"Immense bearing, Your Honor."
She shrugged. "Sustained."
Czernek asked his question again. Valerie answered uneas-ily. "She told me that it was a suction device. I was given a local anesthetic, which didn't do much good. Then she turned the machine on, and it started to make these hissing and suck-ing sounds."
Ron turned around as if in thought. "At any time," he asked, "were you aware that anything was out of the ordinary?"
"Well..." She frowned. "I had never seen an abortion before, so I had nothing to compare it to. High school sex education classes and college women's studies both seemed to ignore the actual medical procedure-"
"Please, just answer my question."
She frowned again, this time at Ron. "I'd never seen an abor-tion, so, no, I didn't think anything was wrong. I figured I knew it might hurt, so when she inserted the tube, the pain was no real surprise, I guess."
"Was there any talk between Dr. Fletcher and her nurse that might have aroused your suspicions?"
"I can't remember any."
"So as far as you were concerned," he said, facing the jury, "Dr. Fletcher had performed an abortion by medically approved means."
"Yes."
"Did you later find out that this was not the case?"
"Yes," she said, rage at the memory of the day growing in her.
"When?"
"Twelve days ago when Dr. Fletcher called me to ask for a blood test. She said a sick baby needed a transfusion."
Czernek nodded and stroked at his beard. "Did she tell you at this time that the baby was yours?"
"No."
Dr. Fletcher gazed steadily at Valerie, though she noted through peripheral vision that the jurors stared at her now, not the witness. She labored to avoid looking guilty at hearing her deception revealed.
"Did you later discover this fact?"
"Yes."
He asked her when she found out.
She replied with obvious bitterness. "The next day in the hospital. A lab technologist was interested in why my blood would be more useful to a baby than the blood of its own sup-posed mother. He left the room while I was donating the pint, and when he came back, he started asking me what I thought were crazy questions about whether I'd regretted having my abortion and what if my baby had lived."
"What did you say?"
"Nothing. Before he could finish, Dr. Fletcher walked in, and he stopped talking."
"Did Dr. Fletcher tell you then that Renata was your child?"
"No. First she asked if I would agree to a bone-marrow trans-plant. I said I wanted to see the baby. When I did, I had the feeling that she was mine. Then the technologist-"
"Do you remember his name?" Ron asked.
"Yes. Mark Landry. He told me his theory that Dr. Fletcher had invented some way to implant aborted fetuses into other women and that the child born to Karen and David Chandler was actually mine."
"What happened then?"
"I fainted. Mr. Landry brought me about with smelling salts. Then Dr. Fletcher walked in."
"Did she tell you then?"
"No. Only when I confronted her did she bother to tell me that my child had been given to someone else."
Throughout the morning, Czernek questioned her on every minute detail with repetitive precision and through her an-swers painted a portrait of irresponsible medical experiments performed on an unsuspecting woman without benefit of in-formed consent. All the while, Dr. Fletcher watched with intense concentration.
"Valerie," Czernek finally asked softly, "would you be a good mother for Renata?"
"Yes," she said, barely audible.
"Could you tell the court why?"
Valerie thought about the question for a moment, though the time was mostly spent remembering what she and Ron had decided the night before. She turned to the jury. "My baby was born to another woman, who claims that makes her the child's mother. Yet when the baby fell ill, I was the only one who could save her. Dr. Fletcher would not have been forced to bring everything out in the open if there were anyone else who could help. That baby needs me. She needs her real mother in order to survive." Her voice was level, unemotional. "She needs her true parents to love her, not two strangers. Strangers who considered her a commodity to be purchased. And I hope that, along with returning my little girl to me, this court decides that no one else should ever have to suffer this deception again." Ron waited for her words to sink in, then asked, "Did you bring this lawsuit just to get money?"
"No! What Dr. Fletcher did to me was wrong. She should be stopped. That's why I brought this lawsuit. To get my baby back and to prevent future abuses."
He paused again. "Thank you, Ms. Dalton. No further ques-tions." Judge Lyang looked over to Johnson. "Would the defense care to cross-examine?" Terry rose. "Yes, Your Honor." He sidled out from behind the table to approach the witness stand. He put his hands in his pockets as if in deep thought. He looked up at the ceiling. "Ms. Dalton, when you discovered you were pregnant, what did you see as your options?"
"Objection," Ron said. "Counsel must restrict himself to ar-eas covered in direct examination." Johnson snorted and looked at Lyang. "Counsel for the plain-tiff is trying to restrict me a bit too much. He did cover her choice to get an abortion."
"Overruled," the judge said flatly.
"What options did you consider, Ms. Dalton?"
Valerie sat admirably still. Inside, she wanted to shake free. "I had no option besides abortion."
"Did you consider giving birth? Raising the child?"
"We weren't ready for that. I wasn't ready."
"That's fine," Johnson said in a calm, accepting tone. "Lots of people have abortions. It's legal. It's relatively safe. Were you aware at that time that abortion was the only known method of pregnancy termination?"
"I certainly didn't know about transoption, if that's what you mean."
"It is indeed." Johnson put his hands back in his pockets and strolled around with a meditative air.
"Did you know that abortion entailed the killing of the fetus?"
"Objection," Czernek said. "To use the term `killing' in re-gards to abortion implies that a first-trimester fetus is a living human being, something denied by every major court deci-sion of the past thir-"
"Sustained, Mr. Czernek. I am familiar with the law."
Johnson smiled. Right where I wanted you, you litigious bas-tard. "Allow me to rephrase the question. Did you know when went in for an abortion that the individual cells in the tissue removed from you during the abortion would, one by one, cease to function after said removal?" Valerie shook her head. "I don't understand the que-"
"Surely, Ms. Dalton," Johnson's voice rose, "you can com-prehend that when a piece of living tissue is deprived of its source of nutrients, it won't survive long. Did you know that extraordinary measures are taken during organ transplants to keep a heart or a liver viable-àlive'-while being trans-ported to its new host?"
"Yes. I guess I-"
"Did you know that once aborted, your fetus would soon cease to be a fetus and become a mass of nonfunctioning tis-sue?"
"Well, yes. Of course."
He turned to her. "So you didn't really consider it alive to begin with?"
"No. I mean, not in the sense of it being a person. That's the way I learned it." She sounded more confident.
"And if you had lived in the South a century ago and had `learned it' that blacks weren't human, you'd believe that, too, right?"