal lab work indicated low blood sugar, as did the femoral stick done during the code. All of the findings of the autopsy, as well as the low blood sugar, would be consistent with an infant born to a diabetic mother.”
“What about the hole in the baby’s heart? That sounds serious…”
“It sounds worse than it is. In most cases, the patent ductus closes up by itself,” Dr. Binnie says, and he glances at the jury. The woman who is a teacher, juror number 12, actually starts fanning herself.
“Were you able to determine how the baby died, then?”
“Actually,” the medical examiner says. “That’s more complicated than most people think. We medical geeks make a distinction between the way a person died and the actual change in the body that causes the termination of life. For example, let’s say there is a gunshot and someone dies. The cause of death is the gunshot wound. But the mechanism of death—the actual physical event that ended his life—would be exsanguination—loss of blood.”
He turns his attention from Odette to the jury. “And then, there’s manner of death—how it came about. Was the gunshot wound an accident? A suicide? Was it a deliberate assault? That becomes important—well—when we’re sitting in a courtroom like this.”
The prosecutor enters another exhibit. “What you’re about to see,” Odette warns the jury, “may be extremely disturbing.”
She sets up on an easel a photograph of the body of Davis Bauer.
I feel my breath catch in my throat. Those tiny fingers, the bow of the legs. The acorn of his penis, still bloodied from the circumcision. If not for the bruises, the blue tint to his skin, he might be asleep.
I had taken this body from the morgue. I had held him in my own arms. I had rocked him toward Heaven.
“Doctor,” Odette begins, “could you tell us—” But before she can finish, there is a crash in the gallery. We all spin around to see Brittany Bauer standing, her eyes wild. Her husband stands in front of her, holding her shoulders. I can’t tell if he’s trying to keep her subdued or keep her upright.
“Let me go,” she shrieks. “That’s my son!”
Judge Thunder raps his gavel. “I’ll have order,” he demands, and not unkindly, “Ma’am, please sit back down…”
But Brittany points a shaking finger directly at me. It might as well be a Taser for the current that runs through my bones. “You fucking killed my baby.” She stumbles into the aisle, approaching me, while I stand caught in the spell of her hate. “I’ll make you pay for this, if it’s the last thing I do.”
Kennedy calls out to the judge as he smacks his gavel again and calls the bailiff. Brittany Bauer’s father tries to calm her down, too, but to no avail. There is a shudder of shock and gossip as she is escorted from the courtroom. Her husband is frozen, caught between comforting her and staying for the testimony. After a moment he turns and runs out the double doors.
When the judge calls order, we all face forward again, riveted by that giant poster of the dead infant. One of the jurors bursts into tears and it takes two others to calm her, and then, Judge Thunder calls a recess.
Beside me, Kennedy exhales. “Oh, shit,” she says.
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, everyone but Brittany and Turk Bauer has returned to the courtroom. And yet their absence is almost even more visible, as if the negative space is a constant reminder of why we had to break in the first place. Odette leads the medical examiner through a series of photographs of the baby’s body, from every angle possible. She has him explain the different test results, what was standard, what was deviant from the norm. Finally, she asks, “Were you able to determine the cause of death for Davis Bauer?”
Dr. Binnie nods. “For Davis Bauer, the cause of death was hypoglycemia, leading to hypoglycemic seizure, leading to respiratory and then cardiac arrest. In other words, low blood sugar made the infant seize, stop breathing, and that in turn stopped his heart. The method of death was asphyxiation. And the manner was undetermined.”
“Undetermined? Does that mean the defendant’s actions had nothing to do with the baby’s death?” Odette asks.
“On the contrary. It just means that it was not patently clear whether this was a violent or a natural death.”
“How did you go about researching that?”
“I read the medical records, of course, as well as a police report that provided information.”
“Such as?”
“Mr. Bauer told the police that Ruth Jefferson was aggressively beating on his son’s chest. The bruising we found on the sternum could support that allegation.”
“Was there anything else in the police report that led you to fill out the report the way you did?”
“According to multiple accounts, there was an indication that the defendant did not take any resuscitative efforts until other personnel came into the room.”
“Why was that important to the autopsy results?”
“It goes to the manner of death,” Dr. Binnie says. “I don’t know how long that infant was in respiratory distress. If the respiratory failure had been alleviated sooner, it’s possible that the cardiac arrest would never have occurred.” He looks at the jury. “Had the defendant acted, it’s possible that none of us would be sitting here.”
“Your witness,” Odette says.
Kennedy rises. “Doctor, was there anything in the police report that indicated there was foul play or intentional trauma to this infant?”
“I already mentioned the bruising to the sternum…”
“Yes, you did. But isn’t it possible that the bruising might also be consistent with vigorous, medically necessary CPR?”
“It is,” he concedes.
“Is it possible that there might be other scenarios—other than foul play—that might have led to the death of this baby?”
“It’s possible.”
Kennedy asks him to review the neonatal screening results she entered into evidence earlier. “Doctor, would you mind taking a look at exhibit forty-two?”
He takes the file and thumbs through it.
“Can you tell the jury what you’re looking at?”
He glances up. “Davis Bauer’s newborn screening results.”
“Did you have access to this information while you were performing your autopsy?”
“I did not.”
“You work at the state lab where these tests were performed, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Can you explain the highlighted section on page one?”
“It’s a test for a fatty acid oxidation disorder called MCADD. The results were abnormal.”
“Meaning what?”
“The state would return these results to the hospital nursery, and the doctor would have been immediately notified.”
“Do infants with MCADD show symptoms from birth?”
“No,” the medical examiner says. “No. That’s one of the reasons the state of Connecticut screens for it.”
“Dr. Binnie,” Kennedy says, “you were aware of the fact that the infant’s mother had gestational diabetes, and that the baby had low blood sugar, correct?”
“Yes.”
“You stated earlier that the diabetes was what caused the hypoglycemia in the newborn, didn’t you?”
“Yes, that was my conclusion at the time of the autopsy.”
“Isn’t it also possible that hypoglycemia might be caused by MCADD?”
He nods. “Yes.”
“Isn’t it possible that a newborn’s listlessness and lethargy and poor appetite might be caused by MCADD?” Kennedy asks.
“Yes,” he admits.
“And an enlarged heart—is it potentially a side effect not only of maternal gestational diabetes…but also of this particular metabolic disorder?”
“Yes.”
“Dr. Binnie, did you learn from the hospital records that Davis Bauer had MCADD?”
“No.”
“Had these results come in in a timely manner, would you have used them to determine the cause of death and manner of death in your autopsy results?”
“Of course,” he says.
“What happens to an infant who has the disorder yet has gone undiagnosed?”
“They are often clinically asymptomatic until something happens to cause metabolic decompensation.”
“Like what?”
“An illness. An infection.” He clears his throat. “Fasting.”
“Fasting?” Kennedy repeats. “Like the kind of fasting done prior to a baby’s circumcision?”
“Yes.”
“What happens to a baby who is undiagnosed with MCADD, and who suffers one of these acute episodes?”
“You might see seizures, vomiting, lethargy, hypoglycemia…coma,” the doctor says. “In about twenty percent of cases, the infant can die.”
Kennedy walks toward the jury box and turns so that her back is facing them, so that she is watching the witness with them. “Doctor, if Davis Bauer had MCADD, and if no one at the hospital knew it, and if the medical protocol was to have him fast three hours prior to his circumcision like any other infant without the disorder, and if an acute metabolic episode occurred in his little body—isn’t there a chance Davis Bauer would be dead even if Ruth Jefferson had performed every conceivable medical intervention?”
The medical examiner looks at me, his gray eyes soft with an apology. “Yes,” he admits.
Oh my God. Oh my God. The energy in court has changed. The gallery is so quiet I can hear the rustle of clothing, the murmur of possibility. Turk and Brittany Bauer are still gone, and in their absence, hope blooms.
Howard, beside me, breathes a single word. “Day-umm.”
“Nothing further, Your Honor,” Kennedy says, and she walks back to the defense table, winking at me. I told you so.
MY CONFIDENCE IS short-lived. “I’d like to redirect,” Odette says, and she gets up before Dr. Binnie can be dismissed. “Doctor, let’s say that this abnormal result had come into the nursery in a timely fashion. What would have happened?”
“There are some abnormal results that require a letter to be sent to the parents in due course—suggesting genetic counseling,” the medical examiner says. “But this one—it’s a red flag, one any neonatologist would consider emergent. The baby would be monitored closely and tested to confirm the diagnosis. Sometimes we send the family to a metabolic treatment center.”
“Isn’t it true, Doctor, that many children with MCADD are not formally diagnosed for weeks? Or months?”
“Yes,” he says. “It depends on how quickly we can get the parents in for a confirmation.”
“A confirmation,” she repeats. “Then an abnormal result on the newborn screening is not a final diagnosis.”
“No.”
“Did Davis Bauer ever come in for more testing?”
“No,” Dr. Binnie says. “He didn’t have the chance.”
“So you cannot say, beyond a reasonable medical doubt, that Davis Bauer had MCADD.”
He hesitates. “No.”
“And you cannot say, beyond a reasonable medical doubt, that Davis Bauer died of a metabolic disorder.”
“Not entirely.”
“And in fact, the defendant and her legal team might be grasping at straws to try to throw some shade in another direction, any direction that doesn’t point to Ruth Jefferson intentionally harming an innocent newborn first by withholding treatment and then by reacting so forcefully she left bruises on his tiny body?”
“Objection!” Kennedy roars.
“I’ll withdraw,” Odette says, but the damage is done. Because the last words that jury has heard may as well be bullets, shooting my optimism out of the sky.
THAT NIGHT EDISON is silent on the way home. He tells me he has a headache, and almost as soon as we have walked in the door and I’m starting supper, he comes back through the living room with his coat on and tells me he is going out to clear his head. I don’t stop him. How can I? How can I say anything that will erase whatever he’s been through, sitting behind me every day so far like a shadow, listening to someone try to make me into someone he never believed I could be?
I eat by myself, but really, I just pick at the food. I cover the rest with tinfoil and sit at the kitchen table waiting for Edison. I tell myself I will eat when he returns.
But an hour passes. Two. When it is after midnight and he does not come back and will not answer my texts, I put my head down on the pillow of my arms.
I find myself thinking about the Kangaroo Suite, at the hospital. It’s a room with an unofficial name that has a mural of the marsupial on the inside. It’s where we put the mothers who have lost their babies.
I have always hated that term—lost—to be honest. Those mothers, they know just where their infants are. They would in fact do anything, give anything, even their own lives, to get them back.
In the Kangaroo Suite, we let the parents spend time with an infant who has died for as long as they’d like. I’m sure Turk and Brittany Bauer were put in there with Davis. It’s a corner room, next to the charge nurse’s office, intentionally set aside from other labor and delivery rooms, as if grief is a communicable disease.
This isolation means that the parents don’t have to walk past all the other rooms with healthy babies and mothers in them. They don’t have to hear the cries of newborns coming into the world, when their own child has left it.
In the Kangaroo Suite, we put the birthing mothers who knew, thanks to ultrasounds, that their babies would be born in a way that was incompatible with life. Or the mothers who had to terminate late, because of some gross anomaly. Or the ones who delivered normally, and who—to their great shock—lived both the greatest moment of their lives and the worst within hours of each other.
If I was a nurse who was assigned to a patient whose baby died, I’d do handprints of the baby in plaster. Or hair samples. I had professional photographers I could call, who knew how to take a picture of the deceased and touch it up so that it looked beautiful and vibrant and alive. I’d put together a memory box, so that when the parents left the hospital, it was not empty-handed.
The last patient I had who had used the Kangaroo Suite was a woman named Jiao. Her husband was getting a master’s degree at Yale and she was an architect. For her entire pregnancy, she had too much amniotic fluid, and would come in weekly to have an amniocentesis to check the baby, and to siphon off fluid. One night I took four liters of fluid off her, to give you a sense. And obviously that’s not normal; that’s not healthy. I asked her doctor what she thought it was—was the baby missing an esophagus possibly? A baby in utero normally ingests amniotic fluid, yet clearly if that much was accumulating, the baby wasn’t swallowing it. But the ultrasounds were normal, and no one could convince Jiao that this was a problem. She was certain the baby was going to be fine.
One day she came in and the baby had hydrops—fluid collection under his skin. She stayed with us for a week, and then her doctor tried to induce, but the baby couldn’t tolerate it. Jiao had a C-section. The baby had pulmonary hypoplasia—the lungs just didn’t function. He died in her arms quickly after birth, puffy, swollen, as if he were jointed of marshmallows.
Jiao was put in the Kangaroo Suite, and like many mothers who had to come to terms with the fact that their babies had not survived, she was robotic, numb. But unlike other mothers, she did not cry, and she refused to see the baby. It was as if she had this image in her mind for a perfect little boy, and she could not reconcile anything less than that. Her husband tried to get her to hold the baby; her mother tried to get her to hold the baby; her doctor tried to get her to hold the baby. Finally, when she was on her eighth hour of catatonia, I wrapped the baby in warm blankets and put a tiny hat on his head. I carried him back into Jiao’s room. “Jiao,” I said, “would you like to help me give him a bath?”
Jiao didn’t respond. I looked at her husband, her poor husband, who nodded, encouraging.
I filled a basin with warm water and took a stack of wipes. Gently, at the foot of Jiao’s bed, I unwrapped her baby. I dipped a cloth in warm water and ran it over her baby’s sausage legs, his blue arms. I wiped his swollen face, his stiff fingers.
Then I handed Jiao a damp cloth. I pressed it into her palm.
I don’t know if the water shocked her into awareness, or if it was the baby. But with my hand guiding her she washed every fold and curve of her baby. She wrapped him in the blanket. She held him to her breast. Finally, with a sob that sounded like she was tearing a piece of herself away, she offered the body of her child back to me.
I managed to hold it together while I carried her infant out of the Kangaroo Suite. And then, as she collapsed in her husband’s arms, I lost it. I just lost it. I sobbed over that baby the whole way to the morgue, and when I got there, I couldn’t let him go any easier than his mother had.
Now, the key turns in the lock, and Edison slips inside. His eyes are adjusting to the darkness; he is creeping because he expects me to be asleep. Instead, in a clear voice, I say his name from my spot at the kitchen table.
“Why aren’t you asleep?” he asks.
“Why weren’t you home?”
I can see him clearly, a shadow among shadows. “I was alone. I was out walking.”
“For six hours?” I blurt.
“Yes. For six hours,” Edison challenges. “Why don’t you just put a GPS chip on me, if you don’t trust me?”
“I do trust you,” I say carefully. “It’s the rest of the world I’m not so sure about.”
I stand so that we are only inches apart. All mothers worry, but Black mothers, we have to worry a little bit more. “Even walking can be dangerous. Just being can be dangerous, if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“I’m not stupid,” Edison says.
“I know that better than anyone. That’s the problem. You are smart enough to make excuses for people who aren’t. You give the benefit of the doubt when other people don’t. That is what makes you you, and that is what makes you remarkable. But you need to start being more careful. Because I may not be here much longer to…” My sentence snaps, unravels. “I may have to leave you.”
I see his Adam’s apple jerk down, and then back, and I know what he has been thinking about all this time. I imagine him walking the streets of New Haven, trying to outdistance himself from the fact that this trial is coming to an end. And that when it does, everything will be different.
“Mama,” he says, his voice small. “What am I supposed to do?”
For a moment, I try to decide how to sum up a life’s worth of lessons in my response. Then I look at him, my eyes shining. “Thrive,” I say.
Edison wrenches away from me. A moment later, the door to his bedroom slams shut. Music whitewashes all the other sounds I try in vain to discern.
I think I know now why it is called the Kangaroo Suite. It’s because even when you no longer have a child, you carry him forever.
It’s the same when a parent is ripped away from the child, but the suite is the size of the world. At Mama’s funeral, I put a handful of cold dirt from her grave in the pocket of my good wool coat. Some days I wear that coat inside the house, just because. I sift through the soil, hold it tight in my fist.
I wonder what Edison will keep of me.