“Don’t get me wrong, Mrs. Cooper, I do sympathize. We see such situations in this court all the time: the driver who didn’t mean to cause a fatal accident by sending a text while behind the wheel, the hospital staff member who made the wrong call during a routine procedure. The point is, these actions all have consequences, some of them devastating and, in Rosie O’Hara’s case, life changing. Just because you didn’tmeanto do something doesn’t make those consequences go away. And in choosing not to vaccinate your child, Mrs. Cooper, and going against proven HSE-approved immunity recommendations, your inaction created a default duty to protect other children in your daughter’s immediate environment—an onus to be mindful of other, more vulnerable children such as Rosie. A duty of care you chose to ignore.”
There was complete silence in the court as Patrick Nevin’s words were driven home not just to the entire court, but Madeleine Cooper, too.
“I was just trying to keep them safe!” she argued, tears in her eyes. “I couldn’t do it...not after what I’d seen with Cameron, not when I’d seen a perfect little boy change before my eyes. All the medical assurances in the world can’t make you discount what you’ve seen with your own two eyes. I justcouldn’trun that risk with my children and, yes, you’re right, I didn’t consider the effect this might have on others, or on the greater good. But for crying out loud, who the helldoes?”
At this, an awed gasp cut across the courtroom from the media gallery.
Oh, wow, Declan thought.Here we go.After being made to stay silent for so long, now they were really seeingMad Mumin all her glory.
She wiped at her eyes furiously, as if offended that tears should dare make an appearance in the court, but then she stared defiantly back at Nevin, evidently deciding to own what she had just said.
“If somebody told you to throw your child under a bus for the sake of the greater good, would you do it? Of course not! But that’s how the MMR vaccination felt to me. Why should making the best decision formychild somehow make me responsible for someone else’s? Any mother—if she truly felt her child was in danger—would do the very same thing. And, Kate, when it came down to it,” she pleaded, looking over at the plaintiff’s table, her blue eyes now boring directly into the other woman’s as she addressed her directly, “didn’t you make the very same call?”
49
“Kate, Kate! What is your response to Madeleine Cooper’s testimony this afternoon, particularly her assertion that you are just as much to blame for Rosie’s illness? Kate? Kate, do you think that Madeleine Cooper has a point? Did your own decision regarding Rosie’s vaccination—”
“Please, I just want to go home now. My daughter is waiting...”
“Let us past, please! It’s been a long enough week.”
“Kate, like Madeleine said in court, if you could go back in time and change things, would you alter any of the choices you made?”
“The very idea is nonsense, of course. But if I could go back in time, it would be to the dinosaur expo Rosie and I visited last Easter in the RDS, the last time I saw my daughter truly healthy and happy.”
“But, Kate...”
“Thank you. Please...we need to go. As Kate’s representative, I’ll be more than happy to make a full statement when all of this is over.”
* * *
A complete and utter disaster.
Madeleine still couldn’t get over just how badly her performance on the witness stand had turned out to be. How had sheeverthought it would be a good idea?
She had known deep down that the damning blog post had been out there somewhere, but still, she’d been rattled by it. And then if that cocky barrister hadn’t done enough in getting her worked up by throwing her words back in her face, he’d also succeeded in making her angry enough to try to defend herself by basically suggesting that Kate was just as much at fault for Rosie’s troubles.
She could only imagine what the judge, let alone the public, thought of that.
Case closed.
Far from coming across as rational and sympathetic, now she looked like the world’s most heartless woman. Her head ached with the reality of it all and she felt like throwing up. She couldn’t bring herself to watch any news coverage of the trial or listen to what the talking heads on TV were saying; Madeleine already knew that they were going to lose and that when the trial resumed next week, the judge was sure to rule against them.
Their lives as they knew it were over. She and Tom were going to have to completely remake themselves—her especially. Now there was no going back to blogging, would definitely be no more radio or TV segments. All of that was over, for good. All her hard work undone. Publishing deal withdrawn, advertising pulled.
Nothing left ofMad Mumbut a collection of blog posts that now, in hindsight, seemed trite and naive.
And when she considered the bigger problems they were about to have financially, as well as personally—after today Tom hadn’t known what to say to her—her head swam with anxiety.
Looking around her already scrupulously clean kitchen, Madeleine needed something to do. The kids were in bed and Tom had been holed up in his office since they got back from court. He said he had some work to catch up on, but Madeleine knew better. Likely her husband was examining their bank statements, checking their insurance limits and protections. Thanks to his wife’s performance that afternoon, Tom had no choice to concede that however spurious Kate O’Hara’s claims might have been, it wouldn’t be long before the judge cleaned them out and handed their life savings over to her.
How were they going to survive this? Madeleine wondered as she made her way upstairs to her office. Frankly, she had no idea, but she knew what she could do. In fact, it was something that had been on her mind for a while now. She had been putting it off over the last year in case things miraculously turned in their favor.
Tonight, though, seemed like a fitting time to check this last task off her to-do list.
It was time to delete her website and all of her social media pages.
Mad Mumwas dead in the water.
