“I thought we should let you know,” Karen said, “we’ve decided to go back to work. Everything’s taken care of. Sitting around with nothing to do is driving us crazy.”

Esther did a quick calculation: Five days of mourning ― three or less if the plan for ending it had the psychological effect of the end itself. She thought of her late brother.  Milt’s health had been failing for months, so Shirley, his wife, was prepared for his death. Yet she’d taken her time. A full week of shiva; a month without entertainment; a year without a man. The phased ritual had eased her gently through her bereavement, all the while she understood ― and accepted ― the purpose of her sacrifice. At the end she was ready to go on living unimpaired.

The Averys did not have an established rite of mourning to fall back on. However, that did not preclude them from going through stages. In the immediate aftermath of Eden’s death, their pain had been paralyzing. But human tolerance for such pain is limited. By noon next day they had become numb, and in the shelter of their numbness they had been able to deal with practical matters like death notices, cremation, and the question of a memorial service.

Now denial had served its purpose. What struck Esther was not the Averys’ going back to work but their reason: It’s driving us crazy. They seemed to be looking to work as a way to anesthetize themselves. Had she known that Karen would shortly unsheathe an even more powerful weapon against mourning, she would have realized the futility of comparing her to Shirley. Esther worried but knew not to interfere. “I understand,” she said.

“It’s just that you’re having all this food brought over so we don’t have to do anything for ourselves. But we need to take care of ourselves. Would anyone be offended?”

“Of course not. The idea is to make contemplation possible, not stifle you with it.”

As Karen began to turn her thoughts outward, they wandered in a number of directions.

Long ago she had made a difficult decision. For the umpteenth time she weighed what she had got and what she had given up. Now she felt cheated. At forty-four she had no interest in starting parenthood all over again; neither did she see any possibility of recapturing her promising future in law. She felt lucky to have a job at all. She did also have a marriage. But try as she might, she had never been able to separate her career from Alan’s part in curtailing it. Surely he could have waited a few years, but he had called her debt even before it was technically due. Equally damning, the thought kept gnawing at her that Alan bore the blame for Eden’s medical problems. She could not confront Alan on this issue ― not now, not ever. Either she was right, and the accusation would devastate him but otherwise change nothing; or she was wrong, and he might never forgive her for her mistrust.

But if she was powerless to retrieve her loss and barred from sharing her feelings, she was not reduced to meek acceptance of her lot. She was, after all, a plaintiff’s lawyer, and she knew beyond reasonable doubt that they had a viable case of medical malpractice. Urgency of treatment notwithstanding, one simple, routine question would have made the difference between life and death, and that question had not been asked.

For the first time since she had begun to practice law she was experiencing pain and suffering, that much maligned category of damages responsible for the most outrageous jury awards. She became possessed by an irresistible urge to exact payment from someone. She didn’t need to sort out the components of her pain and suffering. If it came to a trial, naturally she would not demand compensation for the judicial appointment, law professorship, or even partnership that she had forgone. Her adversaries would call that delusions of grandeur. But make the jurors feel the loss of a seventeen-year-old only child, and they would weep for her.

Thus, within a week of Eden’s death the seed of the avenging lawsuit was germinating. Here was a path in which Karen could take the initiative and fight her battle unimpeded by the demands of others. It was the one thing she could salvage from the broken pieces of her life.

~~~~~~~~~~

Karen ran the gauntlet of condolences and well-meaning questions about Eden’s death with as much grace as she could, until rescued by a summons from Frank. “We’re glad to see you back,” he said. “I don’t know what else to say. All the customary stuff seems so useless.”

“Thanks for being honest. Your welcome back is worth more than sympathy.”

Frank acknowledged the compliment with a silent nod. “Under other circumstances Eden would have had one more year at home before going to college. Then your responsibilities as parent would have been over. It’s been a long time since we talked about that subject. I know we didn’t see eye to eye, but you did what was right for you. I respect that. Now you’re in your early forties. By all estimates you have at least thirty good years left. I’d like you to think of what you could do in that time. We’ve never stopped thinking of you as one of us, and nothing would please us more than to have you full-time ― you know how I mean. You don’t need to hurry, but I want you to know that, and of course I’m speaking for Leslie too.”

Karen’s eyes were brimming as she looked at him. “You can’t imagine how comforting those words are. It’s not as if I came in here worrying about my future, but at least the future is what you’re talking about. Believe me, I prefer that to all the condolences and questions.”

“I’m in the fortunate position of being able to talk about your future. Don’t be hard on those who offer only condolences; it may be all they have.”

“There is one thing I want to talk about, if you have time.”

Frank looked at her calmly. He knew what was coming. “Go on.”

“I want to sue those bastards. They killed my daughter as sure as I’m sitting here.”

“She’d been in that hospital before, hadn’t she, with a bad allergic reaction?”

“Less than a year ago. She almost died then. Either the allergy flag was all over and no one paid attention, or it was never put on the chart. Either way it’s a violation of standards.”

“I’d think so,” Frank said. “My guess is that it was on the chart. It has to have been the primary diagnosis, not an incidental finding. Any way they could defend not seeing it?”

“Only that it was an emergency. OK, so the old chart wasn’t up. It takes time to get it out of the records department. But, my God, aren’t they supposed to ask anyway?”

“Yes, but the case could get soft there. Suppose she was so sick that she wasn’t quite with it. Let’s say delirious, or confused. They might claim she mumbled no or just shook her head, and they had to act without delay. Emergencies are tricky.  Doctors get a lot more leeway.”

“She was sick, but she was not delirious or confused. I’m convinced they didn’t ask.”

“Convinced, you say. Does that mean you weren’t in the room with her?”

“This Doctor McCrae, the intern, he seemed to know what he was doing and he had me convinced that it would be just as well for me to stay out of the way for a while. So that’s what I did. Besides, he was talking about using Prostaphlin, which I didn’t even know was a penicillin-type antibiotic till our pediatrician explained it to me. So I might have assumed that no questions about penicillin allergy were necessary because he wasn’t going to use any.”

“Yeah,” Frank said, “but he knew it was related to penicillin, and you’d remember whether or not he asked. Anyway, you weren’t there. Was anybody else?”

“I don’t know.”

“Now you did say intern, didn’t you? Is that an assumption or do you know for sure?”

“That’s how he introduced himself.”

“Did you meet any other doctors there, for example a supervising resident?”

“Only after her death. There was this Doctor Cross, who got permission for the autopsy.”

“But no resident at the time of admission?”

“Not that I remember. I see what you’re getting at. I should have thought about that.”

“Please, Karen, nobody’s going to hold it against you that you were thinking like a mother, not a lawyer. Checking up on their staff wasn’t your responsibility. But now we have to look at that. This intern had been on the job less than two weeks; July’s when their service begins. He had no business practicing medicine without supervision. Even more seasoned interns have to have their orders countersigned because they aren’t licensed; they’re trainees. Now maybe someone did. It could have been this Doctor Cross. In any case, that would only shift the blame.” He stroked his chin. “OK, we don’t need to speculate. Let’s get the records. Alan should be able to help expedite that, being on staff.”

Karen looked down silently for a moment. “I haven’t discussed this with Alan. I don’t know how he’ll feel about suing his own hospital or any of the doctors.”

“That’s the problem with being a doctor. It’s hard enough to get one doctor to testify against another, never mind sue him. But how do you feel about that? Are you comfortable suing? Doesn’t some of that brotherhood feeling wear off on you, being married to a doctor?”

“All I can say is that I don’t feel a thing. I’ve never identified with medicine, never felt whatever is good about being a doctor’s wife ― if there is such a thing. And lest you should think it’s because of the work we do here, it’s not. It’s personal and I don’t want to go into it.”

Frank sat in respectful silence. What did she mean by ‘the work we do here’? Was it the relationship between plaintiffs’ lawyers and physicians, which tended not to be cordial? Or just how personal was it? He hated these ambiguities.

“Then how do we get the chart? Without it we can’t do a thing.”

“I’ll sign for it. We have power of attorney for each other. I don’t have to involve him.”

“Forget it, Karen. Unless you and Alan agree, this firm won’t have any part in it. Why not just ask him? I mean, is it fair that a father’s legal rights have to be abridged just because he’s a doctor? Put it to him that way. It’s almost like denying a doctor the best in medical care.”

“Legal care is what we’re talking about now.”

“It’s the same thing.”

Karen drew back her head. “What do you mean, the same thing?”

“I’ve spent many an hour thinking about that. To me, legal protection is an extension of medical care. As a stretch, I’d even call it a medical specialty. Take your typical diabetic with his foot problems. When the foot doesn’t heal, internal medicine has failed, so surgery takes over. The patient loses his foot but he gets along. Now the surgeon isn’t in a category off by himself ― certainly not the internist’s adversary.  He’s part of the team, he performs a needed service. Now look at the patient who’s hurt by his doctor’s negligence. For him, medicine as a whole has failed. So we get him, or his survivors, something to ease the loss, may get them functioning again. The lawyer’s a backup for the doctor ― like the surgeon is for the internist.”

Karen had walked over to the window during Frank’s exposition. “Damn!” she muttered.

“What?”

“I don’t know how, but I damn well will. You’re right, I’ll never get back what I lost. But I’m going to get something. Whether Alan likes it or not.” And she was gone.