Suzy's Case: A Novel (26 page)

“Thanks for your concern. Have a nice day.” I put the Eldo in reverse to flee and roll two feet before she motions me to stop.

“Wait. I need more money. I had to buy tennis dresses yesterday at a cash-only sale at the club.” I stop.

“I’m sorry you had to do that. No one should be forced to do anything so drastic.”

“Very funny,” she replies with a smile. “I need about fifteen hundred.”

“What?” I say, crazed. “I gave you a thousand yesterday.”

“I said tennis
dresses
. I bought six. One in every color. That tapped me out.”

“Well what do you need fifteen hundred for, deli meat?”

“No, I’m going to the mall in White Plains. I need to buy socks and underwear.”

“Fifteen hundred for that?”

“I may have to pick up a few other things.”

“I see. Will another five hundred do ya for these very special socks and underwear?”

She counters. “How about a thousand? You said you didn’t want me using my credit card anymore.”

“Honey, you can’t use your credit card anymore. You’re at the limit and I only pay the monthly minimum.”

“So what, I still haven’t used it.”

“You can’t use it. Seven fifty, and I’ll mark it settled,” which is what lawyers say when they’ve made a final offer.

I surrender the cash to my garage hijacker. “Have a nice day, honey,” I say for the third time, ecstatic she hasn’t made a counterattack.

“I will. Where’re you off to?”

“First to the office, then to my expert out in Brooklyn. I’ll see what happens after that. With the case I’m working on now I could find myself just about anywhere. Have a nice day.” Four times.

“You, too. Oh, can you pick me up a new alarm clock on your travels? Mine seems to be broken and you’re better with the technical stuff.” By “better,” Tyler means it would be better if the money came out of my wallet to buy the clock rather than from the cash I just gave her, earmarked for more things she “has to buy.”

“No worries, honey,” I say, thinking I’ll just reset her clock back to the right time later and tell her I fixed it, “I’m on it. Have a nice day.” Five.

It’s a fast top-down trip into the city. I get off the bridge at the 125th Street exit near Harlem Hospital. I drive slowly down Second Avenue, keeping an eye out for the sick, sore, lame, and disabled, hoping to pick up another case, but no such luck this time.

I enter my garage and see Oscar. “Don’t bury it. I’ll need access at a moment’s notice.”

As I walk out of the garage I get a call on my cell. Before I get to say hello, I hear an irate Lily. “Bert Beecher just called and wants to talk to you. He said it’s important. When I told him you weren’t in, he asked me where you were, but I didn’t tell him.”

“Good job. That HIC is a loose cannon.”

“I know. He asked for your cell number, and I told him I couldn’t give it out.”

“Good job again.”

“I know. He wasn’t very happy about it. I had to spend a few minutes trying to calm him down. I told him you’d call him on his cell in ten minutes. Here’s the number.” She gives it to me.

“Try not to have much interaction with Bert Beecher. You never know what’s going to set that guy off.”

“I didn’t sign up for this HIC shit,” Lily notes, then hangs up.

I dial Beecher and he picks up. “What da ya want?”

“Bert, it’s me, Tug Wyler, your new attorney. What’s up?”

“Oh yeah, you. You’re a motherfucker for doing what you did to me the other day.”

I play innocent. “What’re you talking about?”

“You know what the fuck I’m talking about! You know real well. I don’t take kindly to humiliation.”

“Bert, we were just dealing with what’s in Betty’s medical records. I didn’t intend to humiliate you,” I tell him in my defense.

“There’s no other kind of humiliation but intentional, motherfucker.” The line goes dead.

Bert has busted me. I admit it and embrace my error. A slip I should not have made because Henry warned me about this guy’s smarts. I promptly make a couple of mental notes: 1) Don’t act superior to HICs or anyone else, and 2) If you’re going to humiliate someone, be clear to whoever it is that you’re trying to humiliate him because, as Bert correctly pointed out, there’s no other kind. He’ll calm down and come to his senses. I hope.

I arrive at my building and I detect a whiff of marijuana in the elevator on my ride up. The closer I get to my floor, the closer I feel I am to the source. I open the door to my office suite and sitting on the couch is a burnout puffing on a doobie. I thought those guys were away.

“Hey!” I scream at him. He’s slow to react. “You can’t smoke that in here! This is a law office.”

“Sorry, dude, I thought this was
TOKE
—you know, the magazine.”

“Well it is,” I hesitate to admit, “but you still can’t smoke that in here. It’s illegal, especially within a law office.”

“Dude, how we going to get weed legalized if we’re so uptight about smoking it?”

“Put it out! Now!” He sees I mean business and complies.

As I pass Lily, I bark, “You got to enforce the ‘no smoking’ rule, and please bring a pad and follow me right now.”

I enter my office, put my bag down, sit at the desk, and wait. One minute. Two minutes. Three minutes. No Lily.

I buzz her. “Lily, what’s up? I need to dictate.” I hang up the phone without waiting for a reply. I mean business. I’ve got a lot of things on the agenda. I’ve got purpose and passion running through my vessels.

I wait two more minutes, which seem like ten. Still no Lily. I get up and go out to her station and see she’s on the phone. As I approach, she gives me the international sign for “wait a minute.” I am not happy. “No. In my office, now!”

She speaks into the phone. “I got to go. My boss is being an ass.” This comment is intended for me.

I shake my head, turn around, and walk back toward my office.

“I don’t get it. What’s with you?” I ask when she enters. “I told you to come in my office immediately.”

“Yes, you did, but you didn’t say ‘good morning’ first or give me any other type of appropriate greeting.”

I am incredulous. “You’re kidding, right?”

“I kid you not. I demand a proper greeting.”

“Look, the Suzy Williams case has taken a turn in our direction, and I have a lot to do. I don’t have time for pleasantries. I’m facing a motion to dismiss here.”

Lily casually sits back like she couldn’t care less. “I suggest you make the time for pleasantries or find another paralegal.”

“Oh my God! Okay. Good morning, Lily. There, was that better?”

Lily comes back to attention. “That was fine, but don’t make me ask next time. Now what do you want?”

“I’m going to dictate a list of things for you to do and it’s critical that you do each task immediately. Ready?”

“Ready.”

“Number one,” I begin. “Letter to Judge Schneider requesting the pending motion to dismiss the Williams case be adjourned for an additional thirty days. Number two—”

Lily cuts in. “Hold on a minute. Slow down. Okay. Number o-n-e. Letter to who?”

“You’re kidding me, right? You only got the first word down?”

“That’s right. I told you when you hired me I hate taking dictation. I got a slow hand. You’ve known this for years.”

“Just forget it, then. I’ll send you an email.”

“Good. Will that be all, sir?”

“No. Please don’t say I’m an ass to other people even if you feel that way. It’s very inappropriate.”

“Don’t be an ass and I won’t say you’re one.” Lily sticks her pen behind her ear, gets up, and walks out. She’s making my wife look good. I pull my keyboard over and begin typing:

1. Letter to Judge Leslie Schneider on the Williams matter requesting a thirty-day adjournment on defendant’s motion to dismiss.

2. Call June Williams up immediately and tell her I’m hoping to see our medical expert today sometime after one. Ask her if she could please come to the office before then and bring the wire and patch with her so Dr. Laura Smith can look at them.

3. Do an Internet search and identify every single manufacturer, wholesaler, and retailer for cardiac-monitoring machines that did business in New York for the ten-year period prior to Suzy’s date of occurrence. Send out the following letter, certified mail, to each one and direct it to the attention of their legal department. Dear Sir or Madam: Please be advised this law office represents a little girl who was electrocuted and sustained severe brain damage as a result of your negligence. The cause was a defective cardiac monitor you placed into the stream of commerce at the Brooklyn Catholic Hospital of New York. Your failure to respond within seven days from this date shall result in the formal institution of legal proceedings against you and negative media attention about your product and practices.

4. Do a Notice for Discovery & Inspection and serve it on Winnie McGillicuddy. I’m hoping to get some documentation on the hospital’s use of heart monitors. It should read: Plaintiff hereby demands to discovery and will inspect any and all documentation, writings, charts, records, memoranda, inscriptions, notes, letters, notices, emails, interoffice communications, third-party communications, scratch pads, crib notes, Post-its, and any and all other writings heretofore not specifically delineated maintained in the ordinary course of business of the Brooklyn Catholic Hospital in general and the Engineering Department in particular that possess, contain, and/or allude to information relative to the proper and/or improper use, application, connection, disconnection, patient preparation, and otherwise general use of cardiac-monitoring machines and devices including, but not limited to, circumstances that may result in electric shock and/or electrocution of a hospital patient.

Before hitting the send button, I finish by writing, “Lily, I typed this really fast so clean it up and make it look lawyer-like.” I send the email on its way.

I open my drawer and pull out a little blue address book with maroon trim. It contains contact information for all the medical experts I’ve ever used over the course of my career. They are the key to my success and have paid for enough tennis lessons to improve my wife from a 2.0 player to a 4.0 rank. The book is thumb-indexed for each letter,
A
to
Z,
so entries can easily be made alphabetically by last name. However, I’ve organized experts according to medical specialty.

I run my finger down the side tabs and stop at the letter
N
for
neurology. I may need to call Dr. Mickey Mack, a rogue physician and my go-to guy. His license was suspended because of his drug problem, but it didn’t cut into his income because he’s a self-made millionaire. He developed ouchless medical tape, patented the idea, and sold it for a bundle. I enter his number into my cell phone just in case I need to call him later for guidance.

In my book the letter
S
appears next to Mick’s name, which, according to my key code, stands for “suspended license.” It’s the only
S
in my book. I crossed out the letter
P
and the number 15 when I entered that
S
.

My code works like this: the letter
N
stands for a negative review on a case. The letter
P
stands for a positive review, meaning the expert doctor, on his evaluation of a matter I submitted, found malpractice took place. If a name has three
N
’s next to it, I’ll never use that doctor again, on the assumption he’s antimalpractice.

Next to the
N
or
P
is a number between 3 and 15 that signifies a rating assessing how well the doctor testified or performed in court. The number range of the point system is based on the Glasgow Coma Scale, or GCS. It’s a neurological scoring system devised to give an objective way of recording the conscious state of a person after a head trauma. A GCS score of 3 means the expert was unconscious or completely sucked on the witness stand, and a score of 15 means the expert was alert, oriented, responsive, and an excellent court witness.

Using the tabs again, I stop at the letter
H,
for hematology. The last entry there is Dr. Laura Smith, whom I entered before I went to see her. I place a straight vertical line next to Dr. Laura’s name. I hope to convert it into a P for positive review after our unscheduled meeting today but have an unsettling feeling that’s not going to happen. My hunch is she’s an
N
in the making.

After entering Dr. Laura into my cell, I dial her on my office line. On the third ring a familiar voice answers. “Smith Sickle Cell Pediatric Care Center. Steven Smith, director, speaking. How may I help you?”

“Hi. This is Tug Wyler, the lawyer on the Suzy Williams matter. The doctor reviewed the case, and I was in a few days ago.”

“Yes, with your dog. How can I help you?”

“I need to meet with your wife again.”

“It’s my understanding she turned down the case.”

“Yes, that’s true, but—”

He interrupts. “Why don’t you just accept that there’s no case, Wyler?” Called by my last name, I hate that. “To my understanding, your client sustained a terrible complication from her sickle cell disease. That happens, you know.”

“Yes, thank you for sharing, but I need to speak to your wife again. Her opinion was based on what she had before her and I have something new to add to the equation that I think might change her mind. She told me to let her know if there were any new developments, so that’s why I’m calling.”

“You can tell me,” he says primly, “and I’ll relay this new information to my wife—I mean the doctor.”

“I’d be more comfortable discussing it directly with her, if you don’t mind. And in person. I don’t like to talk about important legal matters over the phone.”

“Okay. But I just want you to know my wife shares everything with me. I suggest you tell me and I’ll tell her. Then she can decide if she wants to see you, with my input, of course.”

I am getting annoyed. “Maybe you didn’t understand me. I don’t want to talk about it over the phone.”