I pressed a clean corner of my handkerchief to my lip. “First, I need medical attention.”
“Of course. I meant after that.”
“And an independent record of what happened.”
His mouth tightened at the word independent. Behind him, an attorney bent to retrieve a page from beneath a bench, then hesitated when she saw the names printed across it.
I asked Keene to secure the documents. Some were routine hearing materials, but others included information that should not be photographed or passed around a public corridor.
Iris Shaw, a deputy clerk, brought an empty file box from the nearby office. She collected the papers with the attorney while Keene asked people to avoid stepping through the scattered contents of my briefcase.
Rourke turned toward the benches. “Move along. There's nothing else to see.”
“They may be witnesses,” Keene said. “Let a supervisor take their details.”
“Don't tell me how to do my job.”
Keene's expression did not change. “Then give me less reason.”
I almost asked him to stop arguing. The instinct was familiar: reduce the temperature, help everyone recover their dignity, keep the morning moving.
But I was the one holding a handkerchief against a bleeding mouth. I did not need to repair the officer's embarrassment before anyone examined his conduct.
The young woman with the folder stepped away from the wall. She was Black, perhaps in her late twenties, and wore a navy cardigan beneath a coat whose hem was damp from the rain.
“My name is Simone Porter,” she said. “I saw it.”
Rourke looked sharply at her. “This is an official matter.”
She flinched. Her foot shifted backward, then stopped.
“I recorded him hitting you.”
The phone in her hand looked absurdly small. Rourke stared at it, and I felt a sudden, complicated gratitude toward a woman who appeared more frightened than anyone else in the corridor.
“Keep the original,” I told her. “Please don't delete or edit anything.”
Keene called for his supervisor and medical assistance. He did not ask Simone to surrender the device, and I was glad; a witness should not have to lose the tool she used to help someone before anyone explained why.
Lieutenant Helen Park arrived from the security office. She separated Rourke from us, requested that he remain with another supervisor, and asked whether anyone else had recorded part of the encounter.
Several people looked down. One man said his hearing was starting, and Park asked for a contact number rather than demanding that he choose between helping me and appearing in court.
I heard that distinction even through the pain. Too often, institutions asked frightened people to cooperate as though cooperation had no cost.
Simone still held the folder against her chest. I asked whether she had somewhere she needed to be, and she nodded toward 4B.
“Traffic matter,” she said. “I was told not to be late.”
Iris took down her case number and went to notify the courtroom that a potential witness had been delayed in the corridor. She made no promise about the outcome of Simone's case, only about explaining the delay.
The paramedic arrived while Park was writing names. She introduced herself, asked my permission to examine me, and suggested we move into an empty conference room where she could check my hearing and balance.
I agreed. As Keene helped carry the box of documents, I looked back at Rourke.
He was speaking quietly to his supervisor, one hand describing a movement in the air. Already, he was assembling an explanation.
I could not hear the words. I knew only that my face still hurt, Simone was shaking, and the distance between an event and its official description had begun to open.
Iris checked beneath the benches one last time and found the page that had slid near the umbrella water. She put it separately inside a folder so the damp edge would not damage the others. I thanked her for the care, aware that the people named in those papers had no connection to the scene around us. Their privacy had become another responsibility on a morning when one man's impatience had created work for everyone within reach.
Before we left the corridor, I asked Park to preserve any courthouse recordings covering the western staircase and elevator lobby. She repeated the locations back to me, wrote them down, and said the request would be documented.
That was the first promise I trusted that morning because it described a task someone else could later check.