Skin Privilege Read Free Page A

you know what acute myeloblastic leukemia is?’
    ‘It’s a group of malignant disorders characterized by the replacement of normal bone marrow with abnormal cells.’
    Connor smiled, rattling off, ‘And it begins as a single somatic hematopoietic progenitor that transforms to a cell incapable of normal differentiation?’
    ‘The cell loses apoptosis.’
    Another smile, another point scored. ‘And this disease has a fifty percent survival rate.’
    Sara held her tongue, waiting for the ax to fall.
    ‘And timing is critical for treatment, is that correct? In such a disease – a disease that literally turns the body’s cells against themselves, turns off apoptosis, according to you, which is the normal genetic process of cell death – timing is critical.’
    Forty-eight hours would not have saved the boy’s life, but Sara was not going to utter those words, have them transcribed into a legal document and later thrown in her face with all the callousness Sharon Connor could muster.
    The lawyer shuffled through some papers as if she needed to find her notes. ‘And you attended Emory Medical School. As you so graciously corrected me earlier, you didn’t just graduate in the top ten percent, you graduated sixth in your class.’
    Buddy sounded bored with the woman’s antics. ‘We’ve already established Dr. Linton’s credentials.’
    ‘I’m just trying to put it all together,’ the woman countered. She held up one of the pages, her eyes scanning the words. Finally, she put it down. ‘And, Dr. Linton, you got this information – this lab result that was almost certainly a death sentence -the morning of the seventeenth, and yet you chose not to share the information with the Powells until two days later. And that was because…?’
    Sara had never heard so many sentences starting with the word ‘and.’ She imagined grammar wasn’t high up on the curriculum at whatever school had churned out the vicious lawyer.
    Still, she answered, ‘They were at Disney World for Jimmy’s birthday. I wanted them to enjoy their vacation, what I thought might be their last vacation as a family for some time. I made the decision to not tell them until they came back.’
    ‘They came back the evening of the seventeenth, yet you did not tell them until the morning of the nineteenth, two days later.’
    Sara opened her mouth to respond, but the woman talked over her.
    ‘And it didn’t occur to you that they could return for immediate treatment and perhaps save their child’s life?’ It was clear she didn’t expect an answer. ‘I would imagine that, given the choice, the Powells would rather have their son alive today instead of empty photographs of him standing around the Magic Kingdom.’ She slid the picture in question across the table. It glided neatly past Beckey and Jim Powell, past Sara’s two lawyers, and stopped a few inches from where Sara was sitting.
    She shouldn’t have looked, but she did.
    Young Jimmy stood leaning against his father, both of them wearing Mickey Mouse ears and holding sparklers as a parade of Snow White’s dwarfs marched behind them. Even in the photo, you could tell the boy was sick. Dark circles rimmed his eyes and he was so thin that his frail little arm looked like a piece of string.
    They had come back from vacation a day early because Jimmy had wanted to be home. Sara did not know why the Powells had not called her at the clinic, brought in Jimmy that day so she could check on him. Maybe his parents had known even without the test, even without the final diagnosis, that their days of having a normal, healthy child were over. Maybe they had just wanted to keep him to themselves one more day. He had been such a wonderful boy – kind, smart, cheerful – everything a parent could hope for. And now he was gone.
    Sara felt tears well into her eyes, and bit her lip so hard that the tears fell from pain instead of grief.
    Buddy snatched away the picture, irritated. He slid it back to Sharon