“Who among you believes that the monsters who killed Henry Sexton, Caitlin Masters, Sleepy Johnston, and others—who murdered one of their own, Will Devine, before your very eyes yesterday—would hesitate to snuff out the life of Viola Turner?”

Quentin suddenly goes quiet, like a wind falling deceptively as it gathers before a storm.

“Finally,” he says softly, “I ask you to consider the district attorney, the man who brought us all to this room and asked us to listen to the deceivers he paraded before us. It was Shadrach Johnson who reached back fifty years into the past to try to slander Dr. Cage over his military service to his country. I only thank God that Dr. Cage’s commanding officer survived to tell you of his courage under fire on the night the Chinese broke through the American lines back in 1950. And that Captain Walt Garrity could tell you the truth of how he and Tom Cage were forced to make the toughest choice a medic ever could make in the face of certain torture and death for the hopelessly wounded boys under their care.

“And that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is what I want to leave you with. This man, this simple small-town doctor, has spent his life in the gray areas that most of us pretend don’t exist. As a young man, he was thrown into the crucible of war and asked to do the impossible. He acquitted himself with honor. For the past forty years, he has worked every day to heal the sick and afflicted of our community. He has never sought fortune or fame; on the contrary, he has done countless acts of kindness and mercy without anyone ever learning of them.

“There’s an old saying: ‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.’ By that standard, Tom Cage is a fool. A prudent physician would have run a mile when Viola Turner asked him to help her die with dignity. Because the law doesn’t do much to help terminally ill people in this country. It doesn’t do much to help the doctors asked to care for them, either. The law is mighty quick to condemn a doctor trying to help someone in pain, and mighty slow to help those poor patients find peace. A smart doctor’s first thought upon hearing what Viola wanted would have been the potential lawsuit and the possibility of losing his license. But not Tom Cage. Tom did the same thing he did in Korea. He shoved his fear deep down inside, waded in, and did the best he could in the time he had with the resources at hand.”