I was just about to beat my phone at backgammon for the third consecutive game when the doors to the hallway opened. About forty people were standing in the hallway waiting to get into the room.

My phone suddenly vanished and my posture immediately improved.

All of the advice Vinny gave me on our walk to court began to run through my head. Smile and try to make eye contact. As they file into the room, I’m smiling and looking at each one of them. No one seems to care. A couple of people hesitated, glanced at me and then glanced at the plaintiffs. They all searched around for a place to sit. There were three rows of benches behind a gate separating the visitors from the courtroom. Forty people were herded into those seats with Hitch as their sheepdog.

“Slide in. Slide in, will ya?”

I was waiting for him to pull out his billy club so that his pants would fall down.

It suddenly became very uncomfortable now that 40 people were all sitting in a room with their attention focused on me. Obviously, I didn’t want to be messing with my cell phone, so I pulled out the medical records and began to read them. I knew what most of the records said already, but I wanted to look busy. I took notes on a legal pad, not because of some earth shattering discovery in the chart, but so I could remember my thoughts and write about the whole experience later. They couldn’t see what I was writing, but I looked busy.

I cast another glance over at the plaintiffs. They were sitting in the same position, staring at the opposite wall with their hands folded.

Everyone sat in silence for the next 30 minutes. Sniffles, coughs and shuffling newspaper pages were the only things that intermittently broke the silence. I noticed that I did not hear the lawyers arguing anymore. OK, I have been through the chart three times already. How many more times can I sort through this thing?

Then Madame Sigh caught my attention. She’s sitting less than ten feet away from me in the front row and she keeps sighing loudly every minute or so. I know lady, nobody really wants to be here. Try not to remind everybody about it. With the 15th sigh, I have now decided that she is getting kicked off of any potential jury. I’m not listening to that for the next two weeks. I start to make tally marks on my notebook with each whiff of her breath I catch. Something to do . . . hooray.

It has now been an hour and 10 minutes since I sat down in the courtroom. The jury has been sitting staring at me for just over 45 minutes. Madame Sigh is up to number 67. The sighs were starting to get more frequent. Was she in labor? No. No. Wait. Wait. She’s in DKA. Yeah. Or maybe a brainstem herniation? A “When Harry Met Sally” movie remake audition? I felt myself wanting to giggle, so I tried to stop that line of thought … which is like trying not to think of an albino elephant. Once the image is in your mind, it’s tough to just “forget” about it.

There was a small jury room next to the judge’s bench. One of the jurors asked Hitch where the bathroom was. He pointed her to the jury room then he sauntered into the back again. Now that everyone knew that the courtroom had a bathroom, suddenly everyone had to go. Within no time there was a line of at least 10 people waiting to go to the bathroom. That was a good thing. Now I can pass the time watching other people walk by me, and, as I scanned the room, I saw that everyone’s attention was no longer focused on me. There was now something else to look at. Thanks, Hitch.

A little while later, Hitch entered the room, adjusted his belt for a minute, cleared his throat and exclaimed loudly “I have good news and bad news for everyone.” The good news is that everyone can go back downstairs. You’re excused for the day.” He never did say what the bad news was. I kept waiting for him to look at me and say “The bad news for you, WhiteCoat, is that you have to sit here after lunch with 40 different angry people staring at you.” How many more times can I page through the chart?

The sheep all filed out of their stalls.

Madame Sigh, who, based on her fast respirations and rather unappealing breath, I had unofficially concluded was in the throes of DKA, waved her arms in the air and mumbled something about “missing out on a $100/hour job because of this.” I just smiled and nodded to several jurors as they filed out of the courtroom.

Well, it was back to just me and the plaintiffs sitting in the courtroom. I glanced over and they had hardly changed position. What WERE they staring at on that wall, anyway?

After everyone had left, a cadre of attorneys came in through a door on the opposite side of the courtroom from the judge’s chambers. How did they get there?

Vinny then told me the “bad” news that Hitch forgot to mention. The trial had been postponed.

Then he told me what all the arguing was about. It seems that even though the patient died more than 6 years ago, the plaintiff’s attorney had just found some new earth-shattering evidence against me and wanted to amend his complaint (i.e. change the bad things he said about me) on the day of trial. The judge nixxed that one. That was the “denied” statement I heard coming from the back earlier.
The Grinch also found a bunch of pictures of the patient taken on the day he died that he wanted to show to the jury. He wanted to argue that the patient’s appearance 9 hours later was the same as it was when I saw him. Of course, the patient looked horrible in the pictures. Didn’t make any sense to me because the plaintiff’s attorney was saying that my delay in diagnosis is what caused the patient to die, but he’s also arguing that there was no change in the patient’s condition for 9 hours, so the pictures should be admissible. I’m really not liking the Grinch very much right now. Judge didn’t rule on that request.
Then there were the experts. The only day one of the plaintiff’s experts could show up to testify was on the same day that Vinny’s son was supposed to have surgery. This expert apparently couldn’t get any other day free for a couple of months. He must be testifying against a lot of other physicians.

My attorneys wanted to proceed with trial and the plaintiffs wanted to delay it. The judge called the Chief Justice in the courthouse and they all went down to argue the issue in his chambers, hence the magic trick of leaving through one door and appearing through another door on the other side of the building. The Chief Justice agreed with the plaintiff.

So everyone donned their coats and left the courtroom like it was no big deal.

I took off two weeks of work for this damn trial and that’s it — “it’s been fun … we’ll do it again in a couple of months”?

This really sucks.

(read previous posts in this series here)

Took the train into town again. Never easy to find parking in the city, it costs more than dinner at a restaurant, and rush hour in the morning is anything but.

When I got to Vinny’s office, he had books and boxes laying everywhere. There were three boxes stacked onto a rolling cart with the name “WhiteCoat” on them.

Vinny and Louise both looked like they’d had a Mongo expresso with a Red Bull chaser. I thought I was nervous. Louise repeatedly went into these foot tapping fits. I couldn’t tell whether it was subconscious or whether she was doing it to irritate Vinny.

When Vinny saw me, he began shuffling through papers on his desk. After a few seconds, he found the one he was looking for and handed it to me. “It’s a bunch of B.S., but I have to officially give you this letter.”

The letter was from plaintiff’s attorney and addressed to me. It demanded that I settle the case for my full policy limits of $1 million or else he will go after my personal assets. I suddenly became very angry. I knew it was part of the game, but I just thought he had a lot of balls making a demand like that with the quality of the case he had against me.

“I’ll take my chances,” I told him.
“I figured as much,” he responded.

Louise was still doing the rhythmic foot tapping thing and then she began periodically checking her watch between taps while Vinny was going through stuff on his desk. Finally, in obvious frustration, she says “we have to go.”

During the walk to court, I got to be a firsthand witness of the ravages that caffeine can cause on the human body. Louise was developing a facial tic, was walking with her knees pulled together, and was already calling some imaginary dibs on the bathroom in the court house: “There better not be anyone in there.” Be wary, o courthouse bathroom dwellers … this woman is desperate. She has a chewed up pen in her pocket and isn’t afraid to use it!
Vinny was literally stuttering when he talked.
Both of them pepper me with more random “do’s and dont’s.”
Do not talk about the case in the elevators. You never know if a juror might be in the elevator with you. In fact, do not say anything within three blocks of the courthouse. We were already breaking that rule.
Do not wear flashy clothing. Fortunately, I don’t own flashy clothing. The best I can do is a couple of suits on the 2 for 1 rack at JC Penney’s every couple of years. Besides, it’s a little late for that little piece of advice, isn’t it?
When introduced to the jury, stand up, smile, say good morning, and sit back down. And make eye contact with all of the jurors. All of them.
Don’t drink in front of the jury — they don’t have a pitcher of water in front of them and may get mad at you if they’re thirsty. It will also make you have to go to the bathroom more often. Just suck on breath mints instead.
I kept walking and nodding my head.

Getting into the courthouse meant being scanned for dangerous objects. No one mentioned that one to me, either. They confiscated my pocket knife and my nail clippers, because obviously I’m going to have a nervous breakdown at trial, disarm multiple armed deputies, and commit mass murder by cutting everyone’s nails too close and giving them intractable paronychia. However, Louise was able to flash some card to the guard and was able to cut the line and enter the court with her peptostreptococcus-infested pen of death. The rest of the day better not go this way.

When Vinny opened the courtroom door, it appeared like a movie set. Projectors, wires, computers, and monitors were everywhere. This isn’t Kansas anymore. Butterflies immediately hit my stomach.

Everyone hung their coats in a conference room behind the desk at which the defendants were supposed to be seated. A court reporter was setting up her machine in front of the witness stand. Vinny and Louise walked into the back of the court and told me to sit in my chair.

I could hear people arguing in the judge’s chambers. Voices became loud sometimes. Part of me wanted to walk back to the door to eavesdrop … er, um … look for a bathroom. I remained seated, instead opting for a game of solitaire on my cell phone.

It became quiet for a second, then I heard someone, presumably the judge, loudly and firmly say “DE-NIIIED.” I wonder which side lost that argument. Hopefully not mine.

A few minutes later, the plaintiff and her daughter walked into the courtroom. They didn’t even look at me. Instead, they walked across the room and took their seats at the table next to me. I looked up from my game and glanced over to their table. They were both staring at me and turned their heads away in unison as soon as I looked their way. Can only imagine what they were whispering back and forth about me.

Then the bailiff sauntered into the courtroom and sat on the railing separating the court from the spectators. He was heavy set and as old as the hills. The weight from his keys and gun pulled his pants down further than they should have been, so part of his shirt was untucked. His looks kind of reminded me of one of those old pictures of Alfred Hitchcock. He had a gruff voice and barked orders at everyone as soon as they opened the doors to the courtroom.
“Put your coats in there.”
“Take your briefcase off the desk.”
“Turn off your cell phone.”
He walked back to a doorway leading behind the judge’s bench and began talking loudly with another bailiff. Everyone else was whispering. I wondered if he realized how scared the people sitting in the courtroom were. There is this tremendous fear of doing something wrong that seizes your whole body and keeps you from being yourself. Obviously, he doesn’t have that fear. Probably a lot like what people feel when they come to the ED to see me, I suppose. I wondered how he would feel in an emergency department with me snapping the glove over my hand and opening up a packet of lubricant.

All of a sudden, ol’ Hitch yelled out “Hah! Metro General settled out!”
What a jerk. What if the jurors heard that? Would they think that there was guilt because one of the parties settled out? I felt like saying something. Either that or clipping his nails too short, but they confiscated my only weapon. Curses.

There was still lots of arguing in the back. The jury was supposed to be in the room 30 minutes ago. I bet that a lot of them were thinking that they would get lucky and get sent home early for the day. Those words sent out a cheer in the room when I was in jury duty. I glanced over at the plaintiffs again. They both were sitting there staring straight ahead at the wall with their hands folded.

I was sick of solitaire. I settled into a game of backgammon.

(read previous posts in this series here)