Odette is a foot away from Ruth now, yelling into her face. Ruth closes her eyes with every blast, as if she’s facing a hurricane. “No,” she whispers. “I never thought that.”

“Yet you heard your colleague Corinne say you were angry after you were told you could no longer care for Davis Bauer, correct?”

“Yes.”

“You worked twenty years at Mercy–West Haven?”

“Yes.”

“You testified that you were an experienced, competent nurse and that you loved your job, is that fair to say?”

“It is,” Ruth admits.

“Yet the hospital had no problem taking the wishes of the patient into consideration over respect for their own employee, and dismissing you from the professional role you’d maintained all those years?”

“Apparently.”

“That must have made you furious, right?”

“I was upset,” she concedes.

Hold it together, Ruth, I think.

“Upset? You said, and I quote, That baby means nothing to me.”

“It was something that came out in the heat of the moment—”

Odette’s eyes gleam. “The heat of the moment! Is that also what happened when you told Dr. Atkins to sterilize the baby during his circumcision?”

“It was a joke,” Ruth says. “I shouldn’t have said it. That was a mistake.”

“What else was a mistake?” Odette asks. “The fact that you stopped ministering to that baby while he fought to breathe, simply because you were afraid of how it might affect you?”

“I had been told to do nothing.”

“So you made the conscious choice to stand over that poor tiny infant who was turning blue, while you thought, What if I lose my job?”

“No—”

“Or maybe you were thinking: This baby doesn’t deserve my help. His parents don’t want me touching him because I’m black, and they’re gonna get their wish.”

“That’s not true—”

“I see. You were thinking: I hate his racist parents?”

“No!” Ruth holds her hands to her head, trying to drown out Odette’s voice.

“Oh, so maybe it was: I hate this baby because I hate his racist parents?”

“No,” Ruth explodes, so loud that it feels like the walls of the courtroom are shaking. “I was thinking that baby was better off dead than raised by him.”

She points directly at Turk Bauer, as a curtain of silence falls over the jury and the gallery and, yes, me. Ruth holds her hand over her mouth. Too fucking late, I think.

“O-objection!” Howard sputters. “Move to strike!”

At the same exact moment, Edison runs out of the courtroom.

—

I GRAB RUTH’S wrist as soon as we are dismissed and drag her to the conference room. Howard is smart enough to know to stay away. Once the door is closed, I turn on her. “Congratulations. You did exactly what you weren’t supposed to do, Ruth.”

She walks to the window, her back to me.

“Have you made your point? Are you happy you got up on the stand to testify? All the jury is going to see now is an angry black woman. One who was so pissed off and vengeful that I wouldn’t be surprised if the judge regrets dismissing the count of murder. You just gave those fourteen jurors every reason to believe you were mad enough to let that baby die before your eyes.”