Ted looked across the rapidly erected ether screen at Jeffrey. Jeffrey nodded. Ted stopped massaging the heart and pulled his hand from within
Patty’s chest. “Sorry,” he said.
Jeffrey nodded again. He took a deep breath, then turned the ventilator off. He looked back at the sorry sight of Patty Owen with her abdomen and chest rudely sliced open. It was a terrible sight, one that would stay with
Jeffrey for the rest of his life. The floor was littered with drug containers and wrappers.
Jeffrey felt crushed and numb. This was the nadir of his professional career. He’d witnessed other tragedies, but this was the worst, and most unexpected. His eyes drifted to his anesthesia machine. It too was covered with debris. Beneath the debris was the incomplete anesthesia record. He’d have to bring it up to date. In the fevered attempt to save Patty he’d had no time to do so. He looked for the half-empty vial of Marcaine, feeling an irrational antipathy toward it. Although it seemed unreasonable in light of the test dose results, he couldn’t help but feel an allergic reaction to the drug was the root of this tragedy. He wanted to dash the vial against the wall, just to vent his frustration. Of course he knew he wouldn’t actually throw the vial; he was too controlled for that. But he couldn’t find it among the mess.
“Sheila,” Jeffrey called to the circulating nurse who was starting the clean-up process, “what happened to the Marcaine vial?”
Sheila stopped what she was doing to glare at Jeffrey. “If you don’t know where you put it, I certainly don’t,” she said angrily.
Jeffrey nodded and then turned his attention to unhooking
Patty from the monitors. He could understand Sheila’s anger. He was angry too. Patty didn’t deserve this kind of fate. What Jeffrey didn’t realize was that Sheila wasn’t angry at fate. She was angry at Jeffrey. In fact, she was furious.
MONDAY,
MAY 15, 1989
11:15 A.M.
A shaft of golden morning sunlight filtered through a window high on the wall to Jeffrey’s left and knifed down through the courtroom, hitting the paneled wall behind the judge’s bench like a spotlight. Millions of tiny motes of dust sparkled and swirled in the intense beam of light. Ever since the beginning of this trial, Jeffrey had been struck by the theatric quality of the justice system. But this was no TV daytime drama. Jeffrey’s career-his whole life-was on the line.
Jeffrey closed his eyes and leaned forward at the defendant’s table, cradling * his head in his hands. With his elbows splayed on the table, he roughly rubbed his eyes. The tension was about to drive him crazy.
Taking a deep breath, he opened his eyes, half hoping the scene before him would have magically disappeared and he would wake up from the worst nightmare of his life. But of course it wasn’t a bad dream he was suffering. Jeffrey was involved in his second trial for Patty Owen’s untimely death eight months previously. Just then he was sitting in a courtroom in the center of Boston, waiting to hear the jury deliver his fate on criminal charges.
Jeffrey glanced over his lawyer’s head to scan the crowd. There was an excited, low-pitched babble of voices, a murmur of expectancy. Jeffrey averted his gaze, knowing that all the talk centered on him. He wished he could hide. He felt utterly humiliated by the public spectacle so rapidly unfolding. His entire life had unraveled and disintegrated. His career was going down the drain. He felt overwhelmed, yet oddly numb.
Jeffrey sighed. Randolph Bingham, his lawyer, had urged him to appear calm and controlled. Easier said than done, especially now. After all the heartache, anxiety, and sleepless nights, it was
now down to the wire. The jury had reached its decision. The verdict was on its way.
Jeffrey studied Randolph’s aristocratic profile. The man had become a father to him through these last eight harrowing months, even though he was only five years Jeffrey’s senior. Sometimes Jeffrey had felt almost love for the man, other times something more akin to rage and hatred. But he’d always had confidence in his lawyer’s skills, at least until this point.