Skin Privilege Read Free Page B

Connor. ‘You can practice your opening statement in front of your mirror at home, sweetheart.’
    Connor’s mouth twisted into a smirk as she took back the photograph. She was living proof that the theory that women were nurturing caretakers was utter bullshit. Sara half-expected to see rotting flesh between her teeth.
    The woman said, ‘Dr. Linton, on this particular date, the date you got James’s lab results, did anything else happen that stood out for you?’
    A prickling went up Sara’s spine, a spark of warning that she could not suppress. ‘Yes.’
    ‘And could you tell us what that was?’
    I found a woman who had been murdered in the bathroom of our local diner.’
    ‘Raped and murdered. Is that correct?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘That brings us to your part-time job as coroner for the county. I believe your husband – then ex-husband, when this rape and murder occurred – is chief of police for the county. Both of you work closely together when cases arise.’
    Sara waited for more, but the woman had obviously just wanted to get that on the record.
    ‘Counselor?’ Buddy asked.
    ‘One moment, please,’ the lawyer murmured, picking up a thick folder and leafing through the pages.
    Sara looked down at her hands to give herself something to do. Pisiform, triquetrum, hamate, capitate, trapezoid, trapezium, lunate, scaphoid… She listed all the bones in her hand, then started on the ligaments, trying to distract herself, willing herself not to walk into the trap the lawyer was so skillfully setting.
    While Sara was in her residency at Grady, headhunters had pursued her so relentlessly that she had stopped answering her phone. Partnerships. Six-figure salaries with year-end bonuses. Surgical privileges at any hospital she chose. Personal assistants, lab support, full secretarial staff, even her own parking space. They had offered her everything, and yet in the end, she had decided to return home to Grant, to practice medicine for considerably less money and even less respect, because she thought it was important for doctors to serve rural communities.
    Was part of it vanity, too? Sara had seen herself as a role model for the girls in town. Most of them had only ever seen a male doctor. The only women
    in authority were nurses, teachers, and mothers. Her first five years at the Heartsdale Children’s Clinic, Sara had spent at least half of her time convincing young patients – and frequently their mothers – that she had, in fact, graduated medical school. No one believed a woman could be smart enough, good enough, to reach such a position. Even when Sara bought the clinic from her retiring partner, people had still been skeptical. It had taken years to carve herself a place of respect in the community.
    All for this.
    Sharon Connor finally looked up from her papers. She frowned. ‘Dr. Linton, you yourself were raped. Isn’t that correct?’
    Sara felt all of the saliva in her mouth dry up. Her throat tightened and her flesh turned hot as she struggled with an unwelcome shame that she had not felt since the last time a lawyer had deposed her about being raped. Just like then, Sara’s vision tunneled and blurred in such a way that she saw nothing, just heard the words ringing in her ears.
    Buddy shot to his feet, arguing something, stabbing his finger at the lawyer, at the Powells. Beside him, Melinda Stiles from the Global Medical Indemnity said nothing. Buddy had told Sara this would happen, that Stiles would sit silently by, letting opposing counsel tear into Sara, speaking only when she thought Global might be exposed. Another woman, another failed role model.
    ‘And I want that on the goddamn record!’ Buddy finished, pushing his chair away from the table as he sat down.
    ‘Noted,’ Connor said. ‘Dr. Linton?’
    Sara’s vision cleared. She heard a whoosh in her ears, as if she had been swimming underwater and suddenly pushed herself to the surface.
    ‘Dr. Linton?’ Connor repeated. She kept using