Shorts - Sinister Shorts by Perri O'Shaughnessy Page A

check,” O'Shay said, spooning brown sugar onto his oatmeal. He noted the name of the magical doctor and his friend.
    The judge slathered strawberry jelly onto his side order of sourdough toast. “Not just any experts and evidence, O'Shay. Unassailable experts, with knowledge that will blow their Italian loafers off.”
     
    Back at the office, Rosa gave O'Shay the cold shoulder. After ten years, she felt he ought to listen to her. She knew him better than he knew himself, she believed, and she always let him know when she thought he was wrong about something, in her own way.
    Do this, do that, he told her, and in return for his calm orders, she made his normally smooth life rough. The work she usually did on his files suddenly fell to him. Clients popped in unannounced all day until he reprimanded her sharply. She crossed her arms, grimly satisfied to have rattled him. He worked long into the night to get caught up.
    The next morning, O'Shay arrived at the office slightly late. Rosa looked coolly upon his bleary eyes and awful mood. “Mrs. Olson called,” she said. Mrs. Olson was his most challenging client besides Colby, and that was saying a lot. He handled hundreds a year. This woman made him crazy. Usually Rosa shielded him from clients like her. Not today.
    “She has a new chiropractor you need to talk to. I told her you'd call right away, and get back to her, too. She's hysterical, could really use some hand-holding. Oh, and her husband called after. Yelling about something. I took a message.” She handed him a pink slip of paper. “Really mad. I told him you'd call and explain everything.”
    He wanted to do something to stop the onslaught, kind of like his daughter had when she was a teenager and found something awesomely offensive, “No!” she would cry, fingers forming a cross, as if fending off vampires. Instead, he said, “Fine. Close the door behind you.”
    He did what had to be done. He befriended the prickly new chiropractor, talked down Mrs. Olson, empathized with Mr. Olson, whose wife made sure he shared every single pain she felt, and rolled through another six files.
    Sandra Colby called. “I wanted to thank you for taking Jeff's case,” she said.
    “You're welcome.”
    “Because-he's not himself lately, you know? I don't think you're seeing him at his best. He's got such heart. He's an amazing, involved father, and really a sensitive husband. He cares too much is the problem. He puts on such a macho face, but that's because after all these years they've beat him down. I hardly recognize him sometimes.” By the time she got off the phone with him she was crying.
    “You make me tired,” Rosa said, frowning, at lunchtime.
    “I make me tired, too.”
    “What's going on, O'Shay?” she asked, her frustration evident in the way she persisted with him.
    “I'm really hungry.” He asked if she would arrange for a sandwich from the deli for him. She slammed the door on her way out.
    Late in the afternoon, he tackled Jerome Castile, the insurance attorney representing Colby's company. “He's injured, with a ninety percent disability rating according to three doctors,” O'Shay said into the phone.
    “Come on, his injuries are almost all in his head, and you know we don't have to pay out psych cases anymore. Our doc says a maximum of twenty percent disability rating. Ten thousand.”
    “Trust me on this, Jerome. Lifetime medical, plus a ninety percent award.”
    Castile laughed. “You know, I expected better from you. There's nothing special about this case. Ten and a year's medical.”
     
    O'Shay gathered the X-rays, the hospital admissions papers, the medical records. He called a private detective. Finally, he called Colby.
    “How's it hanging?” Colby asked.
    “I need you to see a few people.” O'Shay had made appointments Colby needed to keep, and went over the injuries Colby needed to be very clear about.
    “Got it, man,” Colby said. “I show up, shirt tucked in, fucked up like