“When you’ve heard all the evidence”—Leary’s voice cuts back into my thoughts, and I shift in my seat, because my trip down memory lane just now has given me a hard-on under the counsel table—“I’m going to come before you, and I’m going to ask you for compensation. It’s going to be a large amount. Be ready for it. It’s going to be an amount to compensate Jenna for her past medical bills, the reconstructive surgeries she still faces, her lost wages, and her pain and suffering. All I ask is that you listen to everything with an open mind and reserve your judgment until you’ve heard all the evidence. Thank you.”
Leary stands a moment more and takes time to look each and every juror in the eye. It’s an impressive and brave way to make a connection with them.
Turning from the jury, Leary walks back to her counsel table and stands in front of her chair. She doesn’t bother sitting down but rather waits for the judge to say, “Thank you, Miss Michaels and Mr. Holloway for your opening statements. The jury is now with Plaintiff. You may call your first witness, Miss Michaels.”
I pull my yellow pad closer to me, prepared for Leary to call Jenna to the stand. I even write Jenna’s name across the top sheet and underline it twice.
“Thank you, Your Honor,” Leary says cordially. “At this time, the plaintiff would like to call Dr. Garry Summerland to the stand.”
I freeze with my pen tip resting against my legal pad. Dr. Summerland curses beside me and then leans over to whisper, “What the hell is going on?”
Looking up to the bench, I hold up one finger on my hand. “Just a moment, Your Honor, if you please.”
“Make it quick,” Judge Henry says.
I put my arm around the back of Dr. Summerland’s chair and lean in toward him. “She’s allowed to call you during her case if she wants.”
“This is fucking great,” he hisses at me.
“You’ll be fine,” I assure him. “Just tell the truth and nothing will go wrong.”
He glares at me and I think to myself, I hope you lie, you cocky son of a bitch, and I hope Leary wipes the floor with you.
Dr. Summerland stands from the chair, buttons his suit coat, and makes his way to the witness stand. The bailiff holds a Bible under his hand, and the clerk puts him under oath.
If I actually gave a shit about this case, this would be very bad for me. Leary pulled a brilliant move, and I admire the fuck out of her for it. She took a gamble, knowing the chances of me preparing him for this were nil. And now I want to laugh over the green tinge to Dr. Summerland’s face.
“Good morning, Dr. Summerland,” Leary says politely as she sits back down at counsel table. In North Carolina, attorneys are not permitted to stand while questioning a witness unless it’s to hand them an exhibit.
He doesn’t respond but just nods at her, his lips flattened in a grimace. Stupid fuck. It’s common sense that if you act like an ass, the jury is going to think you’re an ass. On top of that, the jury clearly likes Leary, so if he treats her hostilely, they’re not going to like that.
I hope he’s a supreme asshole to Leary. She can handle herself, and any animosity she builds up against Dr. Summerland will help ease the blow I’m going to deliver later on in the case.
Leary doesn’t waste any time in laying out the history of Dr. Summerland’s treatment of Jenna. She goes right in for the kill. “Dr. Summerland, can you tell the jury your educational background?”
His chin goes up and superiority oozes off him. “Yes. I did my undergraduate degree at UCLA, medical school at Vanderbilt, and my internship and residency at Emory.”
“And you’re board certified, correct?” she asks politely.
“Yes.”
“In general surgery?”
“Yes,” he says, not willing to elucidate.
“You’re not, however, certified in plastic surgery, are you?” she asks him as she leans back casually in her chair.
“No, I’m not.”
“Plastic surgery is very different from general surgery, wouldn’t you say?” she asks demurely.
“In some respects, but in others we do some similar procedures.”
“Like what?” she asks, tilting her head and sounding generally intrigued and curious.
“Like mastectomies,” he says firmly.
“But the types of mastectomies you do are very different from a plastic surgeon’s, correct?”
“Well, the concept is the same,” he starts to say, but she cuts him off.
“When you do a mastectomy, it’s for women who opt not to have reconstruction, correct? They just want the offending tissue removed?”
“I suppose that’s one way to look at it,” he grumbles.
“And plastic surgeons . . . when they do mastectomies, it’s for the purposes of reconstruction so they can build back up the woman’s breast through implants, correct?”
“Yes, that’s what they do.”
“Dr. Summerland, do you recognize the New England Journal of Medicine as an authoritative medical periodical?”
“Yes, I do. I read it faithfully,” he says confidently. “In fact, there’s an article in a 2009 issue that discusses mastectomies performed by general surgeons.”
Leary dramatically raises her eyebrows in delight and smiles at Dr. Summerland. “Well, isn’t that terrific?” she says jovially as she waves a document in her hand. “I just happen to have that article here. May I approach the witness, Your Honor?”
Judge Henry nods and Leary stands up smoothly from her chair. She walks up to the witness stand, the jurors all following her with avid interest. She hands Dr. Summerland the document. “I’m handing you what’s been marked as Plaintiff’s exhibit one. Does this look like the article you mentioned?”
Dr. Summerland flips through it and nods. “It does.”
“And on the last three pages of the article, it gives photographs of acceptable results from a nonreconstructive mastectomy, doesn’t it?”
Dr. Summerland leans in and peers at the pages she referenced. “Yes, it does, although they’re in black and white and it’s a little hard to see, since this is a photocopy.”
“Well,” Leary says dramatically as she walks back to her table and reaches over the low wall that separates the main seating area of the courtroom. She pulls back a huge thirty-by-forty-inch piece of foam board, keeping the front of it concealed. She walks over to me and turns it so only I can see it. I give it a quick glance, trying hard not to start laughing hysterically now that I see what she’s doing, and give her a nod of acceptance. Leary’s required to show me any demonstrative exhibits before she uses them.
She carries the board back up to Dr. Summerland, keeping it concealed until she reaches him. She stands in front of the witness stand and says, “Dr. Summerland, I took the liberty of getting the original photos from the New England Journal of Medicine and had them blown up so you can see them more clearly. Now, I’d like to know . . . do these photographs accurately represent the results of a typical mastectomy that you would perform as a general surgeon, and without hope of having reconstruction done?”
Leary turns the large board around so both Dr. Summerland and the jury can see it, and the two female jurors actually gasp.
It’s a huge blowup of a woman’s chest after her breasts have been removed. Horrid, angry scars line the bottom, her nipples and areolae are gone, and most obvious are several large, pitted areas left behind.
Dr. Summerland doesn’t understand where Leary is going with this, so he gives a confident smile and says, “Yes. This is what a typical nonreconstructive mastectomy would look like that I would perform in my practice.”