THE HEIR'S REVENGE

chapter 90

Inside Patricia met us briefly. She said Dr Chen had arrived and was prepared and calm. She said the defence would likely cross examine aggressively because Dr Chen was the prosecution's most powerful witness and they knew it. She said to be ready for that.

I said I was ready.

I went inside.

Dr Chen entered the courtroom at exactly ten o'clock.

She was a small woman in her early sixties with grey streaks in her dark hair and reading glasses on a chain around her neck. She was dressed simply. A dark blouse and trousers. She walked to the witness stand with the deliberate pace of someone who had made a decision long ago and had been living with the weight of that decision for twenty years and was now finally here to set it down.

She sat down.

She looked at the prosecutor.

She was calm, not the composed performance of calm that Victoria wore like armour. Something different. Something that came from having made peace with a difficult truth and being ready to speak it.

Patricia stood up.

"Dr Chen," she said. "You treated Sarah Blackwell when she was found in Crestwood twenty years ago. Is that correct?"

"Yes," Dr Chen said. Her voice was clear and steady.

"Can you describe her condition when she arrived under your care?"

Dr Chen looked at the jury.

She spoke carefully and clearly. She described my mother as she had been found confused. Without memory of who she was or where she had come from. Unable to recall any personal information. 

There was no name. No history. Nothing.

She described the initial assessment. The tests that were run. The standard procedures for a patient presenting with severe amnesia.

Then Patricia said: "During those initial tests you ran a full blood panel. Is that correct?"

"Yes," Dr Chen said.

"And what did you find?"

A pause.

Dr Chen looked at the jury again.

"I found traces of a compound that is not naturally occurring," she said. "A synthetic compound that was present in concentrations that were not consistent with accidental exposure." She paused. "The compound was consistent with a deliberate administration. The dosage levels I identified were consistent with a calculated attempt to cause significant neurological damage."

The courtroom was very quiet.

Patricia let the quiet sit for a moment.

Then she said: "When you say significant neurological damage, can you be more specific about what that means in terms of the patient's experience?"

Dr Chen looked at her hands briefly. Then back at the jury.

"At the dosage levels I found," she said, "the compound would cause permanent damage to the hippocampus and surrounding regions. The hippocampus is primarily responsible for the formation and retrieval of memory." She paused. "The damage would effectively prevent the patient from accessing autobiographical memory. Personal history. Identity. Who they were."

Pause.

"In simple terms," Patricia said. "Someone administered this compound to Sarah Blackwell in a dose calculated to make her permanently forget who she was. While leaving her physically able to function."

"Yes," Dr Chen said. "That is what the evidence indicated."

I sat very still.

I had known this. I had read the documents. I had heard Henry explain it. I had sat in a park with Dr Chen herself and received this information from her directly.

But hearing it said in a courtroom. Hearing it said to twelve jurors and a judge and a gallery full of people and a woman sitting at the defence table who had done the thing being described.

It was different.

It hit somewhere different.

I felt Yemi beside me.

She did not move. She did not touch me. She just stayed present in the way she was always present. Steady and close and completely there.

I breathed in slowly.

I looked at the purple ribbon on my wrist.

I breathed out.

Patricia continued.

"Dr Chen," she said. "At the time you treated Sarah Blackwell you filed a report stating that her amnesia was consistent with head trauma. Is that correct?"

"Yes," Dr Chen said.

"Was that accurate?"

A pause.

"No," Dr Chen said. "It was not accurate."

"Why did you file an inaccurate report?"

Dr Chen was quiet for a moment.

"I was contacted shortly after I began treating the patient," she said. "By a woman who visited the hospital. She identified herself as a family member. She told me that the results of the blood panel needed to be handled discreetly. She told me that if I reported what I had actually found there would be serious consequences for myself and my family." She paused. "I was young. I was frightened. I made a decision that I have lived with ever since."

"When you say serious consequences," Patricia said. "What did you understand that to mean?"

"I understood it as a threat," Dr Chen said simply.

"And the woman who made that threat," Patricia said. "Do you see her in this courtroom today?"

Dr Chen looked at the defence table.

She looked at Victoria Pierce.

"Yes," she said. "She is sitting at the defence table."

The courtroom did not erupt the way courtrooms did in films. It just became very very still. The kind of stillness that happens when a room full of people all understand something at the same time.

Victoria did not move.

She looked at her papers.

She gave nothing away.

Patricia sat down.

Victoria's lead lawyer stood up immediately.

The cross examination lasted ninety minutes.

Victoria's lawyer was a man named Carver. The same man who had led the Hargrove legal challenge. He was experienced and skilled and he went after Dr Chen methodically.

He pointed out that she had destroyed the original blood sample. That the records she produced were copies she had kept personally. That she had waited twenty years to come forward. That she had a personal relationship with the Blackwell family now through her connection to the case. That she had reasons to be unreliable.

He said all of this calmly and professionally.

Dr Chen answered every question directly.

She did not get flustered. She did not get emotional. She did not get defensive.

When Carver suggested that her memory of events twenty years ago might not be reliable she said: I remember every detail of that case. I have thought about it every day for twenty years. It is not something I could forget even if I wanted to.

When Carver suggested that the copies of the blood results she had kept were potentially altered she said: they are the original documents I made at the time. I have kept them in the same location for twenty years. I can provide the chain of custody for every day of those twenty years.

When Carver suggested that her decision to come forward now was motivated by financial gain or personal connection to the Blackwell family she looked at him directly and said: I came forward because I was wrong to stay silent and because the woman who was harmed deserved better than my cowardice.

The courtroom was quiet after that.