A young female athlete girl breaks her leg playing soccer. After treating the fracture the doctor sees the potential of a more serious condition and calls her back. While he is doing the tests she begins to study the diagnosis, treatment and outcome of the treatment and in doing so she encounters something disturbing. Are all the surgeries being done for this condition necessary?
Melanie Docks arrived at work the next morning. She was afraid. She faced assault charges. Would she be fired? Would she go to jail? SHe was surprised to see a sign in the lounge, “Welcome Melanie”. The station manager called her into his office. She looked at him.
“If you want to fire me, I will understand. I made the station look bad.”
“Fire? Why?”
“Well I blew it.”
“Let me show you something.” He turned on a TV and started a tape. When it finished she put her head down.
“I committed a crime and I was dumb enough to do it in front of one of the best news cameras with a good operator and two tapes running.”
He laughed. “You did sort of make it easy to prosecute you. The station will be hiring a lawyer for you, separate from our lawyer. That way there is no conflict of interest for him. We can’t get you off but we will help you through it.”
“Thanks. But I made the station look bad. I hit someone.”
“You were human. You saw something so wrong it had to be addressed. And maybe the way you addressed it wasn’t the best but darn, you did something. There are a lot of us who have rolled over and played dead on this. You didn’t. Then you made one of the best reports you have ever made and quite frankly, you have done some that are so good they are hard to top. Dottie did a fabulous job of shooting. Let me show you.”
He ran the tape again. When she was on the step talking he paused the tape. She was on the third step down. There were five amputees standing on the top step, Dottie had cut them at the waist, all that could be seen was their legs. Three were on crutches wearing no prosthesis, the other three were wearing pylons.
“See the women behind you. They are nameless, faceless, and they fully represent what happened and what that trial was about.”
“Dottie is awesome.”
“I know. And your report matches it. It is like a delicious cake with impressive frosting.”
“Really?”
“It ran coast to coast last night.”
“God. Everyone in the country saw me do that. There have to be millions of witnesses. I never wanted to hurt anyone.”
“I know. You reacted like a human being. Dottie is out there waiting for her reporter to go out today and cover stories if you feel up to it. I was going to send her out with Jackie. She asked to wait to see if you felt up to it. She wanted to go with you. I can’t tell you exactly what she said but she told me she wanted to go with a real reporter.”
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