Save Me - Lisa Scottoline [60]
Rose obeyed. She saw smoke. Fire. The kids, a moving stream of heads.
“Do you see the door closing in anybody’s face? Do you see them hitting the bar in the middle to open it?”
Suddenly Rose knew the answer, and she opened her eyes. “No. The door was open the whole time, propped open.”
Tom broke into a grin.
Oliver looked over with a sly smile. “Bingo.”
Rose didn’t understand. “Does that matter?”
“Patience, grasshopper.” Tom cocked his head. “Why was it propped open, if you know? Is that typical? Have you seen that before?”
“Yes, I have seen that, when I pick Melly up.” Rose shifted, and in her arms, John stirred but stayed asleep. “It’s been hot this month, and they keep it propped open, to make it cooler in the hallway.”
Tom frowned. “But what about the air conditioning?”
“The hallways aren’t air-conditioned. Only the classrooms.”
“Yes!” Tom turned to Oliver and raised his hand for a high five. “Hit me, bro!”
Oliver recoiled, smiling. “Quiet. You’ll wake up the puppy, and I don’t high-five. Also, never call me bro.”
Tom grinned at Rose. “Boy, am I feeling better!”
“Why?”
“Here’s why.” Tom set his notepad aside. “First, the basics. There’s no duty to rescue in civil law. In other words, you had no duty to rescue Amanda. But under common tort law, in Pennsylvania and mostly everywhere else, once you undertake to rescue someone, you have to do so with reasonable care. The only exception is for doctors under the Good Samaritan statutes, but they don’t apply to you.”
“Okay.”
“So the question for the jury would be, what is reasonable care in these circumstances? The jury will have to ask themselves, what would I do?” Tom put a finger to his head, mock-thinking. “Would I take Amanda and the others out to the playground all the way, and risk losing my own child in the fire? Or would I do what Rose did, strike an on-the-spot compromise that tries to save all of them? Or would I ignore Amanda and the others altogether and go save my kid?”
Rose’s mouth went dry. She picked up her water and sipped some.
“I’ve listened to your account, and we have an obvious proof problem between what you say you did and what everybody else says you did. We’ll have to overcome that, but the best way to get you off the hook is to put someone else on it.”
“Who?”
“The school, and the state. We can either wait for Amanda and her parents to sue you and the school, or we can take a more aggressive position and file suit against the school.”
“What? No.” Rose recoiled. “I like the school.”
Tom raised a hand. “Keep an open mind.”
“I would never want to sue the school.”
“Why not?”
Oliver clucked, shaking his head. “She’s cream and sugar. Black coffee would sue, no question.”
Tom ignored him, leaning over. “You’re injured. Your kid was injured. She almost died. You’ll have expenses you haven’t gotten the bills for yet.”
“Yes, but—”
“Hear me out, please. Leave aside the faulty wiring for a minute, because we don’t have all the facts on causation, and right now I want to focus on you. You need to change the way you see yourself.” Tom pointed at her. “Let me paint you a picture. You’re thrown into the school as lunch mom, with no instruction on fire safety, either written or oral, and you could have died. So could your daughter.”
“I don’t want to sue anybody, least of all the—”
“The teacher at the door doesn’t notice that a kid is running back inside, which is clear negligence, and the exit door is left propped open, which is a patently unsafe procedure, because a kid could run back inside undetected, and she did, and that’s why she was grievously injured.”
Rose listened, trying to keep up with him. “But how did anything the school did cause harm to me, or Melly?”
“You weren’t told the procedures in case of fire emergency, which put you in jeopardy. You could’ve been killed.”
“Okay, but what about Melly? How did the school do anything to her?”
“It has no fire procedures in place to convey to volunteers, to save kids in a fire emergency. Also, the school could