AFTER ALL THAT.
After months of telling me that race doesn’t belong in a court of law, Kennedy McQuarrie took the elephant in the room and paraded it in front of the judge. She squeezed it into the jury box, so that those men and women couldn’t help but feel the pinch.
I stare at the jury, all lost in thought and utterly silent. Kennedy comes to sit down beside me, and for a moment, I just look at her. My throat works while I try to put into words everything I am feeling. What Kennedy said to all those strangers, it’s been the narrative of my life, the outline inside of which I have lived. But I could have screamed it from the rooftops, and it wouldn’t have done any good. For the jurors to hear it, really hear it, it had to be said by one of their own.
She turns to me before I can speak. “Thank you,” she says, as if I’m the one who’s done her the favor.
Come to think of it, maybe I have.
The judge clears his throat, and we both look up to find him glaring. Odette Lawton has risen and is standing in the spot Kennedy just vacated. I stroke my mother’s lucky scarf, looped around my neck, as she begins to speak. “You know, I admire Ms. McQuarrie and her rousing cry for social justice. But that’s not what we’re here for today. We are here because the defendant, Ruth Jefferson, abandoned the ethical code of her profession as a labor and delivery nurse and did not adequately respond to an infant’s medical crisis.”
The prosecutor approaches the jury. “What Ms. McQuarrie said…it’s true. People have prejudices, and sometimes they make decisions that don’t make sense to us. When I was in high school, I worked at McDonald’s.”
This surprises me; I try to imagine Odette timing fries, but I can’t.
“I was the only Black kid working there. There were times I’d be at the register and I would see a customer walk in, look at me, and then go into another cashier’s line to place their order. How did that make me feel?” She shrugs. “Not so great. But did I spit in their food? No. Did I drop the burger on the floor and then tuck it into the bun? No. I did my job. I did what I was supposed to do.
“Now let’s look at Ruth Jefferson, shall we? She had a customer choose another line, so to speak, but did she continue to do what she was supposed to do? No. She did not take the directive to not care for Davis Bauer in stride as a simple patient request—she blew it up into a racial incident. She did not honor her Nightingale pledge to assist her patients—no matter what. She acted with complete disregard to the infant’s welfare because she was angry, and she took her anger out on that poor child.
“It’s true, ladies and gentlemen, that Marie Malone’s directive to excuse Ruth as a caretaker for Davis Bauer was a racist decision, but it is not Marie on trial here for her actions. It is Ruth, for not adhering to the vow she made as a nurse. It’s true, too, that many of you were made uncomfortable by Mr. Bauer and his beliefs, because they are extreme. In this country, he is allowed to express those views, even when they make others feel uneasy. But if you are going to say you are unnerved by how Turk Bauer is filled with hate, you must admit that Ruth, too, is filled with hate. You heard it, when she told you it was better for that baby to die than to grow up like his father. Perhaps that was the only moment she was candid with us. At least Turk Bauer is honest about his beliefs—as unpalatable as they may seem. Because Ruth, we know, is a liar. By her own admission, she did intervene and touch the infant in the nursery, in spite of telling her supervisor and Risk Management and the police that she did not. Ruth Jefferson started to save this baby—and what made her stop? Fear for her job. She put her own interests in front of the patient’s…which is exactly what a medical professional should never do.”
The prosecutor pauses. “Ruth Jefferson and her attorney can throw up a dog and pony show about tardy lab results, or the state of race relations in this country, or anything else,” she says. “But it doesn’t change the facts of this case. And it’s never going to bring that baby back to life.”
ONCE THE JUDGE has given instructions to the jury, they are led from the courtroom. Judge Thunder leaves, too. Howard jumps up. “I’ve never seen anything like that!”
“Yeah, and you probably never will again,” Kennedy mutters.
“I mean, it was like watching Tom Cruise—You can’t handle the truth! Like…”
“Like shooting myself in the foot,” Kennedy finished. “On purpose.”
I put my hand on her arm. “I know what you said back there cost you,” I say.
Kennedy stares at me soberly. “Ruth, it’s most likely going to cost you more.”
She has explained to me that because the murder charge was thrown out before I testified, the jury has only the negligent homicide charge to decide. Although our medical evidence definitely creates reasonable doubt, an outburst of anger is like a poker burned into a juror’s mind. Even if they’re not deciding on a premeditated murder charge now, they might still feel like I didn’t care for that baby as well as I possibly could. And whether that was even possible, under the circumstances, I don’t know anymore.
I think about the night I spent in jail. I imagine spinning it out to many nights. Weeks. Months. I think about Liza Lott and how the conversation I have with her now would be very different than the one I had back then. I would start by saying that I’m not naïve anymore. I have been forged in a crucible, like steel. And the miracle about steel is that you can hammer it so thin it’s stretched to its limit, but that doesn’t mean it will break. “It was still worth hearing,” I tell Kennedy.
She smiles a little. “It was worth saying.”
Suddenly Odette Lawton is standing in front of us. I panic slightly. Kennedy also said that there was one other alternative the prosecutor might choose—to throw out all charges and start over with a grand jury, using my testimony to show malice in the heat of the moment, and with a new charge of second-degree murder.
“I’m getting the case against Edison Jefferson dismissed,” Odette says briskly. “I thought you’d want to know.”
My jaw drops. Of everything I thought she might say, that was not it.
She faces me and for the first time in this trial, meets my gaze. Except for our bathroom run-in, she has not made direct eye contact with me the entire time I was sitting at the defense table, glancing just past me or over my head. Kennedy says that’s standard; it’s the way prosecutors remind defendants they’re not human.
It works.
“I have a fifteen-year-old daughter,” Odette says, a fact and an explanation. Then she turns to Kennedy. “Nice closing, Counselor,” she says, and she walks away.
“Now what?” I ask.
Kennedy takes a deep breath. “Now,” she says, “we wait.”
BUT FIRST, WE have the press to deal with. Howard and Kennedy formulate a plan to get me out of the courthouse with no media contact. “If we aren’t able to avoid them completely,” she explains, “the correct answer is no comment. We are waiting for the jury’s decision. Period.”
I nod at her.
“I don’t think you get it, Ruth. They’re going to be out for blood; they are going to pick at you and goad you into exploding so that they can get it on tape. For the next five minutes, until you leave this building, you are blind, deaf, dumb. You understand?”
“Yes,” I tell her.
My heart is a drum as we push through the double doors of the courtroom. Immediately there are flashes of lights, and microphones thrust in my face. Howard runs interference, shoving them away, as Kennedy barrels us through this circus: acrobat reporters, trying to reach over the heads of others to get a statement; clowns doing their act—the Bauers in a heated interview with one conservative news station—and me, trying to navigate my tightrope without falling.
Approaching us from the opposite direction is Wallace Mercy. He and his supporters form a human blockade, elbows locked, which means we will have to engage. Wallace and a woman stand in the middle; as I watch, they step forward to lead the rest. The woman wears a pink wool suit. Her close-cropped hair is dyed a hot red. She stands straight as an arrow, her arm tightly tucked through Wallace’s.
I look to Kennedy, a silent question: What do we do?
But my question is answered for me. Wallace and the woman do not come toward us. Instead, they veer to the far side of the hallway, where Turk Bauer is still in conversation with a reporter, his wife and his father-in-law standing by his side.
“Brittany,” the woman says, her eyes filling with tears. “Oh, Lord. Look at how beautiful you are.”
She reaches toward Brittany Bauer as the cameras roll. But we are not in Judge Thunder’s court, and she can say or do anything she pleases. So I see the woman’s hand coming toward her as if in slow motion, and I know even before it happens that Brittany Bauer will push her away. “Get the hell away from me.”
Wallace Mercy steps forward. “I think this is someone you want to meet, Ms. Bauer.”
“She doesn’t need to, Wallace,” the woman murmurs. “We met twenty-six years ago, when I gave birth to her. Brit, honey, you remember me, don’t you?”
Brittany Bauer’s face blooms with color—shame, or anger, or both. “Liar. You disgusting liar!” She lunges for the older woman, who goes down too easily.
People scramble to pull Brittany away, to lift the woman to safety. I hear shouts: Help her! And Are you getting this on tape?
Then I hear someone cry, “Stop!” The voice is deep and powerful and commanding, and just like that, Brit falls back.
She turns around, feral, glaring at her father. “You’re just going to let that nigger say those things about me? About us?”
But her father is no longer looking at his daughter. He is ashen, staring at the woman who now stands with Wallace Mercy’s contingent, Wallace’s handkerchief pressed to her bleeding lip. “Hello, Adele,” he says.
“I did not see this coming,” I whisper, glancing at Kennedy.
And that’s how I realize she did.