The movement sent her chair rolling into a cupboard, where it struck with a noise that made me flinch. She noticed. She did not mention it.
Sam closed the chamber door behind us.
For several seconds, no one spoke.
Then Ruth took the briefcase from my hand and set it on the conference table.
“Sit.”
“I have a calendar.”
“You have an injury.”
Both things were true. I reached for the familiar one because I had no idea what to do with the other.
There were fifty-eight matters listed that morning. People had taken time off work, arranged transport, found someone to watch children. Several were in custody. Their day could not simply dissolve because mine had become difficult.
Ruth brought a cold pack wrapped in a clean towel.
“The list can be reassigned,” she said.
I held the towel against my cheek. The pressure hurt more than the cold.
Sam stood near the door with his hands clasped. When I looked closely, I saw that his thumb was shaking against the other hand.
“What did you see?” I asked.
He began to answer, then stopped.
“Judge, we should give our accounts separately.”
He was right.
The recognition embarrassed me. A lawyer's instinct to establish a sequence had collided with a witness's obligation not to build one together.
“Of course,” I said. “Write down what you remember before anyone asks you questions.”
“I already started.”
Ruth called the court administrator, requested medical assistance, and asked that the corridor recordings and radio traffic be preserved. She did not tell a string of colleagues what Sam or I had said. She supplied the minimum facts necessary to get people moving.
On the conference table, a handwritten note reminded me to telephone a lawyer whose client needed an interpreter. I had left it there the evening before. The ordinary obligation steadied me more than the robe did. Someone else had a problem I could help address, but only if I could first admit I was not yet ready to make decisions about it.
Chief Judge Alan Whitcomb arrived before the nurse.
He had worked in the building for thirty-four years and distrusted dramatic gestures almost as much as he distrusted changing a system during business hours.
His expression when he saw me contained neither hesitation.
“You're not opening court like this.”
“I can speak.”
“That isn't the test.”
I looked toward the robe hanging behind the door.
It seemed to offer a way to turn back into someone who knew what happened next.
Whitcomb sat across from me.
“Vivian. The people on your list need a judge able to concentrate. They don't need you proving that an officer couldn't stop your morning.”
I wanted to disagree because the sentence reached a part of my motive I had not admitted.
“I don't want the story to become that I left.”
“The story will become many things. The list still has to be handled properly.”
The nurse knocked before I could answer.
She asked me to describe my symptoms and examined the swelling, the split lip, and the ringing in my left ear. She recommended a fuller assessment before returning to work. I agreed, although agreeing felt like giving something away.
Ruth reassigned the urgent matters and arranged notices for the remaining calendar. She explained to waiting lawyers that there was a medical interruption, not a favor they could bargain around.
Sam offered to accompany me downstairs.
I thanked him and asked Ruth to come instead. He was a witness who needed to give his own statement, and I could see that he wanted something useful to do with the feeling in his hands.
At the door, Whitcomb told me Briggs had been removed from the floor pending supervisory review.
“Removed from the floor?”
“That's the immediate step. The department is sending investigators.”
I nodded.
He did not promise an outcome, and I did not ask him for one.
Before leaving, I opened my briefcase and placed the scattered papers in a straight stack. A page bore the partial print of someone's wet shoe.
I kept it separate without knowing why.
Ruth watched but did not hurry me.
In the lift, a visitor looked at the cold pack against my face and then away. I was grateful for the small discretion.
Outside the clinic door, Ruth touched the back of the empty chair she wanted me to take.
This time, she waited for me to sit before asking another question.
The examination took most of the morning.