Three Classic Thrillers

by John Grisham

  “He looks fine,” the medic said. “But you might want to get him x-rayed.”

  “Now?” Ron asked.

  “No rush, but I’d do it tonight.”

  By the end of the third inning, Josh was sitting up and joking with his teammates. Ron returned to the third-base coach’s box and was whispering to a runner when one of the Rockies yelled from the dugout, “Josh is throwing up!”

  The umpires stopped the game again, and the coaches cleared the Rockies’ dugout. Josh was dizzy, sweating profusely, and violently nauseous. The medic was nearby, and within minutes a stretcher arrived with two emergency medical technicians. Ron held his son’s hand as they rolled him to the parking lot. “Don’t close your eyes,” Ron said over and over. And, “Talk to me, Josh.”

  “My head hurts, Dad.”

  “You’re okay. Just don’t close your eyes.”

  They lifted the stretcher into the ambulance, locked it down, and allowed Ron to squat beside his son. Five minutes later, they wheeled him into the emergency room entrance at Henry County General Hospital. Josh was alert and had not vomited since leaving the ballpark.

  A three-car smashup had occurred an hour earlier, and the emergency room was in a frenzy. The first doctor to examine Josh ordered a CT scan and explained to Ron that he would not be allowed to go farther into the hospital. “I think he’s fine,” the doctor said, and Ron found a chair in the cluttered waiting room. He called Doreen and managed to get through that difficult conversation. Time virtually stopped as the minutes dragged on.

  The Rockies’ head coach, Ron’s former law partner, arrived in a rush and coaxed Ron outside. He had something to show him. From the backseat of his car he produced an aluminum bat. “This is it,” he said gravely. It was a Screamer, a popular bat manufactured by Win Rite Sporting Goods, one of a dozen to be found in any ballpark in the country.

  “Look at this,” the coach said, rubbing the barrel where someone had tried to sand off part of the label. “It’s a minus seven, outlawed years ago.”

  Minus seven referred to the differential between the weight and the length of the bat. It was twenty-nine inches long but weighed only twenty-two ounces, much easier to swing without yielding any of the force upon contact with the ball. Current rules prohibited a differential greater than four. The bat was at least five years old.

  Ron gawked at it as if it were a smoking gun. “How’d you get it?”

  “I checked it when the kid came to the plate again. I showed it to the ump, who threw it out and went after the coach. I went after him, too, but, to be honest, he didn’t have a clue. He gave me the damned thing.”

  More of the Rockies’ parents arrived, then some of the players. They huddled around a bench near the emergency exit and waited. An hour passed before the doctor returned to brief Ron.

  “CT scan’s negative,” the doctor said. “I think he’s okay, just a mild concussion.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Brookhaven.”

  “You can take him home, but he needs to be very still for the next few days. No sports of any kind. If he experiences dizziness, headaches, double vision, blurred vision, dilated pupils, ringing in his ears, bad taste in his mouth, moodiness, or drowsiness, then you get him to your local doctor.”

  Ron nodded and wanted to take notes.

  “I’ll put all this in a discharge report, along with the CT scan.”

  “Fine, sure.”

  The doctor paused, looked at Ron a bit closer, then said, “What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a judge, supreme court.”

  The doctor smiled, offered a hand to shake. “I sent you a check last year. Thank you for what you’re doing down there.”

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  An hour later, ten minutes before midnight, they left Russburg. Josh sat in the front seat with an ice pack stuck to his head and listened to the Braves-Dodgers game on the radio. Ron glanced at him every ten seconds, ready to pounce on the first warning sign. There were none, until they entered the outskirts of Brookhaven and Josh said, “Dad, my head hurts a little.”

  “The nurse said a small headache is okay. But a bad one means trouble. On a scale of one to ten, where is it?”

  “Three.”

  “Okay, when it gets to five, I want to know.”

  Doreen was waiting at the door with a dozen questions. She read the discharge summary at the kitchen table while Ron and Josh ate a sandwich. After two bites, Josh said he was not hungry. He’d been starving when they left Russburg. He was suddenly irritable, but it was hours past his bedtime. When Doreen began her version of a physical exam, he barked at her and went to use the bathroom.

  “What do you think?” Ron asked.

  “He appears to be fine,” she replied. “Just a little cranky and sleepy.”

  They had a huge fight over the sleeping arrangements. Josh was eleven years old and wasn’t about to sleep with his mother. Ron explained to him, rather firmly, that on this particular night, and under these unusual circumstances, he would indeed go to sleep with his mother at his side. Ron would be napping in a chair next to the bed.

  Under the steady gaze of both parents, he fell asleep quickly. Then Ron nodded off in the chair, and at some point around 3:30 a.m. Doreen finally closed her eyes.

  She opened them an hour later when Josh screamed. He had vomited again, and his head was splitting. He was dizzy, incoherent, and crying and said everything looked blurry.

  The family doctor was a close friend named Calvin Treet. Ron called him while Doreen ran next door to fetch a neighbor. In less than ten minutes, they were walking into the ER at the Brookhaven hospital. Ron was carrying Josh, and Doreen had the discharge papers and the CT scan. The ER physician did a quick exam, and everything was wrong—slow heart rate, unequal pupils, drowsiness. Dr. Treet arrived and took over while the ER physician examined the discharge summary.

  “Who read the scan?” Treet asked.

  “The doctor in Russburg,” Ron said.

  “When?”

  “About eight o’clock last night.”

  “Eight hours ago?”

  “Something like that.”

  “It doesn’t show much,” he said. “Let’s do a scan here.”

  The ER doctor and a nurse took Josh to an exam room. Treet said to the Fisks, “You need to wait out there. I’ll be right back.”

  They sleepwalked to the ER waiting room, too numb and too terrified to say anything for a few moments. The room was empty but gave the impression of having survived a rough night—empty soda cans, newspapers on the floor, candy wrappers on the tables. How many others had sat here in a daze waiting for the doctors to appear and deliver bad news?

  They held hands and prayed for a long time, silently at first, then back and forth in short soft sentences, and when the praying was over, they felt some relief. Doreen called home, talked to the neighbor who was babysitting, and promised to call again when they knew something.

  When Calvin Treet walked into the room, they knew things were not going well. He sat down and faced them. “Josh has a fracture of the skull, according to our CT scan. The scan you brought from Russburg is not very helpful because it belongs to another patient.”

  “What the hell!” Ron said.

  “The doctor there looked at the wrong CT scan. The patient’s name is barely readable at the bottom, but it ain’t Josh Fisk.”

  “This can’t be true,” Doreen said.

  “It is, but we’ll worry about it later. Listen carefully; here’s where we are. The ball hit Josh right here,” he said, pointing to his right temple. “It’s the thinnest part of the skull, known as the temporal bone. The crack is called a linear fracture, and it’s about two inches long. Just inside the skull is a membrane that encases the brain, and feeding it is the middle meningeal artery. This artery goes through the bone, and when the bone was cracked, the artery was lacerated, causing blood to accumulate between the bone and the memb
rane. This compressed the brain. The blood clot, known as an epidural hematoma, grew and increased the pressure inside the skull. The only treatment now is a craniotomy, which is a removal of the hematoma by opening the brain.”

  “Oh, my God,” Doreen said and covered her eyes.

  “Please listen,” Treet went on. “We need to get him to Jackson, to the trauma unit at University Medical Center. I suggest we call their air ambulance and get him there in a helicopter.”

  The ER physician arrived in a hurry and said to Dr. Treet, “The patient is deteriorating. You need to take a look.”

  As Dr. Treet started to walk away, Ron stood, grabbed his arm, and said, “Talk to me, Calvin. How serious is this?”

  “It’s very serious, Ron. It could be life threatening.”

  __________

  Josh was boarded onto the helicopter and whisked away. Doreen and Calvin Treet rode with him while Ron raced home, checked on Zeke and Clarissa, and threw a few necessities in an overnight bag. Then he sped north on Interstate 55, driving a hundred miles per hour and daring any cop to stop him. When he wasn’t plea-bargaining with God, he was cursing the doctor in Russburg who studied the wrong CT scan. And occasionally, he turned around and glanced at the defectively designed and unreasonably dangerous product in the rear seat.

  He had never liked aluminum bats.

  C H A P T E R 36

  At ten minutes after eight on Saturday morning, some thirteen hours after being struck by the baseball, Josh underwent surgery at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson.

  Ron and Doreen waited in the hospital’s chapel with friends who were arriving from Brookhaven. Their pastor was with them. Back at St. Luke’s, a prayer vigil was under way in the church’s sanctuary. Ron’s brother arrived at noon with Zeke and Clarissa, both as frightened and shell-shocked as their parents. Hours passed with no word from the surgeons. Dr. Treet disappeared from time to time to check on things, but seldom brought back any useful news. As some of their friends left, others came to replace them. Grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins arrived, and waited, and prayed, and then left to roam around the sprawling hospital.

  Four hours after the Fisks last saw their son, the chief surgeon appeared and motioned for them to follow him. Dr. Treet joined the conversation as they walked down a hallway, away from the crowd. They stopped near a door to a restroom. Ron and Doreen clutched each other, bracing for the worst. The surgeon spoke in a grave and weary voice: “He has survived the surgery and is doing as well as can be expected. We removed a large hematoma compressing the brain. The pressure inside the skull has been reduced. But there was a lot of brain swelling, an extraordinary amount to be honest. There will likely be some permanent damage.”

  “Life” and “death” are easily understood, but “damage” conveys fears that are not readily defined.

  “He’s not going to die,” Doreen said.

  “As of right now, he’s alive and his vital signs are good. He has a 90 percent chance of survival. The next seventy-two hours will be crucial.”

  “How much damage?” Ron asked, getting to the point.

  “There’s no way to tell right now. Some of the damage might be reversible with time and therapy, but that’s really a conversation for another day. Right now, let’s just continue to pray that he improves over the next three days.”

  __________

  Late Saturday night, Josh was in the ICU. Ron and Doreen were allowed to see him for ten minutes, though he was in a drug-induced coma. They didn’t manage to maintain their composure when they first saw him. His head was wrapped like a mummy, and a breathing tube ran from his mouth. He was hooked to a ventilator. Doreen was afraid to touch any part of his body, even his foot.

  A sympathetic nurse agreed to move a chair to a spot outside his room and allow one parent to sit there throughout the night. Ron and Doreen sent their support team back to Brookhaven, then began alternating between the ICU and the waiting room. Sleep was out of the question, and they walked the halls until sunrise Sunday morning.

  The doctors were pleased with Josh’s first night. After an early morning review, Ron and Doreen found a motel nearby. They showered and managed a quick nap before reassuming their positions at the hospital. The waiting rituals began again, as did the prayer vigils at home. The flow of visitors coming and going soon became an ordeal in itself. Ron and Doreen just wanted to be alone in the room with their son.

  Late Sunday night, when Doreen was in the ICU and the crowd had left, Ron strolled the corridors of the hospital, stretching his legs and trying to stay awake. He found another waiting room, one for the families of noncritical patients. It was much more inviting, with nicer furniture and a wider selection of vending machines. Dinner was a diet soda and a bag of pretzels, and as he crunched on them mindlessly, a small boy walked by and seemed ready to touch his knee.

  “Aaron,” his mother barked from across the room. “Come here.”

  “He’s fine,” Ron said, smiling at the child, who quickly drifted away.

  Aaron. The name brought back a memory. Aaron was the boy struck in the head by the piece of metal thrown by the bush hog. A brain injury, permanent disability, financial ruin for the family. The jury found the manufacturer liable. The trial had a clean record. At that moment, Justice Fisk could not remember why he had so easily voted with the majority in reversing the verdict.

  Back then, barely two months ago, he had never felt the pain of a parent with a severely injured child. Or the fear of losing the child.

  Now, in the middle of this nightmare, he remembered Aaron in a different way. When he read the medical summaries in the case, he had done so in the comfort of his office, far removed from reality. The kid was severely injured, which was a pity, but accidents happen in everyday life. Could the accident have been prevented? He thought so then, and he certainly thought so now.

  Little Aaron was back, staring at the bag of pretzels. It was shaking.

  “Aaron, leave that man alone,” the mother yelled.

  Ron stared at the shaking pretzels.

  The accident could have been prevented, and should have been. If the manufacturer had followed established regulations, then the bush hog would have been much safer. Why had he been so eager to protect its manufacturer?

  The case was gone, forever dismissed by five supposedly wise men, none of whom had ever shown much sympathy for those who suffer. He had to wonder if the other four—Calligan, Romano, Bateman, and Ross—had ever roamed the tomb-like halls of a hospital at all hours of the day and night waiting for a child to live or die.

  No, they had not. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be what they are today.

  __________

  Sunday slowly yielded to Monday. Another week began, though it was far different from any one before. Ron and Doreen refused to leave the hospital for more than an hour or two. Josh was not responding well, and they were afraid that each visit to his bed might be their last glimpse of him alive. Friends brought clothes and food and newspapers, and they offered to sit and wait if the Fisks would like to go home for a few hours. But Ron and Doreen stood fast and plowed on with a fixed determination, zombielike in their belief that Josh would do better if they stayed close by. Tired and haggard, they lost patience with the parade of visitors from home and began to hide in various places around the hospital.

  Ron called his office and told his secretary he had no idea when he might return. Doreen told her boss she was taking a leave of absence. When the boss explained, delicately, that their policies did not grant such leaves, she politely informed him it was time to change said policies. He agreed to do so immediately.

  The hospital was fifteen minutes from the Gartin building, and early Tuesday Ron stopped by for a quick look at his desk. It had accumulated several new piles of paperwork. His chief clerk ran down the list of all pending cases, but Ron was distracted. “I’m thinking about a leave of absence. Run it by the chief,” he instructed the clerk. “For thirty days, maybe s
ixty. I can’t concentrate on this stuff right now.”

  “Sure, will do. You were planning to concur this morning on Baker versus Krane.”

  “It can wait. Everything can wait.”

  He managed to leave the building without seeing another member of the court.

  __________

  Tuesday’s edition of the Clarion-Ledger ran a story about Josh and his injury. Justice Fisk could not be reached for comment, but an unidentified source got most of the facts right. The doctors had removed a large blood clot that had been pressing on his brain. His life was no longer in danger. It was too soon to speculate about long-term problems. There was no mention of the doctor who read the wrong CT scan.

  However, the online chatter soon filled in the gaps. There was gossip about an illegal baseball bat involved in the accident, and speculation about severe brain damage, and an account from someone inside the Henry County General Hospital who claimed to know that the doctors there had screwed up. There were a couple of wild theories that Justice Fisk had undergone a dramatic conversion in his judicial philosophy. One rumor declared that he was about to resign.

  Wes Payton watched it carefully from his office. His wife did not. She was working hard to distract herself with other cases, but Wes was consumed with the story about Josh. As the father of young children, he could not imagine the horror the Fisks were enduring. And he could not avoid wondering how the tragedy might affect the Baker case. He did not expect a sudden about-face by Ron Fisk, but the possibility was there.

  They had only one prayer left, and that was for a miracle. Could this be it?

  They waited. The decision was due any day now.

  __________

  By early Tuesday afternoon, Josh was beginning to show signs of improvement. He was awake, alert, and following commands. He couldn’t talk, because of the breathing tube, but he seemed fidgety, which was a good sign. The pressure on his brain had been reduced to almost normal levels. The doctors had explained several times that it would take days, maybe weeks to determine a long-term prognosis.