Catastrophic

by Dustin Stevens

  Tyler shifted his attention from Shane to the jury box, his face beseeching them to hear and listen to what he was about to say.

  “I would hang up my cleats without thinking twice. I would never wish this on anybody as long as I live.”

  Shane walked up even closer to the stand, resting his hand on the rail right in front of Tyler. “And were you ever given that choice?”

  “No,” Tyler said, no pause of any kind before responding, no elaborating on his response.

  Several moments passed before Shane patted the rail and retreated from the stand. “No further questions Your Honor.”

  Over his left shoulder, Tyler could hear papers shuffling as the judge looked through them, taking notes and checking something before proceeding. Tyler remained still in the chair for several long seconds before looking up at the judge, wondering when his time would be up, praying for these endless stretches of silence to end.

  “Defense counselor, your witness,” the judge said, his voice thick, bordering on sleepy.

  Tyler shifted his attention back to the front and watched as Connor Reed rose from his seat, staring down at handwritten notes on the desk before him. Shane had spent the last several days prepping him for this, pushing even harder on this aspect of his testimony than his own.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Bentley,” Reed said, his face still turned downward.

  “Good afternoon.”

  The man paused again, still staring down at his notes, before finding whatever he was searching for and walking out into the middle of the floor. Just as he had done in his opening statement, he found a spot in the exact center of the room and stood rooted in place, twisting at the waist to speak to Tyler or the jury.

  “Mr. Bentley, I have only a few quick questions for you. First of all, I would like to congratulate you on a very successful athletic career. The numbers and accolades that you and Mr. Laszlo went through earlier are nothing short of incredible. Tell me something though, in all that time, did you ever miss a single game?”

  Tyler paused for a moment, the question taking him by surprise, he made no effort to hide that fact from his face as he rifled back through the years in his head, trying to recall if he’d ever sat out.

  “No.”

  A look of surprise washed over Reed’s face. “Never? Not once?”

  “Not that comes to mind,” Shane said, shaking his head back and forth.

  “Okay,” Reed said, nodding pursing his lips in front of him, “how about practices?”

  “Objection,” Shane called, rising from his seat. “Relevance, Your Honor?”

  Judge Lynch paused for several long moments, debating the merits of the claim, glancing from Shane to Tyler and then to Reed.

  “Overruled.”

  Shane lowered himself back into his chair as Reed bowed the top of his head in appreciation. “Thank you Your Honor. Mr. Bentley?”

  Tyler shook his head just from side to side. “Sure, everybody in college football has missed one or two practices over the years.”

  “But on the whole, you would say it was very rare for you to miss one?”

  Far in the back of his mind Tyler could sense this was going somewhere he didn’t want it to, he just couldn’t quite put it together.

  “Yes.”

  “So,” Reed said, shifting his shoulders to face the jury, “for someone like yourself, a very durable player that never missed a game, rarely missed a practice, the prospect of missing an entire season must have been very difficult, right?”

  There was another lengthy pause as Tyler considered the question, feeling a bit of sweat rise to his forehead. “To be honest, I didn’t get a chance to think of it like that. Everything happened pretty fast.”

  A small smile crossed Reed’s face as he opened his mouth to respond, but he closed it just as fast. “We’ll get back to that in a moment.”

  Reed turned on his heel and walked back to his table, taking up a thin stack of papers. He walked over to Shane and handed him one of the stapled sets of pages before walking up to the judge and extending him a set as well.

  “Your Honor, these are official copies of the surgical consent form signed by Mr. Bentley prior to the surgery. I’d like to enter them into the record as Exhibit A.”

  Judge Lynch accepted the forms and looked up to Shane. “Counselor?”

  “Agreed,” Shane said, leaning forward in his seat to study the document.

  “So entered.”

  “Thank you Your Honor,” Reed said, accepting the form back from the judge and handing it to Tyler. “Mr. Bentley, could you please read the heading at the top of this page aloud for the court.”

  Confusion crossed Tyler’s face as he glanced down at the form and back up at Shane sitting across from him, who met his gaze and gave the tiniest of affirmative nods. “Patient Consent to Surgery Form.”

  “Thank you,” Reed said, having resumed his position in the middle of the floor, his hands now clasped behind his back. “And could you please flip to the last page of the document?”

  Tyler did so, a sense of dread welling within him. He could feel blood rushing to his face, pounding in his temples, starting to form sweat on his upper lip.

  “Mr. Bentley, could you please tell the court whose signature is on the bottom of this consent form?”

  The feeling exploded across Tyler’s core, feeling like it would start to seep from his pores at any moment. His tongue felt rough and dry against the top of his mouth as he stared down at his own signature, a mark he didn’t even remembered making.

  “Mine.”

  “Thank you,” Reed said, nodding his agreement with Tyler’s statement. He shifted again to face the jury and said, “Mr. Bentley, based on the consent form that you now hold in your hand, and the testimony you just provided about your durability as a player, isn’t it possible that you were fully apprised of the risks that came with implanting the KnightRunner, but in your haste to return to action you ignored them?”

  A full-on sweat broke out across Tyler’s brow, beads of moisture that shined beneath the overhead lights. He willed himself to stay still in the chair, to refrain from squirming, to not let the jury think that Reed was right. A dozen different answers went through his mind as he tried to remember what Shane had coached him on, but in the end, they all seemed to fade away, leaving room for the one simple truth that he’d been battling with for almost six months now.

  “To be honest, sir, I don’t remember.”

  A low murmur passed through the crowd as Reed stood in the center of the room, his mouth half open, head cocked towards the witness chair.

  “I’m sorry Mr. Bentley, but you don’t remember?”

  “No sir, I don’t. Like I said, the entire thing happened very fast.”

  A look of incredulity spread over Reed as he took two sharp steps towards Tyler before catching himself and coming to a complete stop. He gave a disbelieving look to Tyler and the jury before offering a disdainful smile and turning back towards his table. “No further questions Your Honor.”

  Tyler’s heart continued to pound in his chest as he took a deep breath, looking down to see his hands trembling against his legs.

  “Mr. Laszlo, redirect?” Judge Lynch asked.

  “Yes, thank you,” Shane said, rising from his chair and walking straight out into the floor to stand in front of Tyler.

  “Mr. Bentley, do you drink?”

  “No.”

  “Smoke?”

  “Never.”

  “Do drugs of any kind?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  Tyler rattled off his answers in rapid fire fashion, his mind racing to figure out where the line of questioning might be going.

  Shane paused and shifted just a bit, looking out over the jury. “Please tell us, when you first injured your knee, what were you given for the pain?”

  “Morphine.”

  “Morphine,” Shane repeated, pausing again for effect. “And how much time elapsed between the time of your injur
y and the surgery to implant the KnightRunner in your leg?”

  “Uh, the injury happened on New Year’s Day, the surgery was first thing on the morning of the fourth, so about two and a half days.”

  “About two and a half days, and tell me, in that entire two and a half days, how much of that time were you not under the effects of morphine?”

  “Just a few hours leading up the surgery itself. They told me it was so they could get the anesthesia right during the procedure.”

  “Huh,” Shane said, taking a step forward and again placing his hand on the rail of the witness stand. “Just one last question, when did they have you sign the consent form for surgery?”

  It was all Tyler could do to keep from smiling, the pieces of what Shane was getting at clicking into place. “The afternoon before.”

  Chapter Forty -One

  During midday recess, the entire team retired back to the conference room on the second floor of the law school. Shane and Tyler stripped off their jackets, Prescott went to check on some affairs in his office, Abby ran out with Shane’s credit card to purchase lunch. For a few moments while Margie excused herself to the restroom, it was just Shane and Tyler, two guys sitting around and talking about the morning’s events as if it were the locker room after a big game.

  “So, how’d I do?” Tyler asked, rolling his sleeves to the elbow, tugging his shirt away from his chest to let in a little air.

  “Very solid,” Shane said, a half smile on his face, an arm propped up on the table beside him. “I almost yelled out loud when you told Reed you couldn’t remember. I looked straight down and started scribbling gibberish as fast as I could to keep the jury from seeing me smile.”

  “It was true though!” Tyler said, his arms spread wide. “I couldn’t remember you and I going over that, and I honestly can’t remember anything from back then, so I just went with it.”

  “It was beautiful,” Shane said, shaking his head. “I’m certain Reed had way more he wanted to ask you, but you threw him so far off his game, he just gave up and ran away. Decided to wait and try again on the next go round.”

  The smile faded a bit from Tyler’s face as he stared off into the distance, recalling the incident in his head. In the moment he was just glad his time in front of Reed was over, but in retrospect he could see how Shane was right, the cross examination had ended on an odd note.

  “Speaking of which, how did you know to come right back up and start firing all those questions at me? Drinking and drugs and stuff?”

  A laugh slid out of Shane as he extended his index finger towards the stack of papers piled high nearby on the table. “Totally off the cuff. A month’s worth of preparation over there and sometimes the best things are the ones that just sort of happen.”

  Tyler nodded his head, raising his eyebrows, deep in his own thoughts. “Sometimes busted plays are the best kind,” he mumbled, drumming his fingers on the table. After a moment he shifted his attention back to Shane, his face serious. “You’re pretty damn good in there, you know it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know about all that. We’ve still got a long way to go yet,” Shane said, waving aside the compliment.

  “Well yeah, I get that, I’m just saying, you’re good on your feet, you’re good in front of a crowd. I was a wreck in there, all those people staring at me. Put me in a helmet and shoulder pads, I don’t care how many people are there, but set me on the stand and make me talk about my leg, my feelings? Terrible.”

  Before Shane could respond, Margie returned from the restroom, shifting the conversation over into prep work for her turn on the stand.

  Three hours later, standing out in the middle of the courtroom, Margie on the stand before him explaining how Dr. Pinkering and Sarconi had presented the KnightRunner as the only possible answer, Shane realized Tyler had been right and wrong.

  Shane was comfortable in a courtroom, had sort of grown up in them, watching one of the best in the business peddle her craft across half the country. For some people it might have instilled a feeling of inferiority, set them up for a lifetime of trying to chase some unattainable standard. For him, it had served to provide him with the ultimate blueprint, an outline for how things were to be done.

  At the same, Shane knew that if he did his job, truly did his job, the most important thing he could do was deflect most of the attention away from himself. He wasn’t there to be a court jester and make people laugh nor a snake charmer to keep people mesmerized, he was there as a facilitator, meant to coax the story out of the people he put on the stand.

  Right now that person was Margie, her hands twisted into a knot in her lap, her face pink with the tears that were never more than a second or two away.

  “Ms. Bentley,” Shane asked, one hand thrust in his pocket, moving back and forth in his methodical slow gait between her and the jury box. “At any point while Dr. Pinkering and Mr. Sarconi were hyping the KnightRunner to you, did you think to seek a second opinion?”

  Margie nodded at the response, a crown of curls visible atop her head. “I did. I even asked Dr. Pinkering about it at one point while Tyler was sleeping.”

  “And what did he say to you?”

  Silence fell as Margie looked down at her hands, her fingers twisting atop each other like a tangle of snakes, writhing in her lap. “He told me that the only way Tyler’s scholarship would cover the procedure was if it was done there at OTU.”

  Shane stopped moving, a look of shock splayed across his features. He fixed his attention on the jury and panned the length of the box, speaking as he did. “He told you that unless it was done at OTU, you were on your own for the costs?”

  “Yes,” Margie said, her voice dropping to just above a whisper. “He also said that he was the best in the hospital at dealing with knee injuries and that nobody would ever dare go against him.”

  “Ms. Bentley, did Dr. Pinkering ever put a price tag on this procedure? Tell you down to the penny how much it would cost?”

  Margie ran her tongue out over her lips. “At one point he asked if I had one hundred thousand dollars to spend on a second opinion.”

  Again Shane stopped and looked at the jury, his jaw hanging open. “If you don’t mind my asking Ms. Bentley, do you? Have a hundred thousand dollars for a second opinion?”

  “No,” Margie whispered, her gaze falling to the floor.

  “Of course not,” Shane said, waving a hand by his side for effect. “None of us do. So let me get this straight. The attending orthopedist at a major university hospital told you that you either do the surgery where and how he says, or somehow find an incredible amount of money to do it somewhere else?”

  Margie lifted her head back to Shane, a tiny bit of understanding on her face. “Yes.”

  “Tell me, how did that make you feel?” Shane asked, stepping up to the stand and taking the same place he had beside Tyler just hours before.

  Her gaze focused on him, Margie said, “At first I was just shocked. Whenever Tyler was awake and they wanted him to be their poster boy, Dr. Pinkering was nothing but nice. The second I started asking questions though, things got ugly fast.

  “I guess it worked though, because after the initial shock and even a little anger wore off, I just got scared. I was worried about my son, about his health, about his career, so I let it go. I knew I couldn’t pay for the surgery he needed, so I kept my mouth shut to make sure he was taken care of.”

  The last words from her were almost inaudible as Margie’s chin dipped to her chest, shoulders heaving up and down as she cried. Shane stayed by her side for several longs moment, a sympathetic look on his face, before stepping away from the stand.

  “No more questions Your Honor.”

  Shane pushed away from the stand, watching Margie the entire way as he headed back to the table. Not until she raised her face towards the courtroom did he offer a tiny nod and turn to take his seat.

  Across from him William Ramirez rose and circled out from behind the counsel table, leaving Reed reclin
ed in his chair, legs crossed, a frown on his face. Mimicking the style of his partner, Ramirez walked to the middle of the floor and chose a spot between Margie and the jury, his hands folded behind his back, orange tie resting atop his protruded stomach.

  “Good afternoon Ms. Bentley.”

  “Hello,” Margie said, her voice still thick with tears, offering a forced nod.

  “Again, we would like to offer our deepest condolences on Tyler’s injury and the impact it has no doubt had on your family.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ramirez paused, his head cocked to the side, debating how to phrase his first question. He remained in that position several moments before asking, “Ms. Bentley, do you have a copy of Tyler’s scholarship?”

  A look of surprise came over Margie’s features, causing her to lean back in her chair. “No, I do not.”

  “You don’t?” Ramirez said, cocking his head even more for effect.

  “No. I’ve never seen a copy of it, just the letter of intent he signed when he committed.”

  “I see,” Ramirez said, nodding his head up and down. He turned and retreated to his counsel table, taking up two documents, holding one in either hand, just as Reed had done that morning. The first he passed over to Shane, the other he brought forth to Judge Lynch.

  “Your Honor, I have in my hand a copy of Tyler Bentley’s scholarship. Mr. Laszlo, do we agree on this?”

  “We do,” Shane agreed.

  “I would like to enter this into the record as Exhibit C.”

  “So entered,” Judge Lynch said, boredom evident in his tone.

  Ramirez walked to the witness stand and handed the document to Margie before returning to his spot in the middle of the floor. “Ms. Bentley, could you please turn to page six of the scholarship agreement and read the highlighted portion found there?”

  Shane rifled through the document before him to page six, his eyes scanning the length of it for what Ramirez was referring to. His copy wasn’t highlighted, but he knew without a doubt what they were going for. In front of him Margie cleared her throat to read, but he was already tuned out, scribbling notes in the margins.