They Took the Kids Last Night by Diane L. Redleaf

Author:Diane L. Redleaf
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABC-CLIO
Published: 2018-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

Attacking the Doctor Who Knows Something About Fractures

* * *

The judge’s ruling took a lot of the family’s worry away, although the strain on the family from being constantly supervised continued unabated. Ben’s mother still had no idea when she would be released to return back home. Her stay was getting to be much longer than she had imagined. The State and guardian ad litem were not close to resting their cases.

On October 21, we returned to court for the State’s cross-examination of Dr. Sheridan. We knew he would acquit himself well, though we hadn’t been given advance notice of what the State would try to throw at him.

State’s Attorney Bailey started his questions by summarily reviewing the four factors Dr. Felix considered significant. Dr. Sheridan quickly turned the second factor, the severity of the injury, in Ben and Lynn’s favor. The more severe an injury, the more a doctor would expect to see other symptoms. If the injury is not noticed, then it’s less likely to be severe. Moreover, to Dr. Sheridan’s way of thinking, nothing about Robert’s fracture was severe. He observed worse fractures than Robert’s just about every day. The only odd thing about Robert’s fracture was his age. The lack of an explanation was a reason to investigate, but that didn’t distinguish Robert’s fracture from many other cases involving accidental injuries. Unwitnessed accidents happen, and parents don’t always notice actions that might cause a fracture to occur. Lots of possibilities could have caused Robert’s fracture without the parents’ knowledge.

Dr. Sheridan was adept in answering cross-examination questions. He wasn’t argumentative, but he was good at turning every question in Ben and Lynn’s favor, nailing each point.

Bailey turned next to Dr. Sheridan’s own evaluation of Robert’s fracture, wanting to know when exactly he wrote his report. In one of the only moments of levity during the entire hearing, Dr. Sheridan mentioned he wrote it when he was in Las Vegas on October 3.

State’s Attorney Bailey was quick on the uptake. “Did you win?” “Not this time,” Dr. Sheridan replied, smiling.

Bailey asked Dr. Sheridan to use his slide show and pointer again to go through some points on the slides, a step that seemed only to magnify how effective Dr. Sheridan was in explaining X-rays. The State wanted to know how long the fracture was: “five millimeters.” The break made Robert’s leg shorter by four millimeters, and given the length of Robert’s leg, this amounted to a 5 percent displacement. Dr. Sheridan had seen 90 percent displacements. This measurement made the implication obvious; contrary to Dr. Felix’s testimony, Robert’s fracture was not one any orthopedist would call “severe.”

After making no headway on the medical science points, State’s Attorney Bailey moved to the heart of his attack on Dr. Sheridan: his customary role as a witness for the defense. In the past 12 years, Dr. Sheridan had probably testified “at least 30 times.” Still, testifying as an expert witness was a small part of his practice. As a pediatric orthopedist, Dr.

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