Such a Pretty Face (13 page)

The other bedroom is actually much bigger than mine, but I love sleeping in a small space. To me, it feels cozy and safe, cocoonish.

The caterpillar in the cocoon turned off her light, then stared at the Starlight Starbright ceiling for hours, afraid to sleep and step into the nightmares—afraid I wouldn’t sleep, and my mind would snap.

Not relaxing, folks.

“So you believe, Mrs. Atherton,” Crystal said, disbelief ringing around each word, “that your son went without oxygen for”—she fiddled with her papers for effect—“four minutes, at least, while under sedation at Harborshore Hospital? Is that correct?”

I sat on Crystal’s right in the conference room. Across from us was Mr. and Mrs. Atherton, the parents of Danny, a boy who had gone from playing baseball and reading about dragons and loving music to resting on a hospital bed full time in their dining room, with a feeding tube and a bag for urine.

The Athertons were in their thirties and clearly exhausted, unbearably saddened, and angry all at the same time. Mr. Atherton was well built and muscled with bright green eyes, his wife plump with an attractive face. They sat across the table along with their attorneys, two young people in their late twenties named Sonja Woods and Dirk Evans.

The attorneys for the Athertons had been a standing joke for Crystal. They were three years out of law school, going up against her, the powerful and smart Ivy League–educated Crystal Chen, and Harborshore Hospital. They couldn’t win. They wouldn’t win.

As Crystal said, “We will bury them alive. We will smash them. When I am done those attorneys will wish they had become plumbers and were under a sink with Mr. Atherton handling a wrench with their cracks slopping out their pants.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Mrs. Atherton said. “We believe, based on Danny’s condition now, that he was without air for about four minutes.”

“Mrs. Atherton, were you in the room when your son—” Crystal sifted through papers ostensibly grasping for their son’s name. She well knew the boy’s name was Danny. She lived and breathed the name of that child, investigating, searching for ways that the hospital could win this case, but she was trying to undermine the couple, intimidate them, smother them down, bury them in so much paperwork, threats, and hopelessness that they’d bow out and quit.

“Danny,” Mr. Atherton said, his face reddening. “Our son’s name is Danny.”

“Yes…Dan,” Crystal said, offhanded. “You weren’t in the room, so how do you know that he did not have oxygen for four minutes?” She narrowed her eyes at Mrs. Atherton, then tilted her head. I actually saw her eyes taking in Maggie Atherton’s hair and clothes. Maggie got the message. Crystal Chen did not think much of Maggie, her curling hair, the lack of makeup on her face, her plump figure under the blue blouse and beige pants, the dark circles under her eyes.

Maggie tilted her chin up. “No, I wasn’t in the room.”

“Are you a doctor?” Crystal asked.

“No.”

“Do you have any medical training at all?”

“No.”

Crystal pretended to be confused. “Then how could you possibly offer a medical opinion when you’re clearly not qualified to do so?”

Her attorneys cut in. They fought with Crystal while Mrs. Atherton paled.

“Mrs. Atherton,” Crystal drawled. “Isn’t it true that you signed these papers”—she shuffled the papers again—“that the hospital gave you, indicating that you knew your son’s heart operation could have a poor result, even death?”

“Yes, I did—”

“And you, too, Mr. Atherton? You signed the papers?”

“Yes. We had to sign the papers or the operation would not be performed and—”

“Thank you. I have the papers.” Crystal put the copies of the papers that the Athertons had signed in the middle of the table. The couple barely glanced at them. They had seen the papers.

“As you can see, it says right here”—Crystal tapped the paper with her red-tipped nail—“that this operation can have poor results….”

“Ms. Chen, you know as well as I do,” Sonja Woods said, “that the fine print on anything from a medication prescription to a minor operation involving three stitches lists any and all possible medical problems that can incur. You can’t swallow a basic pain medication without reading that you could instantly die—”

“I’m not talking about pain medication, I’m talking about a heart operation,” Crystal interrupted. “These people”—she flicked her eyes to the couple, then smoothed out an invisible wrinkle on her designer suit—“signed off on the operation. They were told there could be medical consequences.”

“There’s nothing in there, Ms….
Chen
”—Mr. Atherton deliberately paused before her name, as if he was trying to recall it, as Crystal had done with his boy—“that says we should expect the oxygen tube to be incorrectly placed in my son’s mouth.” Mr. Atherton’s voice rose. “Where was the anesthesiologist? What happened to him? Why wasn’t he watching?”

“Mr. Atherton, please.” Crystal held up a hand. “Your son was born with a congenital heart defect. The doctors tried to save him, tried to help him. They’re not God.”

“No one asked them to be God,” Mrs. Atherton cut in. “We asked them to do their jobs.”

“Let’s move on—”

“Let’s not,” Mr. Atherton said.

Dirk Evans, the other Atherton attorney, raised his eyebrows at Crystal. “This is why we’re here, Crystal. As much as the hospital is trying to hide it, that breathing tube was incorrectly placed. That’s why Danny is in the tragic condition he’s in. The Athertons deserve compensation to care for Danny.”

“You can’t prove it.” Crystal leaned back and smiled tightly. I saw her swinging her foot under the table, her expensive heel rocking back and forth. This was fun for her. Fun. Make ’em miserable. Put up a wall. Make the wall so unscaleable, so terrifying, they give up.

“Yes, we can,” Sonja said, but I could see the doubt in her eyes.

“We’ll prove it. We’ll take you to court, in front of a jury and judge,” Dirk added, but I could tell he wasn’t a hundred percent confident. Crystal saw it, too.

“There’s no way we’re going to pay you ten million dollars.”

“Why not?” Sonja said. She was young, but she was determined and passionate about this case. “That’s how much it will cost, throughout Danny’s life, for medical care. That’s how much round-the-clock nurses will be, medications, oxygen. Mrs. Atherton won’t be able to work….” The list went on.

Crystal shook her head. She was so sorry she was dealing with imbecilic people. “We will never agree to this number. It’s idiocy. Harborshore Hospital tried to help. They tried to save your son’s life—”

“They almost killed him. Seconds more and he would have been dead,” Mrs. Atherton said sadly. I did not miss the way her hands trembled, the pallor of her skin. Her husband linked an arm behind her chair.

“That’s not true. Had they not done the operation, your son would not have lived. They saved your son’s life.”

“Saved his life, they did that indeed,” Sonja said. “It’s not in dispute that the operation saved Danny’s life. But is it a life now worth living? The doctors failed.”

The arguments went on and on, the numbers floated around and about, for about fifteen minutes. I could tell that Mr. Atherton was enraged, Mrs. Atherton crushed. Their attorneys—intelligent but, even in my eyes, inexperienced—were furious.

“I think we’ll have to take this one to court,” Crystal said. I knew she was bluffing. No one wanted this in court, especially not the hospital.

“Go ahead,” Dirk said. “We’ll wheel Danny in, in his wheelchair and we’ll see how the jury feels about this.”

“The jury will understand that the hospital did all they could—”

“All they could?” Mr. Atherton stood up, hands on the table, his voice choked. “All they could? They almost killed him. They almost killed my son and they won’t admit, not for a second—”

“Yes, we’re all sorry. Poor kid,” Crystal said. “Too bad you parents can’t be grateful, grateful to the hospital for what they tried to do, and it’s come to this. We’re done here. Steve?” She stood up. That was my cue. We left. I pretended not to hear Mrs. Atherton crying and Mr. Atherton swearing.

This was a horrid case, horrid.

“Was the breathing tube out of Danny’s mouth for four minutes, Crystal?”

Crystal shuffled papers on her desk. The Athertons and their attorneys had left. I had ducked behind a file cabinet as they passed. Their pain made me feel as if I couldn’t draw a breath. I could feel it in my own heart.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“What do you mean it doesn’t matter?”

“It doesn’t matter.” She pushed her straight black hair behind her back. “It’s irrelevant. A nonissue. Who cares? It’s of no consequence.”

“No consequence? It’s of consequence because a child has been permanently disabled because of it.”

“That’s not our concern. Our concern is to get the hospital off the hook. To defend them. To continue this fight until the Athertons are too fried to go anywhere else with it, and it’ll happen. They’ll get sick of it. They’ll realize they can’t fight with the big guys. The big guys always, always win. Plus, their two attorneys, those young hotshots.” She snorted. “I’ve checked them out. If Sonja’s husband wasn’t working as a nurse and Dirk’s wife wasn’t working as a kindergarten teacher, they would both be eating cat food right now, they’re so broke. They’ve set up their ‘legal offices’”—she made quotes with two fingers in the air—“in the garage of Sonja’s ranch house. They’ve taken out second mortgages on their homes. They have nothing to their names except $40,000 in student loans. Each.” She snorted again. “This is their only case and it’s taking up all their time. They’re using their own money to hire experts, court fees, and so on. They’ll give up. They’ll have to. Sonja and Dirk are going to bankrupt themselves. They’re hoping they’ll get thirty percent plus costs if they win a settlement, but what’s thirty percent of nothing? Nothing.”

“You think they’ll drop the case?”

“Sure. We might hand over $50,000 to make the whole thing go away. Sonja and Dirk will get $15,000, the Athertons will get $35,000. Everybody will sign a confidential, ‘Don’t say a damn thing to the media’ agreement, and that will be that.”

“But where will the Athertons be then? That $35,000 isn’t very much with their costs. I’ve seen the expense sheet.”

“Again, Steve”—she stood up to glare at me, arms crossed in her “Must I deal with an imbecile” position—“we don’t care. I don’t care. You shouldn’t care. We’re attorneys, okay? It’s not our job to care, and I certainly don’t care about this.”

She turned back to her desk and picked up her BlackBerry. “Damn,” she muttered, then pierced me with those narrow eyes. “You can go now, Steve.”

I nodded.

“Wait.”

She fiddled with the edge of her suit jacket. “You haven’t seen the letter from Dr. Dornshire yet?”

I shook my head.

“Keep searching. It’s
none
of your business what’s in that letter, but keep searching.”

I left.

I had a stack of documents on the Atherton case, and I’d flipped through them searching for that letter simply because Crystal wanted it so badly and I couldn’t figure out why.

What is in that letter?

Zena and I sat in Pioneer Courthouse Square for lunch, as usual. Pioneer Courthouse Square is in the middle of Portland. It’s this huge bowl with brick steps, a fountain, and a statue of a man with an umbrella. There’re concerts and cheer fests for our professional basketball team and sandcastle-building contests. It’s the place for businesswomen and panhandlers, mothers with strollers and homeless teenagers, executives and suburbanites coming in for some city lights and action.

Everybody has a different story, and if one person had had the unfortunate misfortune of landing in the same shoes as that homeless person right over there, their life would have been completely different.

Nobody wants to think of it that way, but it is the truth.

“Do you believe in reincarnation?” Zena asked me.

“I don’t know. It’s the ultimate in recycling, though, isn’t it? Don’t waste, reuse! Here’s a soul, now stick it back out there.”

“I think I was Cleopatra in another life,” she said. “I have a thing for snakes. And I think I might have been a pirate. Probably the captain of the ship. I might have been a king in my past, too.”

“That would be a problem.” I handed her slices of pear. “This is the best pear in the world.”

“Why would it be a problem?” She handed me cheese sticks.

“Because you’d have to have a queen and you’re not gay.”

“Maybe I was a manly man back then and chased women. Or maybe I was a king and let my wife run around with the knight out in back with the sexy thighs.”

“Could be.”

“In my next life I want to be a magician, magic and all, none of these fake tricks. What do you want to be?”

I thought about that. “I think I want to be an explorer. A world traveler. Someone who goes all over the world, meets new people, sees new things, and is brave and courageous. Exactly the opposite of how I am now—my world so small, seeing the same things, same people, every day, because I’m too scared to set fire to the walls of the box that surround me.”

“You’d be good at that.” She handed me a handful of raspberries and I took them.

“That’s who I’d want to be. An adventurer.” I nodded. Good choice.

We saw Crystal teetering on her high heels toward a Chinese food kiosk. She said something to the man and woman serving lunch. They handed her a plate. She nodded at them, and the woman came out and gave her a hug.

“Gee. Somebody wants to hug Crystal? That’s a shocker,” Zena drawled.

Crystal teetered off, butt swaying. Even walking she seemed ticked off.

“I think Crystal’s stick is bugging her,” Zena drawled.

“Have you had a boob job?”

I choked on my water, put the water glass down, and mopped up my face. “What?”

“Come on now, sweetie. Tell me the truth. Job or no job? Natural or popped up?”

Why had I even gone out on this dinner date? Why can’t I say no? I cursed Zena silently. She had set this date up for me and cajoled me into going. “Come on, Stevie. Don’t be a puss.”