Mistress of Justice

today.” He smiled, creating a camaraderie with six men and women bored numb from days of medical testimony.
    Hunkered down behind two octogenarian trial buffs, Taylor watched him pace back and forth slowly.
    Reece said, “Now, sir, you know I’m getting paid for asking you questions.”
    The witness blinked. “I—”
    Reece laughed. “It’s not a question. I’m just telling you that I’m getting paid to be here, and I assume you’re getting paid to testify. But I don’t think it’s fair to ask you how much
you’re
getting, if I’m not prepared to tell you how much
I’m
getting. And I’m not. Lawyers’re overpaid anyway.” Laughter filled the room. “So we’ll just let it go at the fact that we’re both professionals. Are we all together on that?”
    “Yessir.”
    “Good.
    The plaintiff’s lawyers grew wary at this. One of the first ways cross-examining lawyers attack experts is to make them sound like mercenaries.
    “Now, Doctor,” Reece said, “let me ask you, how often do you testify at medical malpractice cases like this one?”
    “Rarely.”
    “How rare would that be?”
    The witness lifted his hand. “I’ve probably testified three or four times in my life. Only when I feel a terrible injustice has been done and—”
    Reece held up his hand and, still smiling, said, “Maybe if we could just stick to answering my questions, please.”
    “The jury will disregard the witness’s last sentence,” the judge mumbled.
    “So it’s safe to say that you spend most of your time
practicing
medicine. Not testifying against other doctors.”
    “That’s right.”
    “That’s so refreshing, Doctor. I mean that. It’s clear you care about your patients.”
    “Helping patients is the most important thing in the world to me.”
    “I applaud that, sir. And I welcome your appearance here—I mean that. Because these are very tricky technical matters that my friends on the jury and I have to wrestle with, and cooperative witnesses like you can make the issues clearer.”
    The witness laughed. “I
have
had a bit of experience.”
    “Let’s talk about that, sir. Now, you practice internal medicine, correct?”
    “That’s correct.”
    “You’re board-certified in internal medicine?”
    “I am.”
    “And you have occasion to administer various drugs?”
    “Oh, yessir.”
    “Would you say you have great experience administering them?”
    “I would say so, sure.”
    “Those ways of administering them would include sublingual—that’s under the tongue, right?”
    “That’s right.”
    Reece continued, “And rectally as well as administering injected medicines, like the sort that the plaintiff received.”
    “That’s true.”
    “I don’t want you to think I’m up to anything here, sir. You’ve testified that my client did something wrong in administering certain medicines and all I want to do is make it clear that your observations about what my client did are valid because of your expertise. We’re all together on that?”
    “All together, yessir.”
    “Good.”
    Taylor could see that the jury had brightened up. Something was happening. Reece was being
nice
to the witness. Shouldn’t they be screaming at each other? The jury was confused and because of that they’d started paying attention.
    She noticed something else: Though she hadn’t seen him change his appearance, Reece’s jacket, at some point, had become unbuttoned and in lifting his hand to straighten his hair he’d mussed it. He looked boyish. Shethought of him suddenly as a young Southern lawyer—a hero in a John Grisham book.
    The witness too had relaxed. He was less stiff, less cautious.
    Taylor, though, thought that Reece had gone too far with the good-old-boy approach. The witness was looking good in the eyes of the jury; the credibility of his testimony was improving. By now, she reflected, her father would’ve cut the balls off this doctor and had him cowering on the stand.
    Reece said, “Now, let me quote from the record as best I can.” He squinted and recited, “ ‘In March of last year a doctor from St. Agnes treated a patient—Mr. Marlow there in the wheelchair, the plaintiff—who has arthritis and adrenal insufficiency with seventy milligrams of cortisone acetate in conjunction with one hundred milligrams of indomethacin.’ ”
    “That’s right.”
    “And you testified that you wouldn’t have done that.”
    “Correct.”
    “Because of his preexisting ulcerous