Guy Booker, as the defendant’s attorney, would be using a combination of smoke and mirrors to suggest that Piper Reece had not made an error in judgment: that OI couldn’t be conclusively diagnosed in utero, that you can’t be blamed for not seeing something you can’t see, that no one has the right to say life’s not worth living if you’re disabled. But no matter how much smoke Guy blew in the jury’s direction, I would redirect them, remind them that this was a medical malpractice suit and someone had to pay for making a mistake.
I was vaguely aware of the irony that I was championing the juror’s right to medical privacy when-on a personal level-it had made my life a nightmare. If not for the sealing of medical records, I would have known my birth mother’s name months ago; as it was, I was still in the great black void of chance, awaiting news from the Hillsborough Family Court and Maisie.
“You can stop grandstanding, Ms. Gates,” the judge said. “And as for you, Mr. Booker, if you ask a follow-up question like this again, I’ll hold you in contempt.”
Guy shrugged. He finished up his questioning, and then we both approached the bench again. “The plaintiff has no objection to Mrs. Cooper sitting on this panel,” I said. Guy agreed, and the judge called up the next potential juror.
Her name was Mary Paul. She had gray hair pulled into a low ponytail and wore a shapeless blue dress and crepe-soled shoes. She looked like someone’s grandmother, and smiled kindly at Charlotte as she took the stand. This, I thought, could be promising.
“Ms. Paul, you say here that you’re retired?”
“I don’t know if retired is really the word for it…”
“What kind of work were you doing previously?” I asked.
“Oh,” she said. “I was a Sister of Mercy.”
It was going to be a very long day.
Sean
When Charlotte finally came home from jury selection, you were soundly kicking my ass in Scrabble. “How did it go?” I asked, but I could tell before she even said a word; she looked like she’d been run over by a truck.
“They all kept staring at me,” she said. “Like I was something they’d never seen before.”
I nodded. I didn’t know what to say, really. What did she expect?
“Where’s Amelia?”
“Upstairs, becoming one with her iPod.”
“Mom,” you said, “do you want to play? You can just join in, it doesn’t matter if you missed the beginning.”
In the eight hours I’d been with you today, I hadn’t managed to bring up the divorce. We’d taken a field trip to the pet store and had gotten to watch a snake eat a dead mouse; we had watched a Disney movie; we had gone food shopping and bought SpaghettiOs-Chef Boyardee, which your mother called Chef MSG. We’d had, in short, the perfect day. I didn’t want to be the one who took the light out of your eyes. Maybe Charlotte had known this, which was why she’d suggested that I be the one to tell you. And maybe for that reason, too, she looked at me now and sighed. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said. “Sean, it’s been three weeks.”
“It hasn’t been the right time…”
You stuck your hand into the bag of letters. “We’re down to two-letter words,” you said. “Daddy tried to do Oz, but that’s a place and it’s not allowed.”
“There’s never going to be a right time. Honey,” she said, turning to you, “I’m really wiped out. Can I take a Scrabble rain check?” She walked into the kitchen.
“I’ll be right back,” I told you, and I followed her. “I know I have no right to ask you this, but-I’d like you to be there when I tell her. I think it’s important.”
“Sean, I’ve had an awful day-”
“And I am about to make it more awful. I know.” I looked down at her. “Please.”
Wordlessly, she walked back into the family room with me and sat down at the table. You turned, delighted. “So you do want to play?”
“Willow, your mom and I have some news for you.”
“You’re going to move back home for good? I knew it. At school Sapphire said that once her father moved out he fell in love with a dirty whore and now her parents aren’t together anymore, but I said that you’d never do that.”
“I told you so,” Charlotte said to me.
“Wills, your mother and I…we’re getting divorced.”
She looked at each of us. “Because of me?”
“No,” Charlotte and I said in unison.
“We both love you, and Amelia,” I said. “But your mom and I can’t be a couple anymore.”
Charlotte walked toward the window, her back to me.
“You’re still going to see both of us. And live with both of us. We’re going to do everything we can to make things easy for you, so not much has to change-”
Your face was pinching up tighter and tighter as I spoke, becoming a flushed and angry pink. “My goldfish,” you said. “He can’t live in two houses.”
You had a betta that we’d gotten you last Christmas, the cheapest concession to a pet we could provide. To everyone’s shock, it had lived longer than a week. “We’ll get you a second one,” I suggested.
“But I don’t want two goldfish!”
“Willow-”
“I hate you,” you shouted, starting to cry. “I hate both of you!”
You were out of your chair like a shot, running faster than I thought you could to the front door. “Willow!” Charlotte called out. “Be-”
Careful.
I heard the cry before I could reach the doorway. In your hurry to get away from me, from this news, you had not been cautious, and you were lying on the porch where you’d slipped. Your left femur was bent at a ninety-degree angle, breaking through the bloody surface of your thigh; the sclera of your eyes was an unholy blue. “Mommy?” you said, and then your eyes rolled back in your head.
“Willow!” Charlotte screamed, and she knelt down beside you. “Call an ambulance,” she ordered, and then she bent closer to you and began to whisper.
For a fraction of a second, as I looked at the two of you, I believed she was the better parent.
Do not, if you can help it, break a bone on a Friday night. Even more important, do not break a femur the weekend of the annual convention of American orthopedic surgeons. Leaving Amelia home alone, Charlotte rode in the ambulance with you, and I followed in my truck. Although most of your serious breaks were handled by the orthopods in Omaha, this one was too severe to simply immobilize until they could assess it; we were headed to the local hospital, only to learn in the emergency room that the orthopedic surgeon called to consult was a resident.
“A resident?” Charlotte had said. “Look, no offense, but I’m not letting a resident rod my daughter’s femur.”
“I’ve done this kind of surgery before, Mrs. O’Keefe,” the doctor said.
“Not on a girl with OI,” Charlotte countered. “And not on Willow.”
He wanted to put a Fassier-Duval rod-one that would telescope as you grew-into your femur. It was the newest rod available, and it threaded into the epiphysis, whatever that was, which kept it from migrating, like the older rods used to. Most important, you wouldn’t be in a spica cast, which was the postoperative care for femur rodding in the past-instead, you’d be in a functional brace, a long leg splint, for three weeks. Uncomfortable, especially during the summertime, but nowhere near as debilitating.