That weekend, I went shopping with Elise. A store announcement cracked through a faulty speaker, and I flinched hard enough to drop a package into the cart.
She asked whether I wanted to leave. I said I wanted a minute, and she stayed beside the cart until the present returned to the correct size.
Then we finished buying groceries. I did not call it a victory, but I let it count as a day in which fear interrupted something without deciding how the whole afternoon ended.
When the charges moved toward trial, people began treating the process as if its existence guaranteed its conclusion. Some congratulated me; others asked whether the command was sacrificing Rusk because my hidden connections made me important.
I directed questions to the public statements and kept my own account for the appropriate proceedings. There was no concise answer capable of repairing every assumption built into a stranger’s question.
The trial counsel explained which allegations had been referred and what the evidence needed to establish. The physical conduct and the misuse of official reporting would be examined as specific acts, not as a referendum on every year of Rusk’s career.
My own use of force had been reviewed in context. The authorities found no basis to prosecute me on the commander’s preferred account, but the defense could still question the circumstances relevant to his case.
That mattered. A decision not to charge me did not make my testimony immune from scrutiny or require the court to accept every word because somebody else had already reviewed it.
Preparation began with my statements, not a script. Counsel asked me to identify what I personally remembered and what the recordings later helped me understand.
I remembered the first impact and his hand. I remembered the second movement as threatening, but the exact angle of his arm was clearer on video than in the fragment my body retained.
“Say that,” counsel told me.
It sounded simple. In practice, admitting the difference meant trusting that the case could survive an honest witness rather than requiring a perfect one.
I disclosed the earlier operation involving Price through the protected route. The defense was entitled to examine whether our prior connection could affect his account, while unrelated sensitive details remained governed by the appropriate safeguards.
The process required planning. It did not require a public recital of names that had nothing to do with Rusk’s hand on my face.
Price prepared separately. We did not compare memories, and our ordinary contacts were documented when relevant rather than hidden beneath an implausible claim that we never spoke.
Ortiz worried about one thing she could not answer: whether she should have cut the live feed to spare everyone the sound. The prosecutor told her the trial concerned what happened, not whether a frightened sound operator could have made the moment less embarrassing.
She still carried the question. I understood because I carried my own impossible alternatives: another sentence, a different pause, the choice to walk away sooner.
Bell asked his supervisor how to obtain leave arrangements around his testimony. The request was handled without commentary on whether he supported the prosecution or the commander.
That ordinary administrative care mattered. A witness should not need to offer loyalty as an extra document before receiving instructions about transport.
At home, I prepared by reading for an hour, then closing the folder. The counselor had suggested setting a limit so the case did not occupy every minute merely because the file remained available.
I resented the advice until the first evening I followed it and slept better. After that, I resented how useful it was.
Elise came over the weekend before my travel. She helped check practical things and refused to discuss whether a different pair of shoes would make me look more believable.
“They are shoes,” she said. “Wear the ones that don’t hurt.”
I laughed. Years in uniform had not prepared me for how much anxious meaning I could attach to an ordinary object before testimony.
The prosecutor asked me to identify any public statements I made, including comments through counsel. We collected them so a question about wording would not arrive as a surprise.
One sentence sounded broader in a headline than in my original statement, and I supplied the actual version without pretending the headline belonged to me. Preparing that material was tedious, but it gave me a concrete task.
I could verify a quotation, provide the source, and stop. I did not have to repair every interpretation that people attached afterward, a limit I was still learning to accept outside official meetings.