“You broke our baby!” he snarled, physically pushing me back. “Get away from us before we call the police!” He slammed the door in my face, the sound echoing the collapse of my world.
The next morning, I met with my assigned public defender, Mr. Ramsay. His office was a chaotic landscape of overflowing case files and half-empty coffee cups. He was juggling forty cases and barely had time to glance at mine.
“This doesn’t look good,” he said, flipping through the pages with a weary sigh. “Technically, you did cause the injuries. The law doesn’t really care about your intentions.”
I stared at him, dumbfounded. “But I saved his life! He would have died!”
“Doesn’t matter,” Ramsay mumbled, already reaching for another file. “Just take the plea deal. Two years is better than ten.”
The preliminary hearing three weeks later was a nightmare. The prosecutor, a slick, ambitious man named Mr. Davies, stood up with large, glossy photos of the baby’s x-rays, showcasing the fractures in graphic detail. “The defendant’s reckless and untrained actions directly caused these catastrophic injuries,” he declared to the courtroom.
The parents, Mark and Carol Peterson, testified, weeping about their traumatized baby and the long road to recovery he faced. Then, the prosecution called several witnesses who claimed they saw me drop the baby. I don’t know if they were hired or where they came from, because I was certain there was nobody else around when it happened. I walked out of the courthouse in a daze, the reality of my situation finally crashing down on me. This was actually happening.
The day before the final trial, Mr. Ramsay called with a new plea deal. “Three years in prison. Take it. If we go to trial and lose, you’re looking at ten.”
