My dad nodded, and we headed off down the hall toward the elevator. On the way we passed by the series of rooms where 624 was located. For the first time, I noticed that different rooms had pink or blue balloons floating from the door handles. I imagined the happy scenes inside each room as we walked by. There was no balloon on the door handle of room 624.
“Was it like this when I was born?” I asked. “Balloons on the doors?”
“No,” Mom said softly. “Your dad had to wait in a waiting room until you were delivered, and you and I were back in a regular hospital room. Now the deliveries take place in the room with the father there. There also have been many changes in hospitals since you were born. This place looks more like a hotel than a hospital to me.” I thought to myself that hanging Impressionist paintings, setting plush leather wingbacks around, and piping in Beatles’ music might change the sterile appearance of a place, even though it’s still a hospital where life, disease, and death converge on a daily basis. The elevator door opened, and we stepped inside.
“I almost forgot,” Dad said, as I tried to figure out which elevator button to push. “This came to you at our house in Abilene.” He handed me the crumpled envelope he had been carrying since I had first seen him in the chapel. “It looks like it has something to do with medicine.”
The envelope was addressed to me at my parents’ home in Abilene. The return address was from Dr. Mock in Lexington, Kentucky.
“Thanks, Dad,” I said. “I’ll open it later.”
We were standing in front of the hospital under a porte cochère, and the valet brought my parents’ pickup around first after Dad and I gave him both of our tickets. Mercifully, Mom had put on her sunglasses that fit over her eyeglasses so that we couldn’t see her eyes. I gave Dad a door key and an automatic opener to the wrought iron gate that enclosed the driveway at the house in West University. “I’d ask you what you’re going to do now, but I imagine that you’re asking yourself that same question.” Dad said.
“In fact, it had occurred to me to ask you what I should do.” I said.
He smiled. “I’m happy to talk to you about it, though, honestly, I don’t know what you should do next. You’ll figure it out. You’ve always been good at figuring things out on your own. You probably don’t believe that right now. But you have been.” He handed a dollar he found in his pants pocket to the valet who rejected it with a wave of his hand, opened the passenger door for Mom, and we slowly walked around to the driver’s side of the car.
“You know that your mom and I have always been proud of you and we always will be. I think trying to get a little sleep sounds like a good start. I’ll bet that you’ll want to be back up here before too long.” He paused for a second before getting into the truck. I was standing beside his open door. “I know this isn’t a baseball game. It isn’t a game at all,” Dad said calmly shaking his head from side to side.
“What if it was a baseball game? What would you tell me to do next?” I asked.
“I’d tell you to do the next right thing as correctly as you know how. If you’re at the plate and the count is ‘3 and 0,’ you take the next pitch. If it is ‘0 and 2,’ the next pitch is probably not going to be anywhere near the plate so you better make sure it’s good before you swing. Doing the right thing only improves your chances. It’s not a guarantee of success. The trouble is that I can’t tell you what the next right thing to do is,” he said slowly shaking his head again. “That’s what you have to figure out.”
I nodded and he shrugged his shoulders and started the engine. I closed his door and Dad eased the pickup away from the hospital.
I watched as they drove off, and then I opened the envelope. Dr. Mock addressed his letter to me, and referenced the Henderson case. I scanned it quickly searching for the salient points. After discussing his education, work history, and the materials he had reviewed in the case, he wrote the following:
Based on this report and findings of carcinoma, bilateral simple mastectomy was performed on 9-11-04. No cancer was found in either breast. On 10-14-04, the 8-22-04 biopsy slides that had originally been read by Dr. Valdez were submitted to the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas . . . those pathologists reported atypical cells and fibrous reactive tissues, no carcinoma. I independently examined the slides from the 8-22-04 biopsy, and I found . . . no carcinoma.
In my opinion, Dr. Valdez failed to use the ordinary care required of a reasonable and prudent pathologist in reading the pathology slides . . . and that such professional negligence resulted in improper diagnosis and the resulting unwarranted double mastectomy . . .
Such negligence caused great harm to Ms. Henderson, including unnecessary surgery of double mastectomy . . . pain and suffering . . . disfigurement . . . unnecessary medical expenses . . . including reconstructive surgery.
Thank you for the privilege of consulting with me in this very interesting case.
Very truly yours,
Larry Mock, MD
I finished reading the report, and stuffed it back into the FedEx envelope. When my car arrived, I opened the passenger door and threw the envelope onto the front seat. Then I got the box with the infant car seat out of the back and set it on the curb. I walked around the car. Before I got into the driver’s seat, I asked the valet to see that somebody that needed a car seat got the one in the box, and he said that he would. I pressed the button to put the top down and waited for it to retract automatically before I pulled away.
It was a damp morning and it would be a few hours before the sun became too hot to leave the top down. When I looked back in my rearview mirror, the box with the little blue bow on top was still sitting on the curb, and the valet had gone off to get somebody else’s car.
After I had shifted through the gears, I picked up the cell phone. I dialed information, and asked for the number for Dr. and Mrs. Jean Henderson on River Oaks Boulevard. The cellular phone service connected me to the number. After several rings, Mrs. Henderson answered the phone.
“Hello,” she said. Her voice sounded like I might have woken her.
“Hello Mrs. Henderson. This is David Jessie.”
“Yes, Mr. Jessie. How are you?” She asked, her voice warming as she recognized who it was that was calling.
“I’m . . . I’m okay I guess. How are you?”
“Fine I suppose. I haven’t had my first cup of coffee yet so it’s too early to tell.”
“I apologize for calling you from the car and for calling so early in the morning. I wanted to tell you I just read the report that our pathologist has prepared in your case. You remember that this is the report I explained to you we would need in order to go forward with a medical malpractice case on your behalf?”
“Yes, I understand,” she said. “What does it say?”
“Honestly, it’s both good news and bad news, Mrs. Henderson. The good news is that you appear to have a very good case. The cellular changes that the defendant pathologist observed on the biopsy were the result of the previous radiation therapy you underwent. Obviously, that is also good news, as the cancer did not reoccur. The bad news is that there was no medical reason for removing your breasts.”
I could hear Mrs. Henderson start to cry softly on the other end of the call. I waited for a moment to see if she was going to say anything.
“Are you okay, Mrs. Henderson?”
“Yes,” she said, as she tried to cover up her voice cracking.
“I’m sorry that you also had to go through this second cancer scare, Mrs. Henderson.”
“It’s not that,” she said and paused again. “I’ve personally already come to terms with that. Dr. Valdez and his pathology group are pretty well known in this town. I didn’t know if anybody would be willing to help me stand up to them.”
“I understand,” I said. And maybe, for the first time since I had been practicing personal injury trial law, I did understand. She needed to know that someone, anyone, was on her side, whatever the odds and whateve
r the outcome. It doesn’t matter whether you live on River Oaks Boulevard or deep in the Fifth Ward, sometimes you just need to know that somebody is on your side.
I had not given much thought about Dr. Valdez’ reputation or how highly respected his pathology group might have been in Houston. His was just a name on what I anticipated would be a large insurance policy. Despite the fact that tort reform (Sullivan always called it “tort deform”) legislation had made it virtually impossible for a plaintiff to win a medical malpractice case in Texas, I had a clean plaintiff, an injury with which a jury could sympathize, and a qualified expert. I liked our chances. I didn’t know if the case was good enough to stake a career upon, but I didn’t have any alternatives.
“Mrs. Henderson?” I asked. “If you need to reach me in the next few weeks, you should probably call this number. I’m going to take off a few days. And then, I’m going to look for office space in Austin. I’m going to be setting up my own law office there.”
“Oh, Dr. Henderson and I love Austin. We were there as undergraduates. We’ve always talked about moving back there. I’m jealous. Why is it that we all want to move back to the town where we went to college?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I started to tell her that I thought it had something to do with how we perceived God at different stages in our lives, and then thought better of it.
“You will be able to continue to work on my case, won’t you?”
“Yes, of course. In fact, it may seem to you that the only case I’m working on will be yours. Because, it will be.”
“That’s fine with me. We make a pretty good team, don’t you think? You’re a good, young lawyer. You’ll do just fine. I’m sure there will be other cases eventually, Mr. Jessie.”
I hoped that she was right. Not only would I need the income, but I looked forward to getting back into the courtroom and watching trials unfold. I told myself that I was in my element in the courtroom where I had some chance at controlling what might happen. It was out in the real world where I was lost.
I drove down Fannin, and turned west on University, passing under the crossover between the Dunn Tower and the Smith Tower. Though it was mid-September, the morning was already turning hot and humid, but University was shaded by the ancient oaks that lined the boulevard on both sides. Just past Rice University and the Rice Village shopping center, I crossed Kirby and entered West University.
When I pulled up to my house, I parked on the street rather than in the driveway. My dad’s car was pulled far enough up the driveway for me to park inside the automatic wrought-iron gate, but I wanted to go up the steps to the front door. It really was a nice little house, though, admittedly, we had paid too much for it. I figured there would be somebody else, some other young professional couple, who would be willing to make the same mistake.
When the builder sold us the house, he had done some minimal landscaping in the front and planted a small patch of St. Augustine grass in the back. There was not much yard to work with, really. The house took up almost the entire lot.
Michelle had hired some workers to enlarge the flowerbeds that symmetrically framed the front of the house by pulling the beds out toward the street. She had planted small, ornamental trees at the corners of the house, and filled the beds with alternating red and white begonias that complemented the painted brick on the house and continued to bloom this late in the year. Two large, terra-cotta pots of red and white impatiens framed the front door, and a purple blooming wisteria vine had been trained along a wire hidden over the arched entryway.
Each spring, white narcissus bloomed in the beds along each side of the sidewalk that went from the front porch down to the street, while at this time of year only their olive-colored leaves sprouted in bunches along the walkway. Except for the small, climbing jasmine plants that Michelle had planted along the back fence, we had left the backyard alone until kids came along.
As I put the key in the door, I thought to myself that it felt like I was going into somebody else’s house and not my own. To my right would be the formal dining room where we hardly ever ate unless Michelle’s parents were there for dinner. To my left there would be a formal living room where nobody ever sat, much less “lived.” In front of me would be the oak stairs with the painted, white risers that led to the bedrooms, including the master bedroom and a small room next to that with a custom-made, ark-shaped baby bed for Paul.
The house didn’t have the familiar feel to me that it had even the day before when I had picked up Michelle to take her to the hospital. I wondered how long it would be before I would go into a place and feel like it was not some place new and unknown to me, and instead was my home and a place where I felt like I belonged.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my family and friends who provided support and suggestions through the writing process. I have frequently turned to the following works for insight and guidance: Kenneth C. Davis, Don’t Know Much About the Bible (1998); Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe (2003); Norman Mailer with Michael Lennon, On God (2007); David Plotz, Good Book (2009); and Alan Light, The Holy or The Broken (2012).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PHOTOGRAPHY BY DARCIE WESTERLUND
PRICE AINSWORTH is a trial lawyer in Austin, Texas. A graduate of Texas Tech University (summa cum laude 1981) and The University of Texas School of Law (1984), he has been practicing law for more than thirty years. He primarily represents personal injury clients and has been Board Certified in personal injury trial law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization since 1991. He has been consistently recognized as a “Super Lawyer” by Texas Monthly Magazine beginning in 2003, and Mr. Ainsworth is an Advocate in the American Board of Trial Advocates.
While he has coauthored numerous law journal articles and frequently presents papers at continuing legal education conferences, A Minor Fall is his first foray into published fiction. He and his wife of twenty-seven years have two handsome, intelligent adult sons that visit them on occasion and an old bird dog whose eyesight is fading but whose nose is still strong enough to find her food bowl.
A Minor Fall Page 38