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Mistress of Justice

Mistress of Justice

Titel: Mistress of Justice Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Jeffery Deaver
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condition.”
    “Yes.”
    “But I’ve looked through his charts. There’s no record of his having an ulcer.”
    The witness said, “I don’t know what happened with the charts. But he told the doctors he had an ulcer. I was there. I heard the exchange.”
    “He was in the emergency room,” Reece said. “Generally a busy place, a lot of doctors trying to cope with all kinds of problems. I’ve been in them myself—cut my thumb bad last year.…” Reece winced and smiled at the jury. “I’m a real klutz,” he told them. Then back to the doctor: “So will you agree that it’s
possible
that the person Mr. Marlow told about his ulcer wasn’t the person who administered the drugs?”
    “That doesn’t—”
    Reece smiled. “Please, sir.”
    “It’s possible. But—”
    “Please. Just the question.”
    Taylor saw that Reece was preventing the witness from reminding the jury that it didn’t matter who knew before the injection because Dr. Morse had brought it to the staff’s attention just
after
the injection, when there was still time to correct it, but the staff had ignored him.
    “It’s possible.”
    Reece let this sit for a moment. “Now, Dr. Morse, there’s been a lot of talk in this trial about what is and is not an accepted level of medical treatment, right?”
    Morse paused before answering, as if trying to figure out where Reece was going. He looked at his own lawyer then answered, “Some, I suppose.”
    “I’m thinking that if, as you say, you wouldn’t’ve treated the patient with these medications then I assume you feel that St. Agnes’s treatment was below the standards of proper medical care?”
    “Certainly.”
    Reece walked to a whiteboard in the corner of the courtroom, near the jury, and drew a thick line horizontally across it. “Doctor, let’s say this is the standard-of-care line, all right?”
    “Sure.”
    Reece drew a thin dotted line an inch below it. “Would you say that the level of care St. Agnes provided in administering those drugs was this far below the standard level of care? Just a little bit below?”
    Morse looked at his lawyer and was greeted with a shrug.
    “No. It wasn’t just a little bit below. They almost killed the man.”
    “Well.” Reece drew another line, farther down. “This far?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Another line. “This far below?”
    Dr. Morse said in a solemn voice, “It was very far below.”
    Reece drew another two lines then stopped writing. He asked, “Once you get below a certain level of the standard of care … well, how’d you describe that?”
    Another uncertain look at his lawyer then the witness answered, “I’d say … I’d guess I’d say it was malpractice.”
    “You’d characterize St. Agnes’s treatment of Mr. Marlow,” Reece said in a sympathetic voice, “as malpractice.”
    “Well, yes, I would.”
    A murmur of surprise from several people in the courtroom. Not only was Reece befriending the witness but his cross-examination was having the effect of making the witness repeat over and over again that the hospital had made a mistake. He had even gotten the witness to characterize the staff’s behavior as malpractice—a legal conclusion that no defense lawyer in the world would have accepted from a plaintiff’s witness. Yet it had been Reece himself who elicited this opinion.
    What was going on here? Taylor glanced at Burdick and saw him sitting forward, clearly troubled.
    A dozen rows behind him Clayton’s representative, Randy Simms, sat immobile though with a slight smile on his face.
    The judge looked at Reece, opposing counsel looked at Reece.
    “I appreciate your candor, Doctor. Malpractice, malpractice.” Reece walked back to the table slowly, letting the word sink into the jury’s consciousness. He stopped and then added brightly, “Oh, Doctor, if you don’t mind, I just have a few matters of clarification.”
    “Not at all.”
    Reece said, “Doctor, where are you licensed to practice?”
    “As I said before, California, New Jersey and New York.”
    “No other state?”
    “No.”
    Reece turned to look into Morse’s eyes. “How about any other
country?”
    “Country?”
    “Yessir,” Reece said. “I’m just curious if you’ve ever been licensed to practice in any other country.”
    A hesitation. Then a smile. “No.”
    “Have you ever
practiced
medicine in another country?”
    “I just said I wasn’t licensed.”
    “I caught that, sir. But what I just asked was

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