A Minor Fall

by Price Ainsworth

  “Man, you look like shit,” Jonathan said after waiting a reasonable amount of time for me to begin the conversation.

  As a debate team, Jonathan and I had not been a particularly formidable duo, but I think we were respectable. Texas Tech, at the time, was not seen as one of the national powerhouses of collegiate debate. Still, by the time Jonathan was a senior and I was a junior, we won our share of rounds against the likes of the Baylor Bears and the Houston Cougars. More importantly, we got to be friends and could count on each other to stand up and take a turn at the podium even when we knew that we sometimes had very little to say to contradict the other side’s case. We thought of ourselves as having been in the trenches together.

  I liked Jonathan. I liked how after the first day in the first tournament we debated together, rather than getting upset that we had just lost four consecutive rounds, he just said, “Let’s go drink a bunch of beer and see if we can see Jesus.” He was his own person, and he didn’t mind being on the side of the underdog. If Michelle went to law school to please her father, Jonathan had gone so that he could be independent of his father. And what else are you going to do with a major in political science and a minor in debate from Tech?

  In law school, Jonathan and I thought of ourselves as two people among a very small minority who saw the law as a means of equalizing opportunity rather than as a tool for protecting wealth. We were friends. We tried to be honest with each other. Of course the best thing to come of the friendship, to me, was Jonathan’s introduction of me to his sister. Now my dishonesty with her had cost me—how much I could not yet say—I only knew it had cost me. In any event, it would serve no purpose to try to pretend that everything was all right with Jonathan. To whatever extent I trusted and relied on him, Michelle trusted and relied on him more, and I assumed that it was Jonathan she would have talked to right before surgery.

  “I feel like shit. I wish I could just go to sleep,” I said. “I wonder if they would give me a sedative. Has Michelle had the baby yet?” Even without a sedative, I felt groggy and like I was slurring my words when I tried to speak. I had lost all track of time.

  The young doctor came in followed by a nurse with a rolling tray of instruments. The doctor clucked his tongue and examined my head. He put on a pair of latex gloves and went to work to repair the open wound. “Let’s see if we can get this closed this time,” he said.

  I tried to lay as still as possible and neither Jonathan nor I said anything. When he finished, the doctor asked Jonathan to take me back to the maternity ward.

  Jonathan nodded to the doctor and nurse as they left. “The baby should be along any minute now,” he said. “They sent me down to come get you. Why don’t you stay in the wheelchair this trip?” There was a wheelchair positioned by the end of the bed. He lifted my left arm over his shoulder and helped me as I swung out of the bed and stumbled into the chair.

  “I’ve messed things up pretty badly, Jonathan,” I said as I slumped down into the chair.

  “Sounds like,” he said. “For somebody who has never had a problem in his life, you’ve managed to jump to the front of the line.” While he was trying to be lighthearted, I could tell that he was genuinely concerned about what was happening. It was obvious that he had talked to Michelle or her mom.

  “Did you talk to Michelle? Did she tell you about the affair? Did she tell you about the herpes?” I asked.

  “Well, she asked me about it. I only got to see her a second before they took her in for the C-section. I told her I didn’t know anything about it. I don’t. I really don’t know where you got it. But listen Davy, I know Michelle loves you. I don’t know if she’ll ever get over this, but once upon a time she did love you. She’s going to need you to grow up and be there for her tonight. You owe her at least that much,” he said, trying to sound encouraging while helping me to get comfortable in the wheelchair.

  “I don’t think it’s going to matter whether she ever loved me,” I said. “I don’t think there is ever going to be any getting over this.”

  I asked if everybody knew, and he told me that his parents didn’t know yet what was happening. They just knew that there was some complication that necessitated a C-section. He said he expected that Michelle would tell her mom after the surgery when the doctors knew more about any problems there might be. Michelle would avoid giving her mom something else to worry about, something other than the C-section, if she could. After the delivery though, we both knew that Michelle would tell her mom everything.

  My parents had not arrived at the hospital yet. Jonathan had called them after Michelle called him before I picked her up to take her to the hospital. They were on their way from Abilene. Jonathan had talked to them again in the car and had given them directions to the medical center. Jonathan told me that Rod Day and his wife were both at the hospital, and Jonathan had asked them to wait for my parents in the lobby. Jonathan told me that he had caught Rod on his cell phone celebrating the victory in the Fulshear case at Brennan’s. Jonathan had told my parents about the C-section the last time he spoke to them, but he had not told them the reason for the surgery. He thought they would be getting to the hospital very soon.

  I reached my hand to the crusty stitches on my forehead as I sat up. I fought back the need to vomit as Jonathan spun the wheelchair around and wheeled it toward the door.

  “Are you okay?” he asked and paused to bend over and look at me face to face to determine to his own satisfaction whether I was telling the truth.

  I nodded, and Jonathan began pushing me down the series of hallways to the Dunn Tower elevator. He pressed the button on the wall to call the elevator, put his hands on his hips, and let out a long sigh.

  “Listen,” I said. “I’m sorry I have to do this. I’ve got to make a call. It’s for work.”

  “Work?” Jonathan asked. “Why would you be worried about work right now?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I am. It will only take a minute.” I pulled out my cell phone and dialed the number I had written on my hand.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea. You are in no condition to be making calls right now,” he said.

  While the phone was ringing, Jonathan said, “Look, there is something I have to talk to you about also.” The elevator door opened, but we let it close without getting on and Jonathan pressed the button for another one. I started to hang up the phone to find out what it was that Jonathan wanted to talk about when Tamara Davis answered the phone.

  “Tamara, this is Davy. I’m sorry to bother you, but I need to ask you something.”

  “Is there something wrong? Am I still going to get my settlement?” she asked, her voice immediately full of concern.

  “Well, I don’t know. Tamara, when I asked you the other day if you knew anybody at the hospital, your mother answered and said no. But you didn’t answer.”

  There was silence on the other end of the phone. I looked up at Jonathan who was tapping one foot on the floor.

  “So let me ask you this time. Not your mother. Did you know anybody at the hospital?”

  It is difficult to say with any accuracy what transpired next in the conversation. Essentially, Tamara started crying and saying something about how she knew this wouldn’t work but that her boyfriend Jeff—Dr. Ammons—had put her up to it and that he had all these bills from medical school and college, and they were just trying to get a fresh start out from under all of that debt. I tried to get her to stop crying and managed to tell her that I would have to call her back when I figured out what to do next. Another elevator door opened, Jonathan kept telling me that we had to go, and finally she calmed down enough that I could hang up and Jonathan wheeled me on to the elevator.

  We had gone only a floor or two when Jonathan said, “That didn’t seem to go so well. I told you that you were in no condition to be making calls.”

  “No,” I said, “I still don’t have it resolved either. I probably never will. I seem to have a knack for making all the women arou
nd me cry.” I thought he might be fishing for an explanation, but I wasn’t going to tell anybody that I didn’t have to tell about Tamara Davis. It turns out that wasn’t what he wanted to talk to me about.

  “I hate to ask you, man, but what happened in Kentucky?” he asked without looking directly at me.

  “I lost the motion,” I said. “The judge struck our expert and refused to strike the defendant’s experts.”

  “Yeah, I know that,” he said watching the row of lights above the elevator. “Dad told me that just now in the hallway outside the surgical delivery room. They’re all speculating about whether you’re having a nervous breakdown or something because you lost the hearing. I didn’t tell them about the affair or the herpes, and, like I said, I was the only one in the room when Michelle tried to tell me what was going on. Mom and Dad think your behavior has something to do with the hearing in Kentucky.”

  “Screw the hearing. Screw Kentucky,” I said.

  “I agree with that. I’m not asking about what happened at the hearing. I mean, what happened to Riza?” Jonathan asked. He looked back down at me in the chair. “I know you have a few issues to deal with right now, and I assure you that I’m not trying to insert myself into this drama. But I just had to find out, and I don’t know anybody else to ask.”

  “What do you mean? I don’t know anything about something happening to Riza.” I said.

  “She didn’t come home,” Jonathan said. A muffled bong signaled the arrival of the elevator to our floor. The doors opened.

  “She’s probably just working on some other case,” I said, guessing. Jonathan pushed the wheelchair out of the elevator. “She was going to take a commercial flight,” I said. “Maybe your dad sent her to work on something else after she left Kentucky. I’m sure that she’ll be home tonight or in the next day or so.” I tried to remember if she had said anything about having to go somewhere else after the hearing. I couldn’t think of anything, but I wasn’t thinking all that clearly.

  “I don’t think so,” Jonathan said. He sounded genuinely concerned. “I went by her condo and it’s for sale. I don’t think she’s coming home. She must have told a listing agent to sell the house the day before she left for Kentucky. She doesn’t answer her cell phone. It’s like she’s disappeared.” The elevator doors closed behind us and Jonathan pushed the wheelchair down the hall of the sixth floor of the Dunn Tower. Neither of us said anything else. Both of us were thinking about where Riza could have gone.

  When we turned the corner in the hallway, Tim Sullivan was standing in front of us. I noticed for the first time that he was wearing an olive plaid sport coat with olive slacks and a purple tie that perfectly matched a thread in the coat. In his left hand, he held a bottle of Far Niente chardonnay. He motioned back toward the elevator with his right hand and attempted a smile.

  “Gentlemen,” he said.

  I nodded, and Jonathan said, “Hi, Dad,” as he started to push the wheelchair past his father.

  “Why don’t you let me take over?” Sullivan asked and stepped behind the wheelchair.

  “Really, I’m fine to walk,” I said.

  Jonathan looked down at me, and shook his head. “He’s all yours,” he said to his dad and walked down the hall to where Michelle’s mother was pacing the floor. I saw her stop pacing long enough to give Jonathan a hug when he walked up to her. Tim pulled the chair back around the corner, pressed the call button for the elevator, wheeled me into the elevator when it opened, and pressed the “door close” button on the panel.

  “I’m fine, really,” I said. “I’d just as soon walk.”

  “Oh, ride,” Sullivan said while reading the options on the elevator control panel. “I think I know where we’re going. There is a chapel downstairs in this building where we can find some privacy.”

  Sullivan pressed the button for the first floor, where I assumed the chapel would be located. I sighed, anticipating the cross-examination that I knew would be coming. I wondered if Sullivan was going to start the examination there in the elevator, or if he would wait until we got to the chapel.

  My mind began to wander across the various trials I had attended with Sullivan, and I thought about the cross-examinations I had seen him do. Each was a work of art. In most trials there would be one or two key witnesses. With each of these witnesses, Sullivan had a “short” version or a “long” version of the questioning.

  The short version was for those occasions when the opponent passed his witness with only a few minutes remaining before lunch or five o’clock, thinking that the jury would leave the courthouse with the impression that the opponent desired, or when the opponent had spent a particularly long time with the witness and the jury looked completely bored. Sullivan would fire off a zinger before the judge could adjourn or opposing counsel could return to his chair. In my mind, I could hear him asking the witness, “Sir, considering preparation time, first-class travel, conferring with Elihu Root—gesture toward defense counsel—at the Palm over porterhouses and pinot noir, two nights at the Ritz, and your considerable time today, it only cost the defendant thirty-eight thousand dollars for you to come entertain us this afternoon. I’m excluding, of course, what the other half of this Laurel and Hardy review—another gesture toward defense counsel—might have cost.”

  The longer version was an orchestrated, if not rehearsed, event. Sullivan never wrote out his questions, preferring to stack the documents he was going to use in the order he wanted to present them, and relying on a rough outline of the topics he intended to cover. After seeing Sullivan do the long version a few times, I began to notice that more than the penetrating nature of his questions or the juxtaposition of the documents with the testimony, his tone of voice was the dramatic force in the examination. He would begin in a normal voice and increase his volume with each question in a furious crescendo. The most salient point, however, would come when Sullivan would pause, after almost shouting at the witness, and then, in little more than a whisper and with the court room so quiet that you could hear the witness breathing, Sullivan would ask the question that he really wanted to ask.

  When I first went to work for Peters & Sullivan, I just carried luggage when I went with Sullivan to trial. I would be responsible for making sure everything was in the file and that the witnesses were lined up and had what they needed to be prepared. Sullivan required that I sit at counsel table with him and take notes throughout the trial. After a while, I took very few notes because I found that I performed better if I kept my head up and watched what was going on in the courtroom, rather than trying to write down everything the witness said.

  As a “baby” lawyer, notes were important. At the end of the trial day, Tim, Riza, our next witness, and I would sit in a bar or a hotel room drinking scotch, Far Niente chardonnay, or Coronas with lime wedges, and go over the notes from the day. Sometimes, Tim might jot down something on a pad. Usually he would just listen and add to what Riza and I had failed to write down.

  There were times I thought that the recital of our notes from the day was intended to summarize for Tim what the actual testimony had been, as filtered through a listener. Did we get the point that Tim was trying to make with the witness? Riza and I served as Tim’s mock jury. He could tell what points he needed to beef up by finding out what we heard. There were other times that I thought Tim had me read my notes out loud just so he could be sure that I was following and learning the techniques he had used.

  Once during trial Sullivan was cross-examining a witness. I remember Sullivan standing next to the witness, showing him a document. Sullivan stopped his chain of questions, and, still on the record, shouted across the courtroom for me to “be sure and write this down in my notes, because it was going to be a very important point.” The defense counsel objected to Sullivan’s highlighting the testimony, but Sullivan just explained to the judge how important it was for a young lawyer to learn to take good notes. The judge nodded knowingly, no doubt cognizant of the fact that the defense counsel�
�s objection had further highlighted the testimony and told Sullivan to “move along” without actually ruling on the objection. I at least tried to look like I was writing down everything that the witness said in response to the question that followed. I did look up from my legal pad long enough to notice that most of the jurors had moved forward to the edge of their seats to see what Sullivan’s next question was going to be.

  As I got a little more experienced, I got to put on a few witnesses. In time, we divided the trial responsibilities. Sullivan would take the witnesses he wanted, and I would get the rest. He would pick the jury, and I would get to do the opening statement. Truthfully, by the time Sullivan finished picking the jury, everybody knew what the case was about and what the evidence was going to be, so an opening statement was almost superfluous. We would divide the closing argument, but Sullivan always got the last speech.

  It was interesting to me to watch Sullivan get ready for trial. As I got more experienced, I would be the lawyer who would have taken most of the depositions in preparation for trial. That is not to say I did most of the work. Often, I would be presenting a plaintiff for deposition or taking the other side’s expert’s deposition. Sullivan would take the important depos. Deposing the other side’s expert is really the easiest job—what are your credentials, what have you read, what were you paid, what are your opinions? The hard part is having the self-control and willpower not to try to cross-examine the expert before trial. Because I had done much of the legwork before trial, I would have a good idea of what the issues in the case were going to be, whom I thought would be the key witnesses, and what I thought would be the important documents.