During my malpractice lawsuit, I kept notes on my computer and wrote notes on scraps of paper, telling myself some day that I would write a book about my experiences. As life goes on, priorities change and the notes just got put into a file for several years.

An article I read about another doctor who had difficulty coping with a malpractice trial finally motivated me to pull the notes out of storage and begin writing. My intent was to generate discussion about what doctors go through during a trial and I undoubtedly succeeded. When doctors are sued, many times they don’t know what to feel. My experiences are the way one doctor felt. Hopefully the story will give others the impetus to discuss their experiences. Through my eyes, hopefully everyone can see some of the major flaws in our system and the need for change. I realize that patients have their own view of what happens during malpractice proceedings and this story is not intended to diminish the ordeal that patients go through. Like I said when I started writing this series – malpractice trials aren’t about who wins, they’re about who loses least.

I’ve read comments and have been sent e-mails asking me about the case.

Is the story real or am I some John Grisham/Samuel Clemens reincarnate? Scary that I’m being mentioned in the same sentence with writers like that. The story is definitely real. My writing is what it is. I try to write like I talk to people. I appreciate it immensely that so many people enjoy it. I don’t think I’m creative enough to make up story lines out of thin air, although admittedly I’ve never tried. Maybe in all my future free time, I’ll give it a shot.

Why was I dragging out the posts? Was it a ploy to boost hits to the EP Monthly site? Sure I enjoyed the increase in readers. Daily hits to the site more than doubled since I started the series. That’s not why I posted so many parts to the story, though. The entire series ended up being over 30,000 words. Much of it I had to transcribe from written notes, which is no small task. Sometimes I felt like putting it off, but stayed motivated by everyone’s comments. I tried to do the story in 1000-2000 word chunks because those are easiest to read and because they were manageable in terms of transcription. Don’t forget, I still have two jobs and a family to spend time with.

What really happened to the patient? I doubt I’ll ever disclose the exact issues in the case. The facts about the patient and his or her condition were changed. The patient’s condition was uncommon enough that if I disclosed the condition, it is possible that someone adept at internet research would be able to figure out who the patient and his family were. If the story doesn’t fit together perfectly, that’s the reason.

The central elements in the malpractice case were not changed. The events happened several years ago, so I don’t have an independent recollection of everything that happened. I took notes, but there were some gaps, so I filled things in as best I could from my memory. One example of me filling in gaps was the time between leaving the court after the jury began deliberations and the time the verdict was read. Not sure whether I took notes and the paper was lost or if I just never took the notes. I remembered the talks we had, Louise pumping her fist at the table, and Vinny saying that it only took 45 minutes for some company to lose millions of dollars – I think he said AIG, but I couldn’t remember. I did some searching on the internet and still couldn’t find the answer, so I made it AIG.
Couldn’t remember everything, but I did the best that I could to make the story complete.

What was up with Louise? I’m not sure. I could tell that she had a lot of other personal issues going on outside of the courtroom. She frequently seemed to be on edge – and her pen paid the price for it. I assumed that she was a single mom because she talked about child care a lot. I never came out and asked her because it wasn’t any of my business. Just like every other profession, sometimes personal lives carry over into professional lives.

No, there were no romantic trysts – at least as far as I was aware.

There were several parts of this story that I left out. I took pictures of a few things with my cell phone. I doodled pictures of the jurors while they were being asked questions during voir dire (Louise yelled at me for doing so). There were several interactions with Vinny that I left out because they seemed to drag on (even more than the story already did). If I write a book, I’ll probably include these other snippets.

I had actually planned to file a countersuit against the Grinch and his expert. One of my best friends and someone who I deeply respect is a medical malpractice plaintiff’s attorney. I never told him about my malpractice case until after it was over. Then I told him about what had happened and how I planned to sue the plaintiff’s attorney. It turns out that he was close friends with the Grinch. He told me that the Grinch was a good person who did a lot to help families and the community. I thought about it for a while and decided to move on with my life.

What did I learn? Lawsuits are stressful. I didn’t change my practice much other than to document things a little more thoroughly. That slows me down a little, but ends up being a necessary part of emergency medicine.

If you have other questions, post them below and I’ll try to answer them.

Thanks for all the great comments and for the interest.

Writing this story has been a great experience.

Now I have to figure out other interesting things to post about in the future.

People at both tables stood at attention as the jury filed back into the room. None of the jurors looked at us as they took their seats. That made me uncomfortable. I could feel my heart rate kick up several notches. In fact, I could faintly hear my heart beating in my ears. I was conscious of every breath I took.

The judge asked the foreperson if the jury had reached its verdict.
“We have.”
“With regard to whether the actions or inactions of Dr. WhiteCoat were an actual and proximate cause of the plaintiff’s death, what is the jury’s verdict?”
“We find in favor of the defendant”
“With regard to whether the actions or inactions of Dr. GreyCoat were an actual and proximate cause of the plaintiff’s death, what is the jury’s verdict?”
“We find in favor of the defendant”
“With regard to whether the actions or inactions of CrossTown Hospital or its agents were an actual and proximate cause of the plaintiff’s death, what is the jury’s verdict?”
“We find in favor of the defendant”

The codefendant punched me in the arm and hugged me.
I looked over at the plaintiff. Her head was hung and she covered her eyes with one of her hands. The Grinch had his arm around her and was whispering something in her ear.

I sat back down in my chair and stared at the table. I didn’t know what to feel.

Relief.
Let down.
Tired as hell and half ready to fall asleep.
Mix in one pinch of vengance and a few sprinkles of self-righteousness.
Happy didn’t really seem to come into the picture at that point.

Louise asked me how I felt.
I said “emotional.”
She kept watching me. I looked up at her and looked away again. It really annoyed me that she kept eyeballing me. I furrowed my eyebrows. It was making me angry. Then my eyes started to well up with tears.

I don’t know why it popped into my head at that point, but I thought that if a man could ever experience PMS, this must be what it would feel like. That thought made me burst out laughing while tears were running down my cheeks.
Louise must have thought that I was a total nut job right about then.

I called my wife and told her the news. She was at work and started cheering with excitement. Her voice was jiggling, so I could tell that she was bouncing up and down.
Then I heard her nurse yell “He DID?” in the background. Three or four other people started cheering. “Woo hoo! Yeaaaaahh! Congratulations!”
They were having an instant party on the other end of the phone line and I was sitting on an old wooden court house chair feeling numb.

Yet again, my wife helped me put things in perspective. I needed to be happy and stop being a drag on everyone else’s good mood. I hung up with her, stood up and hugged several people. I shook Vinny’s hand, thanked him, and gave him a hug. I even hugged Louise, although it was one of those hugs where you touch shoulders, turn your heads away from each other, and pat each other on the back a couple of times.

I looked around to give the Grinch a good stare, but he, the plaintiffs, and the family had already left.

The judge was gone, too.

I went through the door in the back of the courtroom to find the judge. Behind the courtroom was a long hallway with a series of offices. I walked up and down until I found the judge’s office and I went inside.

His door was partially closed, but I could see him taking off his robe and hanging it on a hook. I knocked and asked if I could speak to him for a second.

He walked out and I shook his hand.
“I know my opinion probably doesn’t mean much to you, but I wanted to tell you that I thought you ran a good trial and that you kept things fair. I appreciated that and wanted to thank you.”

He nodded his head a couple of times and then said “I’m glad that you’re at the end of your ordeal.”

Talk about hitting the nail on the head.

As the Grinch began to talk, I quickly saw why the codefendant physician was so upset. Most of the things the Grinch said either were untrue or distorted the evidence.

“There is nothing to suggest that the family’s observations were wrong.”
In reality, every one of the medical personnel that evaluated the patient most of the day noted none of the findings that the family observed. It upset me that the Grinch never addressed those discrepancies during my testimony. Then again, Louise never brought them out either. Perhaps they didn’t want to emphasize them. All part of the “show.”

“The patient’s medical records confirm the family’s observations.”
Yeah, only after the patient had gone into septic shock and was near death eight hours after he came to the emergency department.

“Dr. WhiteCoat only listed only “findings” in his note, he never listed any “diagnoses.”
So what? This was never an issue until late in the trial and none of the experts even said anything about it.

“There was no question that there was blood on the abdomen.”
Only one medically trained person even mentioned the possibility, and that person hadn’t even done a thorough exam.

“Dr. GreyCoat was not a reliable witness. He was impeached and said something different between his deposition testimony and his trial testimony.”
He really did not get impeached. His deposition testimony was that he “believed” I had done something, when I really had not done so. He tried to clarify it in his testimony, but the Grinch glossed over it. There was no difference, but the Grinch blew it out of proportion.

“Dr. WhiteCoat had a duty to the patient in the emergency department whether or not the patient had been admitted.”
This statement had nothing to do with any pertinent issue in the case. He was just throwing dirt at me to see if it would stick.

“And then look at the demeanor of the witnesses. On direct examination, you saw a ‘gentle, calm’ Dr. WhiteCoat. When he was presented with evidence that made him look bad, you got see the ‘snarling, angry’ Dr. WhiteCoat.”
I may have been a little angry, but I never snarled.

“Dr. WhiteCoat’s failure to request a surgical consult up until he transferred the patient care to the admitting physician was pure and simple negligence.”
The only basis for this assertion was his hired expert’s testimony. I later learned that during her closing argument prior to my arrival, Louise had made a big deal about how much money this expert had been paid — on the order of $4 million during his work as an expert witness. Wow.

Through all this, I kept my poker face. I kept telling myself the only reason the Grinch was making all these stretches in logic was because he knew he was losing and he was taking desperate measures to attempt to win the case. I had to trust that the jury would not buy into the silly arguments.

“My client is without a husband because of the negligence of these physicians and that hospital.” He held out his arm and pointed a long arthritic finger at us as he made the statement.
“This jury should send a message that blatant negligence like this will not be tolerated from any healthcare provider.”

With that, the Grinch sat down.

Then the judge began reading through all of the jury instructions. There are a lot of them.

“The laws of this state say that a jury must …”

My head started swimming again. I tuned out the judge and actually started thinking about the patients from the night before. What really happened with the girl and her boyfriend? Would the dad kick his drunk son out of the house? Why doesn’t he go to rehab, anyway? What will the scar on the little girl’s forehead look like after her cut has healed?

I snapped back to consciousness to see everybody standing up around me. Louise hadn’t even bothered to kick my chair. I quickly stood up.
The judge had finished talking and the jury was filing back into their room to do their deliberations.

Once the door had been closed, Vinny offered to buy everyone lunch.

“You can go home if you want,” he told me. “Deliberations could take hours or they could take days. I’ll call you once we hear something.”
In other words, I should plan on my head not being in the game and should plan on picking up my phone on the first ring between 9AM and 6PM for the next couple of days.
I wanted to go home to get some sleep, but I took him up on his offer for lunch.

All of the attorneys left their cell phone numbers with Hitch, and we headed down the street to a burger joint.

During the walk, Vinny talked about the pros and cons of jury deliberation.
“If it deliberations last less than two hours, it is generally considered a defense verdict. Otherwise the jurors have to go through all the calculations of damages.”
Here’s hoping for a short deliberation, then.
“That doesn’t mean that short deliberations are always defense verdicts, though. Not too long ago, a jury deliberated less than an hour before finding AIG liable for $8 million.”
Here’s hoping that none of those jurors or their families lived in this city.
“And …”
“Could we not talk about this right now?” I asked.
“Oh … sure. Sorry.”

We sat down in the restaurant and made our orders.
Vinny and Louise started bantering back and forth about the different jurors. The hospital attorney just sat there and stared. He wasn’t the talkative type.
The other doc and I caught up on what each other had been doing since leaving the old hospital. He had moved to another state and was helping to run a residency program. He actually saw another patient 6 months prior who had the same problem that the patient in our case had. “Damn right I called the surgeon as soon as the patient reached the door. Surgeon asked me why the hell I was calling him when I hadn’t even done any testing.” We both laughed.
“Didn’t make any difference with the patient, though. He still died.”
Ironic.

Then the hospital attorney’s phone rang.
“Are you kidding me? Yeah. The other defense counsel is here with me. I’ll tell them. We’ll be there in 20 minutes.”
He hung up his phone and looked at us.
“They’ve got a verdict already.”
“Are you kidding me?” Vinny asked.
Louise got a big smile on her face and pumped her fist toward the middle of the table, almost knocking over her glass of Diet Coke.

As we were getting all of our orders changed “to go,” Vinny reminded us …

“Don’t forget – it only took 45 minutes for AIG to lose $8 million.”

Closing arguments were underway when I arrived in court.

As I walked into the courtroom, several of the jurors looked up at me and smiled.
“Good sign, especially the way I look,” I thought to myself.

The Grinch had already finished his initial closing arguments. Louise was discussing my case when I walked to the table. As I sat down, the codefendant physician whispered in my ear that the plaintiff wanted $2 million as reasonable compensation for my alleged failure to call a surgeon soon enough. I stopped and looked at him for a second. He raised his eyebrows as if to say “poker face.” I sat back down and felt my blood start to boil.

They settled out with one hospital for $250,000. Now they want 8 times that much from us?

The doc then leaned over to me again and whispered “His first two hours of closing arguments were a bunch of lies. I really want to strangle that guy right now.”
I thought to myself “Are you TRYING to make me go postal in the middle of this courtroom?”
I took a liking to the Tom Petty song “I Won’t Back Down” during the prior few weeks. Those words “You could stand me up at the gates of hell but I won’t back down” ran through my mind right then.
Zen master. Be calm, mind. Take deep breaths.  Ahhhh. Better.

When my thoughts settled down and I tuned myself into closing arguments, Louise was summing up our case.
“If you believe that Dr. WhiteCoat performed as a reasonably well qualified physician under the same or similar circumstances, you should vote in favor of the defendant. If you believe that it was not required to call a surgeon when the patient arrived in the emergency department, you should vote in favor of the defendant. If you believe that the patient would have died no matter what Dr. WhiteCoat did, you should vote in favor of the defendant. And if you believe that the patient did not suffer any damages based on Dr. WhiteCoat’s actions or failures to act, you should vote in favor of the defendant.”

Hearing her say these things made me very emotional for some reason. I was probably just tired. I was a lot more confident about this case before today. Then all of these bizarre thoughts started running through my head.
What if the jury decided to award the plaintiffs $2 million? That was $1 million more than my policy limits. I would be bankrupted. What would happen to me? What would happen to my family? I would have to appeal the verdict.
Maybe I would enter into a settlement arrangement with the plaintiffs attorney where I just paid the policy limits. But what if he would not agree to that?
Boy, my head was really spinning.

I looked around the courtroom and saw several new faces watching from the stands. The plaintiff’s daughter was sitting with a group of other people. There were several other people sitting in a small group that I did not recognize. I later learned that they were attorneys from another law firm that were “sizing up” some of the attorneys here today. Another one sitting alone was the representative from my insurance company. She had been to court a lot lately. She saw my head turn and smiled calmly at me. That seemed to stop my head from spinning so much. I am glad I looked over and saw her. Of course, if she had given me one of those other “looks” after hearing the Grinch’s closing argument, I think I would have had a nervous breakdown on the spot.

Louise reminded all of the jurors that she was not going to have the chance to stand back up and rebut what the Grinch would later say. The plaintiff had the burden of proof and therefore was given the opportunity to begin the closing arguments and to end closing arguments. She reminded them to all make their decision based upon the evidence, not based upon sympathy. She said that she knew sympathy existed, because the jury was not a bunch of “Bobs,” but that the law stated that the jury could not base their decision on sympathy.
I think she wanted everyone to laugh at her “Bobs” comment, but I don’t think anyone understood it. After making the comment, she hesitated for a moment, like a comedienne waiting for the audience to laugh. All we heard was the court reporter clicking away on the keys of her stenotype machine. When even that noise stopped, Louise stammered a little then continued. After a few more sentences, she thanked everyone for taking the time out of their schedules to sit on the jury, then she bowed to them and sat down.

I looked over to the plaintiff’s table. The Grinch was busily writing things down his notepad. This is where attorneys really earn their money during a trial. They have to think on their feet and change their strategy in mid-stream. I am sure that the Grinch was creating responses to the things that Louise had just finished saying, but he had to do so while still listening to what the hospital attorney was going to say. Tough predicament for him to be in. “Good,” I thought.

While the hospital attorney was making his closing argument, I noticed that he didn’t introduce the hospital representative. I looked over and she wasn’t there again. She had been missing several days of trial over the past week. Her child was sick two days last week and was sick again today. Hope he feels better.

I liked the hospital attorney’s technique with evidence. He described how the Grinch stated that there was “no evidence” that several things occurred in the case. The hospital attorney set up a big poster board on an easel right in front of the jury while he was talking. As he was talking, he would refer to things from the medical record, such as my notes, the notes from the surgeon, notes that the plaintiff’s daughter had taken while they were in emergency department. As he referenced each document, he would pull them out of a binder and stick them to the poster board with pushpins. Then he would refer to the poster board over and over again pointing out all of the “evidence” that was “plain to see” in responding to the plaintiff’s case.

Many times he talked about my testimony at trial. He had printed up all of these pieces of paper with the names of all the doctors on them. I saw that he had at least 4 or 5 pieces of paper with my name and different quotes on them in a neat little stack. As he referenced something that I said, he would pick up my quote, push another little pin through it, and stick it to the poster board.

After the hospital attorney had stuck a half dozen pieces of paper with my name on it to the poster board, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Vinny write something on a piece of paper and elbow Louise. I didn’t turn my head, but strained my eyes a little more so that I could read the words “He scares the hell out of me.” I looked up at Vinny’s face and he looked like he was deep into a hand of Texas Hold’em. I watched Louise write something in reply and push the pad out of my sight. Vinny read the note and quickly folded up the paper and put it in his pocket.

There go those butterflies again.

By the time the hospital attorney was done with his argument, there was a poster board with probably 20 or 30 pieces of paper stuck to it. I think it made quite an impression when he finally stated:
“The plaintiff’s attorney said there was no evidence of many things happening in this case…”
Then he walked over, put his arm on the poster board, and looked at it for a few seconds without saying anything. After the dramatic tension had built up, he looked back at the jury and said
“Well … I beg to differ.”
Then he took the board down and set it against the wall.

It was time for the Grinch to finish his closing argument.

Monday morning. The last day of trial … I hope.

Several members of the jury were quite upset with the judge because he called in sick on Friday. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who planned on the trial being over with last week.

I wasn’t able to find coverage for my 24-hour shift yesterday, so I had to work all night. I usually get at least a few hours of sleep at night. Of course, as fate would have it, last night was so busy that I was lucky to get an hour of sleep.

Things had finally settled down in the ED and I was getting ready to hit the couch in the doctor’s lounge when a young lady came in for evaluation. She had been involved in a fight with her boyfriend three days earlier and, after drinking a wee bit too much peppermint schnapps at 1:30 in the morning, she came in to be checked out and to make a police report against her boyfriend.

I had just finished talking with the police about this young lady when another police car rolled up to the ambulance bay. An ambulance pulled in along side of it. Police officer and paramedic escorted in a young man who was bleeding from various aspects of his head and face. An anonymous caller had notified police that there was someone passed out in a church parking lot. Why someone was driving through a church parking lot at three o’clock in the morning was beyond me. It was near zero degrees outside and by all rights, this kid should have frozen to death. Whomever called the police probably saved his life.

The story gets better, though.

When police saw that this young man was still breathing, they called paramedics, leaving him laying on the ground until paramedics arrived. The ambulance sirens apparently stimulated the “fight or flight” response in the patient and he chose the latter. As the paramedics pulled up, suddenly the patient sat bolt upright, jumped to his feet, and began running away from them. The paramedics chased him, telling him to stop because they were only trying to help. No sooner were the words out of their mouths than the patient ran right into the side view mirror of a truck and broke the mirror, sustaining a large gash to his forehead. The laws of inertia caused the upper half of his body to stop motion while the lower half of his body continued its getaway. The sudden change in the center of gravity, combined with the effects of alcohol on the patient’s sense of balance, caused him to fall backwards hitting the back of his head on the running board of the truck, and then landing back on the ground from which he had previously so suddenly arisen.

By the time the patient arrived in the emergency department, it was obviously that he was intoxicated. There was a mixture of blood and vomitus matted to his hair and he had a large palpable hematoma to the back of his head. Apparently he had done something to upset the paramedics as well. The paramedics, in order to check him for other injuries, had cut off his coat and other clothing in order to perform a thorough examination. They left his underwear intact, but most of the rest of his clothes looked like something from an old Incredible Hulk movie.

When I walked in to examine him, he had a strong odor of Miller Genuine Draft about him and was not able to answer my questions appropriately. We had to shave part of his head to examine the injuries and so that I could see the laceration on the back of his head to sew it. Fortunately, the injuries were not severe. We found a large lump in the pile of shredded nylon sitting against the wall – formerly known as the patient’s coat. On further examination, we extracted an unopened tallboy can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. My ability to discern between odors emitted by rival beer companies had obviously been affected by my lack of sleep.

After radiating his cranium and repairing his lacerations, we attached him to a monitor and tucked him into bed so that he could sleep it off.

The waiting room was empty throughout the night, but there was a constant flux of patients into and out of the ED rooms.

Early in the morning, the intoxicated patient’s father called the emergency department. He had called several emergency departments in the area and was happy to find that his son was safe. The nurse told the father to bring some clothing and coat. The father was quite upset. “They cut his coat off AGAIN!?” The nurses replied “Well . . . yes they did, sir.” Apparently this was not the first time that the young man had been picked up by paramedics. His drinking was becoming an expensive habit.

The father showed up about 30 minutes later with a bag of clothing. He appeared somewhat upset — more so with his son than with the situation. I handed the father the tallboy can of Pabst Blue Ribbon and he told me to throw it away. I considered saving it for later, but opted to crack the can open and dump it down the sink, reacquainting my nostrils with the distinct PBR odor.

The shift ended as it began … busy. After signing over all of the patients to the oncoming physician, I went into the call room and changed my clothes from scrubs to a suit, changing my identity from physician to defendant.
I forgot a tie.
Dammit.

Stopped at the donut shop down the street from the hospital and got an extra large cup of coffee for the trip into the city.

I had to stop at the men’s clothing shop on the way to court to purchase another tie. Different clerk this time. Apparently he realized that I was in a hurry. He asked me what I was looking for. I told him I needed something to match my suit. He quickly picked out a very nice tie that I was ready to purchase until I flipped over the tag and saw that it cost $125. I was ready to walk out and go to court without a tie when the salesman found one “in the back” that cost $50. Fine. It was a “steal” compared to the one I bought there last week. I’ll stop in to check out the underwear aisle next week.

I just wanted to get to court.

So this is it. The big day. Expert testimony this morning, closing arguments this afternoon. Jury deliberations start next week, but I didn’t have to be there for them. The case is over with today. What a great feeling.

Hopefully it’s not a bad omen, but I spilled yogurt all over my tie while riding the train into town. The spill looked horrible. At $30, my tie was one expensive bib.

On the way to the courthouse, I found a men’s clothing shop. They had a wall of ties and I went about finding a tie that matched my jacket, pants and shirt. After about ten minutes, I came up with one that was “close enough.” I turned it over and nearly choked when I saw that it cost $89. I went to put it back and the salesman helping me said ” Tell you what, I will give you 35% off the price if you come back and see me in the future.”
There goes the little voice inside my head again … Oh yeah. I’ll stop back and buy my Jockey shorts here – my attorneys already owe me three pair of them. What do they cost – like $49.95 per pair?
So I paid $65 for a tie.
This funky looking piece of silk will henceforth be known as my “lucky tie.”

When I got to the courthouse, I discovered that they were not going to call the last expert witness. Everything that needed to be said regarding the case and the standards required had already come out through the testimony of other experts. They determined that this expert’s testimony would have been “cumulative,” so everyone agreed not to have him testify. It probably saved the Grinch another five grand in expert fees, too.

Everyone was upbeat. Vinny and the hospital attorney brought in easels so that they could diagram their complex arguments for the jury. Vinny told me how he was going to devote one page to the experts. He planned to draw a line down the middle and then list all of the experts who had the same opinion. Two of the plaintiff’s experts and our two experts on one side of the line with the plaintiff’s surgeon all by himself on the other side of the line. I don’t think that the jury believed the plaintiff’s surgeon anyway. Speaking about the jury, I didn’t hear them laughing and joking in the jury room. Maybe they were somewhere else.

I decided to treat the stuff that happened with Louise up to this point as water under the bridge. If she started up with me again, I would reconsider, but since this was the last day we would be in court, I doubted that there would be a problem.

Then Vinny told me that Louise was going to be doing closing arguments. Gulp. Instant butterflies in my stomach.

Then Louise walked into court looking disheveled. Her jacket was unbuttoned and part of her blouse had come untucked. The belt to her overcoat missed the loop on her left side. The right side of the belt was tucked into her pocket and the left side of the belt was hanging off of the loop in back of her, so it swung back and forth like a tail when she walked. She put her notepads on the table. At the top of one was written “WhiteCoat Closing.” There were lines, different colored inks, and all kinds of doodles scribbled out all over the pad. Those butterflies in my stomach were beginning to feel more like bats.

Vinny was very methodical and comforting. Louise worried me because she could be scatterbrained at times.

I smirked at the irony. It was almost like me being in the hospital and debating whether I should allow the resident to perform an operation or I should demand on the attending physician’s services. Ironic because that was one of the ancillary issues in this trial — whether or not a resident is qualified to take care of critically ill patients. Was Louise qualified to argue a complex closing argument? I just continued to have faith and trust them. We made it this far.

The court clerk opened the door to the back and poked her head into the courtroom. She saw Vinny and said that the judge wanted to talk to him. He told her that not all of the attorneys were present. Apparently attorneys can only talk to the judge if all sides are represented. The court clerk said that was okay because he just wanted to talk to any one of the attorneys. Vinny walked back into the chambers.

He came out about three minutes later and looked very upset.

My heart sank.

I had flashbacks to how patients must gauge my expressions when they are in the hospital emergency department. By Vinny’s look, I knew that something was wrong. He walked over and cursed under his breath. It seemed like an eternity until he spoke again.

I had another flashback to one time when a teenage girl had been killed by a drunk driver and was brought to my emergency department. Her parents came into the hospital and I did not quite know how to break the news to them. I started to mumble a little bit and then the father grabbed me by the shirt with both hands and said “Speak, man, SPEAK!” He already knew what I was going to say. He just needed to hear the words.

He started out “Well….”
I thought to myself “Can we drag this out any longer? Is it THAT bad?”
“The judge called in sick today. We’re going to have to postpone closing arguments until next week.”
It was like a weight was lifted off my shoulders.
“THAT’S all? Heck, for a second I thought that one of our experts was going to be disqualified or something.”
Then he added “I am going to go down to see if we can argue this case without the judge.”
Shortly thereafter, the Grinch walked into the room. He didn’t bring anything special for closing arguments – just his briefcase.
The court clerk motioned him towards the back. He went back into the judge’s chambers and I heard him say “If he dismissed the jury, then I’m leaving.” He came through the door from the judge’s chambers, grabbed his briefcase, and walked out of the courtroom. Didn’t give it a second thought.

I waited around for Vinny to return. He walked through the outside door with a disgusted look on his face about 10 minutes later.

“Well … nothing we can do now.”

Frustrating.

It was a long train ride home that day. To make matters worse, my notebook computer crackled when I turned it on and suddenly stopped working.

I just remembered – I thought the trial would be over with today. I scheduled a 24 hour shift from Sunday morning to Monday morning. I wouldn’t be able to make it to court until the afternoon. Have to see if I can switch the shift.

So much for the “lucky tie.”

Maybe Louise could use it as a belt for her overcoat.