Sycamore Row - John Grisham

that he’d killed himself not long after their conversation, he was stunned. The man
seemed so at ease and relaxed, even content. He’d known Seth for many years and he
was not the slightest bit gregarious. Rather, Seth was a quiet man who kept to himself
and said little. He remembered Seth smiling as he drove away that Sunday, and
remarked to his wife that it was rare to see him smile.
Mrs. Gilda Chatham told the jury she and her husband sat behind Seth during his final
sermon, spoke to him briefly when the service was over, and picked up no clue
whatsoever that he was on the verge of such a startling act. Mrs. Nettie Vinson testified
that she said hello to Seth as they were leaving the church and that he seemed
uncharacteristically friendly.
After a short recess, Seth’s oncologist, a Dr. Talbert from the regional medical center
in Tupelo, was sworn in and quickly managed to bore the courtroom with a long and
dry narrative about his patient’s lung cancer. He had treated Seth for almost a year,
and, referring to his notes, went on and on about the surgery, then the chemotherapy
and radiation and medications. There had been little hope initially, but Seth had fought
hard. When the cancer metastasized to his spine and ribs, they knew the end was near.
Dr. Talbert had seen Seth two weeks before he died, and was surprised at how
determined he was to keep going. But the pain was intense. He increased the oral
dosage of Demerol to a hundred milligrams every three to four hours. Seth preferred not
to take the Demerol because the drug often made him drowsy; in fact, he said more than
once that he tried to survive each day without pain meds. Dr. Talbert did not know how
many tablets Seth actually took. In the past two months, he had prescribed two hundred.
Jake’s purpose in putting the doctor on the stand was twofold. First, he wanted to
establish the fact that Seth was almost dead from lung cancer. Therefore, hopefully, the
act of suicide might not seem so drastic and unreasonable. Jake planned to argue later
that Seth was indeed thinking clearly in his last days, regardless of how he chose to die.
The pain was unbearable, the end was near, he simply sped things along. Second, Jake
wanted to confront head-on the issue of the side effects of Demerol. Lanier had some
heavyweight testimony lined up, an expert who would say the powerful narcotic, taken
in the quantities prescribed, seriously impaired Seth’s judgment.
An odd fact in the case was that the last prescription was never found. Seth had
purchased it at a pharmacy in Tupelo six days before he died, then he apparently
disposed of it; thus, there was no proof of how much or how little he’d actually
consumed. At his specific instructions, he was buried without an autopsy. Months
earlier, Wade Lanier had suggested, off the record, that the body be exhumed for toxicity
tests. Judge Atlee said no; again, off the record. The level of opiates in Seth’s blood on
Sunday when he died was not automatically relevant to the level the day before when
he wrote his will. Judge Atlee seemed to be particularly offended by the notion of
digging up a person after he had been properly laid to rest.
Jake was pleased with his direct examination of Dr. Talbert. They clearly established
that Seth tried to avoid taking Demerol, and that there was simply no way to prove how
much was in his system when he made his last will.
Wade Lanier managed to get the doctor to admit that a patient taking up to six to