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 did she continue 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, she did intervene 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 JUDGE has 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 cost you more.”
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 na?ve 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 out all charges 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, that was 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.