“What happened next, Mrs. Masters?”
“He asked me for food, and I thought he was a transient so I told him through the glass that I didn’t have any. Then he raised up his arm and was holding a gun.” My voice wavered slightly, and I took a deep breath. I tried to push the memory out of my mind and my eyes found my sister and focused on her. She smiled at me and nodded. “The man,” I continued, hoping I sounded a little more put together than I felt, “pulled the trigger on his gun and I was shot in the shoulder. The fall caused severe head trauma and I was taken to OHSU for treatment.”
I exhaled, glad I had made it through the retelling of one of the most terrifying moments of my life.
“Mrs. Masters is it true that you identified your shooter in a line up at the Portland Police station?”
“Yes.”
“Is the man you identified here today?”
“Yes.”
“Can you point to him, please?”
I raised my arm, just as Jason Ramie had when he pointed a gun at me, and aimed my finger directly at him.
“That’s him. The man who shot me.”
“Thank you,” he said to me. He then turned to the judge. “I have no further questions, Your Honor.”
“Defense, the witness is yours to cross examine.” The judge’s voice was short, cold, and sharp. It made sense though. She was obviously impartial and not interested in anything except order. Jason Ramie’s main attorney stood and buttoned his gray blazer, walking towards me with a slimy smile on his face.
“Good morning, Mrs. Masters, how are you today?”
Caught off guard by his question, not expecting to exchange pleasantries, it took me a moment longer than I would have liked to formulate my answer.
“I am anxious to put this all behind me. I have a brand new baby in the hospital waiting for me to come back to her. So if you wouldn’t mind . . .” I tilted my head to the side, hoping my snark was coming across. I happened to catch Kalli grinning from her chair, so perhaps it was working.
“Right. We all want to get back to our lives, Mrs. Masters.” He took a moment to let his comment sink in, and the meaning wasn’t lost on me. I readjusted myself in my chair while he took his pregnant pause. “Tell me, what happened after you were shot?”
“I was taken to OHSU and treated.”
“For what?”
“I had a gunshot to the shoulder and a sub-cranial bleed.”
“But you recovered.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes.”
“But not entirely.” Again, a statement.
“Objection, Your Honor. Counsel isn’t cross examining the witness. He’d need to be asking questions to do so.” Mr. Donaldson sounded exasperated. Being a lawyer took a lot of acting ability, I was learning.
“Your Honor, I am trying to make a point and if it pleases the court, I would like to continue.”
After a few seconds the judge responded with, “Get to the point, Counselor.”
“Mrs. Masters, you had some long-lasting effects from your unfortunate accident, didn’t you?”
“A few. To which are you referring?”
“Memory loss, for one?”
“Yes. I suffered from retrograde amnesia.”
“So, for a time, you couldn’t remember the actual shooting in question or the shooter for that matter.”
“That is true. But my memory returned about two months after the accident.”
“Fully?”
“Mostly.”
“Meaning?”
“There were a few things that were still fuzzy, and even now sometimes I have a hard time recalling things that happened in the six weeks of memory that I lost, but most of it comes to me fine.”
“Was your shooter’s face and identity part of the memory that came back easily?”
“As soon as my memory returned I remembered the shooting, but part of the shooter’s face was blocked from me.”
“And then, magically, while looking at a random line up of men, your memory returned and you conveniently remembered Mr. Ramie’s face, is that true?”
“There was nothing magical or convenient about it, I assure you.”
“Do you think it’s medically possible for someone’s memory to just return to them out of the blue?”
I was primed to answer the question with a resounding YES! Because that was exactly how it had happened, both times, but I was cut off by Mr. Donaldson’s loud and angry voice.
“Your Honor, I object! Mrs. Masters is not a medical professional and can’t possibly comment on the inner workings of the human brain.”
“Sustained.” The judge sounded a little upset with the defense too. “I think we all need a break. Court will recess for thirty minutes.” She banged her gavel and everyone seemed to scatter. Jason Ramie was cuffed again and led back to wherever he had emerged from.
I pushed out a long and deep breath, releasing a lot of anxiety the last twenty minutes had created within me. I walked over to the girls to grab my pump.