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,reallyhear 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 didshecontinue 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, shedidintervene 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 JUDGEhas 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 costyoumore.”
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 outallcharges 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,thatwas 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.”
