Assault Outline

Title      “ASSAULT – a Memoir for Our Time”
            Timeline  1995/04/07 – 2006/04/10

Prologue    “Death on Tremont Street”
1995/04/07 15:00 – 21:30
This is my fictionalized description of Renee’s overdose.


Act One = A Normal Tragedy

Chapter 1  “Of Hospitals, Hope, and Nursing Homes”
1995/04/07 to 1995/09/05
Most of the story is in flashback from the beginning day of the final court trial, eleven years after Renee’s overdose.  This chapter covers Renee’s stay in the Boston City Hospital’s Cardiac Intensive Care Unit, her deep coma, organ donation prospects, first awakenings, and decisions to move her to a nursing home for permanent, long-term care.  I set the time frame with reference to the Oklahoma City bombing.

Chapter 2  “Strangers in the Room”
1995/09/05 to 1998/05/01
This chapter shows our acceptance of Renee’s ‘new normal’ life in a nursing home.  I describe our visits and routines, other residents, the staff, logbooks, and the circumstances where the rape can take place.

Chapter 3  “One Damn Thing After Another”
1998/05/01 to 1998/10/24
This chapter describes the discovery of Renee’s pregnancy, the withholding of critical information, our discussion of abortion, and our plan to tell the family after our son’s graduation.  It ends with our family being thrown into the fishbowl of a media event.


Act Two = The System’s System

Chapter 4  “Of Lawyers, the Law, and Litigation”
1998/10/25 to 1998/11/05
We meet Kimee (the baby), the police, the lawyers, the journalists, and the courts, too many players to keep track of.  The DNA dragnet starts.  The court Guardian takes control amid suspicions, lies, and false stories.  We first hear the horrors of the birth.

Chapter 5  “Only a Mile and a Half”
1998/10/23 – 09:30-18:10
This is my fictionalized account of Renee’s labor, transport, and Kimee’s birth.  I had to invent dialogue to show the circumstances.

Chapter 6  “Of Compassion Lost”
1998/11/05 to 1998/12/22
This chapter shows our loss of control, respect, and court problems.  The courts are unmoved.  DSS wants to ‘Let Kimee go!’

Chapter 7  “Of Justice Lost”
1998/12/22 to 1999/11/03
This is a tale of small victories, partial progress, and new problems.  The DNA clears and the DNA solves, but the courts are inconsistent.  Both girls have surgeries while MRSA poisons the NICU.  We shuttle between hospitals and try to get the girls moved together.  The DA stumbles and almost looses the criminal case.  Nursing home bankruptcy clouds our cases.

Chapter 8  “Of Freedoms Lost”
1999/11/03 to 2000/02/11
Renee gets relief from contractures but her fevers return.  The perpetrator is convicted but there is no joy.  Another mother weeps.

Chapter 9  “A Second Death”
2000/02/18 to 2000/04/30
Both girls develop problems.  Kimee has more operations, gets pneumonia, and goes on the vent again.  Renee shows cognitive responses, gives us hope, but starts to decline physically.  Our world descends deeper into the dark when Renee dies a month before her twenty-sixth birthday.


Act Three = Reactions

Chapter 10  “Of Charts, Logbooks, and Affidavits”
2000/04/30 to 2001/03/13
This chapter is between the quick and the dead.  It covers Renee’s funeral, Kimee’s complications and tough decisions, and a change of the legal cast.  From our lawyers planning/fighting the cases, having to choose to go public or private, and the silliness of the legal system, I reach the end of my restraint.  “Clean their clock!”

Chapter 11  “Endings Without Victory”
2001/03/13 to 2006/04/04
This chapter is about those darn confidentiality clauses, turning down a million dollars, accepting responsibility, and settlement for good reasons.  We dismay how money matters start to pollute the families of 9/11, the media, and the rest of the country.  “It’s not about the money.”
But we owe the baby boomers a better life.  The system has flaws so we still go to court.

Chapter 12  “Winners and Losers”
2006/04/04 to 2006/04/10
This ends the flashback, returning to the final trial, legal precedents, and newspaper stories.  What are the real questions and who should be held responsible?

Epilogue    “A Grim Future”
2006/04/10 to 2010/07/09
The verdict.  The way things are, the recent health care law, and Kimee’s future.

Appendix    The Verifiable Facts


Pages:        3
Words:      676