Free A Mother's Trial by Nancy Wright Page B

Don’t you understand, she’s already killed one child and has tried to kill another!”
    “What do you mean? What other child?”
    “Tia! At this point I’m sure Tia didn’t die a natural death, either!”
    “My goodness! That’s really difficult to take in. I can’t believe it! What evidence do you have? I’m just sure she couldn’t have done that—that you’ll find you’re mistaken,” Miss Jameson said numbly.
    “Frankly, I think that’s unlikely. When we start looking through Tia’s chart—knowing what we do about Mindy—I think we’ll find medical evidence. Now we know what to look for. It is so easy to introduce a substance into a child with a naso-gastric tube in place, you know. Just mix it with a little water and inject it into the tube. With a bottle, of course, it’s even easier. And there have been some articles recently about mothers—perfectly ordinary-seeming mothers, incidentally—doing this sort of thing to their children. We were just never suspicious enough, unfortunately.”
    “Well, this is a delicate situation as you know. Mrs. Phillips is a county employee who has worked in the Child Protective Services. I don’t want to malign her or slander her or jeopardize her position without proof,” Miss Jameson said.
    “You saw Mindy. She’s the proof!”
    “She’s also the problem here.”
    “Exactly,” Evelyn said.
    “Obviously her needs come first. She must be protected. I don’t necessarily agree with your conclusion about Mrs. Phillips, but you’re rendering a professional opinion, and I will go by it. Mindy will not be released to the Phillipses.”
    “Thank God!”
    So that was one fewer battle that had to be fought, Evelyn thought. But something else was gnawing at her now. Yesterday she had finally admitted to herself the significance that all this had on Tia’s death. But how was she going to tell Sara?
    That afternoon, Evelyn started telephoning Sara’s house every half hour. She wanted to make certain she reached her before anyone else. She was worried about what the Phillipses might do to Sara, verbally or possibly even physically. And she was concerned about how Sara might take the news.
    She tried, distractedly, to plan for her trip tomorrow to Sacramento. She had been working for months on another child abuse matter, an assembly bill that would enable doctors to take photographs of suspected cases of child abuse without parental consent.
    Now she was supposed to go to the capital, sit in on the Criminal Justice Committee, and possibly testify about the bill. The timing was ironic, she thought. If nothing else, it would be a relief to get out of the hospital and away from the Phillipses.
    But she still had today to get through. That afternoon, she had finally reached the Physician-in-Chief. He didn’t want to hear about it when she told him what was happening. He made it plain that it was too abhorrent to think about. As though that closed the matter. She sensed that administrative support would be minimal.
    Finally, at ten that evening, Sara answered the phone.
    “Mindy’s in ICU but she’s all right. Stay there, I’m coming over to tell you about it,” Evelyn said, just as she had practiced it all afternoon.
    Evelyn drove slowly west along North San Pedro Road, past the huge pink sprawl of the San Rafael Civic Center with its vivid turquoise roofs, through central San Rafael.
    Sara lived in a little cul-de-sac in a two-story block house that lay up alone against a wooded hillside by a stand of pine trees. It was very quiet and hidden. You wouldn’t know it was there if you weren’t looking for it, Evelyn thought randomly.
    She focused her mind on Sara, who like her house, was difficult to find. Sara revealed so little of herself. Evelyn realized suddenly that she was not even sure how Sara would react tonight, exactly how shattering this all would be to her. But she knew it would be grim because Sara had trusted Priscilla Phillips and because, when