Chapter 3 - Emergency Measures
The first thing I did was click the confirmation link from the Board of Law Examiners.
*Do you wish to confirm the withdrawal of your registration for the July Bar Examination?*
I hovered over the red box marked *NO*. I clicked it once, twice, three times until the screen updated: *Withdrawal Request Canceled. Status: Active Candidate.*
A small breath escaped my lungs, but the hurdle ahead was monumental. The Pennsylvania Bar Exam is a grueling two-day ordeal: hundreds of multiple-choice questions on the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE), followed by six complex essay questions and a performance test. Even fully able-bodied candidates routinely ran out of time. My dominant right hand was encased in fiberglass from my knuckles to my mid-forearm, the pins holding my metacarpals rigid and immobile.
Typing fifty words a minute with one hand was mathematically impossible.
I opened a blank browser window and navigated directly to the Pennsylvania Board’s emergency petition portal. There was a little-known provision under the Americans with Disabilities Act for sudden-onset traumatic injury occurring within seventy-two hours of administration.
*Rule 103, Section C: Emergency Testing Accommodations.*
To qualify, I needed two things by 8:00 AM tomorrow: a signed clinical affidavit from an orthopedic surgeon affirming that the impairment was acute and non-elective, and an official request for an amanuensis—a designated, neutral scribe to type my spoken dictation—or voice-to-text software in an isolated testing room.
I looked at the discharge papers the hospital had given me. Dr. Marcus Vance, my father's second cousin, had been the attending physician on call who set my hand. His notes were conspicuously sanitized: *Patient presents with crush injury to right hand consistent with accidental domestic mechanical impact. Pain management administered. Cast applied.*
He hadn't documented the bruising on my shoulder where Vanessa had shoved me. He hadn't noted the angle of impact that proved the jack had been swung horizontally, not dropped vertically.
If I relied on Marcus, he would call my father before he ever signed an accommodation form.
I pulled out my phone with my left hand and dialed the only number I knew by heart that didn't belong to someone on my father's payroll: Professor Evelyn Alvarez.
Alvarez was a former federal prosecutor who had served as my faculty advisor for the Penn Law Review. She was ruthless, brilliant, and hated my father with a passion that dated back to a contaminated water class-action suit in 2004.
The phone rang three times before she picked up.
"Clara? It’s past ten on a Sunday night. You should be sleeping before Tuesday."
"Professor," I said, keeping my voice level despite the shudder running through my chest. "I need an independent medical evaluation and an emergency administrative writ. Tonight."
There was a beat of silence on the other end. The background noise of a television vanished as she muted it. "Where are you?"
"In my bedroom at my parents' house in Bryn Mawr."
"Why do you need an independent evaluation?"
"Because my sister crushed my right hand in the garage two hours ago, my father instructed his cousin to falsify the clinical triage report, and they've already tried to forge my withdrawal from the bar."
Alvarez didn't gasp. She didn't offer empty platitudes. She was a trial lawyer.
"Is the bedroom door locked?" she asked.
"Yes. But they have the master key."
"Pack your identification, your laptop, your charger, and whatever documentation you have. Do not touch your father's car. Do not walk out the front door. Can you climb down the trellis on the east terrace?"
May you like
"My hand is broken, Professor."
"Then you slide down the terrace drainpipe with your boots pressed against the brick," she said flatly. "I’ll have a car waiting at the corner of Montgomery and Morris in twenty minutes. If you want to take this exam, Clara, you have to leave that house right now."
