Legal Briefs Stories by Today's Best Thriller Writers

Everyone has a favorite John Grisham book, but among lawyers the preferred novel is almost alwaysA Time to Kill, because of its brutally realistic characters and spellbinding courtroom action. In "The Birthday," Grisham displays his ability to create an equally gripping narrative in only a few pages, as well as his talent for depicting characters who will remain with you long after this short story has ended. The Birthday John Grisham The good doctor awoke in the darkness just before noon. Somehow, through the black-painted windows, a ray of sunshine bounced and reflected and landed in a faint circle on the carpet. He turned away from it, moaning, and rattling the cheap metal frame under the dirty mattress. His eyes burned but he did not touch them. He opened and closed them, blinking slowly in a hopeless effort to see without hurting. His brain pounded fiercely against his skull--the aftermath of a fifth and a half of six-dollar vodka. Today was another birthday. The mail would arrive at two. He cursed the vodka, a morning ritual. This was the eighth birthday. She had found him last year in this battered trailer in this armpit mobile-home ghetto where engineless pickups were parked in the streets like statues people were proud of, and where illegitimate toddlers urinated on the curbs, and where televisions shrieked nonstop through ragged storm doors. She had somehow tracked him here. She always knew where to find him. He took a job selling medical supplies and moved into a duplex where no one could find him. The sixth birthday was on a Sunday, and he was asleep, dreaming, when someone knocked on the door. He just missed her, but she left another envelope with a picture of the birthday boy, now thinner, shriveled, more grotesque. There was no note. He cried over the photo and went for the narcotics. He woke up three days later without a job. He served ninety days for shoplifting, and borrowed money for the last time from his mother. He found this trailer. He sold some of his pills to buy food. * * * He sipped the vodka and read for the hundredth time the newspaper account of a good doctor gone bad. The jury gave Jeffrey four million, and the appellate court affirmed. His ex-wife took what she wanted, and he bankrupted the rest. His malpractice carrier paid its limit of a half a million to little Jeffrey and there was simply no more with the bankruptcy and all. He loved to play tennis, the paper said. The seventh picture was the worst. Jeffrey's head was much too large for his body, and it was clearly just a matter of time before the birthdays ceased. Last year when he opened the envelope, he sat at the same table and cried over the pictures until he made himself sick and vomited. Suddenly, he was cold. He pulled the robe tighter around his neck and stuffed his hands deep in the pockets. The folder contained many other things, the divorce papers, letters from lawyers, notices from the state medical board. But he'd read them a thousand times, and the words never changed. He'd looked at the pictures of the little boy a thousand times and prayed hopelessly that the next one would show a healthy kid on a new bike with a big birthday smile. He had grieved over the pictures, gotten drunk over them, moved around like a gypsy because of them, hated them, planned suicide over them. But he wanted to see the next one. Maybe it would be different. He was drunk now. He drained the plastic cup and threw it on the floor. He collected the photos, wrapped the rubber band back around them, and stood up. His hands were shaking, and he was mumbling to himself when he heard a faint knock on the door. He froze, having no idea what to do. Then, another knock. He held the table for support. A female voice said, "Dr. Green?" She was on the steps. He made his way to the door and opened it slowly. HBernhardt, William is the author of 'Legal Briefs Stories by Today's Best Thriller Writers', published 1998 under ISBN 9780385514439 and ISBN 0385514433.