“Well—”
“If you lied toallthese people,” Odette says, “why on earth should this jury believe anything you say right now?”
Ruth turns to the men and women crammed into the jury box. “Because I’m telling them the truth.”
“Right,” Odette says. “But that’s not your only secret confession, is it?”
Where is she going with this?
“At the moment that the baby died—when the pediatrician called the time of death—deep down, you didn’t really give a damn, right, Ruth?”
“Of course I did!” She sits up in her chair. “We were working so hard, just like we would for any patient—”
“Ah, but this wasn’t just any patient. This was the baby of a white supremacist. The baby of a man who had dismissed your years of experience and nursing expertise—”
“You’re wrong.”
“—a man who called into question your ability to do your job simply because of the color of your skin. You resented Turk Bauer, and you resented his baby, didn’t you?”
Odette is a foot away from Ruth now, yelling into her face. Ruth closes her eyes with every blast, as if she’s facing a hurricane. “No,” she whispers. “I never thought that.”
“Yet you heard your colleague Corinne say you were angry after you were told you could no longer care for Davis Bauer, correct?”
“Yes.”
“You worked twenty years at Mercy–West Haven?”
“Yes.”
“You testified that you were an experienced, competent nurse and that you loved your job, is that fair to say?”
“It is,” Ruth admits.
“Yet the hospital had no problem taking the wishes of the patient into consideration over respect for their own employee, and dismissing you from the professional role you’d maintained all those years?”
“Apparently.”
“That must have made you furious, right?”
“I was upset,” she concedes.
Hold it together, Ruth,I think.
“Upset? You said, and I quote,That baby means nothing to me.”
“It was something that came out in the heat of the moment—”
Odette’s eyes gleam. “The heat of the moment! Is that also what happened when you told Dr. Atkins to sterilize the baby during his circumcision?”
“It was a joke,” Ruth says. “I shouldn’t have said it. That was a mistake.”
“Whatelsewas a mistake?” Odette asks. “The fact that you stopped ministering to that baby while he fought to breathe, simply because you were afraid of how it might affectyou?”
“I had been told to do nothing.”
“So you made the conscious choice to stand over that poor tiny infant who was turning blue, while you thought,What if I lose my job?”
“No—”
