The conference room had no windows and smelled faintly of old coffee. I sat beneath a framed photograph of the courthouse dedication while the paramedic checked my pupils and asked whether the ringing in my ear was getting worse.
I said it was steady. She recommended a hospital evaluation for the head strike and advised me not to drive myself.
My first response was to ask about the hearing upstairs. Keene looked at me with something close to disbelief.
“Nadine, they can move a hearing.”
He had not called me by my first name at work in years. The sound of it broke through the professional voice I had been using since Rourke grabbed my arm.
“People took time off,” I said. “One witness came from another county.”
“Then the clerk will explain. You are not going to the bench with a head injury.”
He was right. I asked Iris to contact the presiding judge, arrange appropriate reassignment or a delay, and protect the confidentiality of the papers now stacked in the box.
Rourke's supervisor could investigate an incident. I could not continue treating myself as the person responsible for every consequence of it.
Park returned to say the recordings had been placed on a preservation hold. She also confirmed that Rourke's body camera and initial report would be handled under the department's evidence procedures rather than passed informally between colleagues.
“Who will investigate?” I asked.
“The initial response is ours. Given your position here, an outside agency will need to be involved in decisions beyond immediate preservation.”
I nodded. I did not want a friend investigating an enemy I had acquired twenty minutes earlier, and I did not want Rourke judged by me simply because he had struck a judge.
Park asked whether I was ready to give a short preliminary account. The paramedic said we had time for a few questions before leaving, and I described the elevator, the mistaken name, the grip, my movement against his wrist, and the slap.
I made sure to include that I had tried to walk toward the clerk's station. It would have been easy to tell a cleaner story in which I stood perfectly still through every insult.
“I moved his wrist away,” I said. “I want that recorded accurately.”
Park wrote it down and asked which hand I used. I showed her, slowly, feeling a tremor begin at my elbow.
I had spent fifteen years as a public defender before taking the bench. I knew how testimony could be narrowed until a frightened person's ordinary reaction sounded like the event's entire cause.
Knowing that did not make me immune to fear. It made me aware of how precisely fear could be used.
My husband, Aaron, answered on the second ring. I told him I was safe before describing anything else, then heard my own words fail when I tried to say that a police officer had hit me at work.
“Which hospital?” he asked.
I gave him the name. He did not tell me to calm down or ask whether I was certain; he said he would meet me there.
In the ambulance, my phone filled with messages. A colleague asked if it was true, a reporter requested comment, and an unknown number sent a blurry photograph of the corridor.
I turned the screen facedown. The paramedic handed me an ice pack wrapped in a cloth, and for the first time that morning I had nothing useful to do except hold it against my cheek.
At the hospital, Aaron came through the door wearing his raincoat over a shirt buttoned incorrectly. He stopped when he saw my face, then sat beside me and took the hand that was not holding the ice.
“Tell me what you need,” he said.
I considered explanations about evidence, jurisdiction, and the delicate position of the court. What came out was much simpler.
“Stay.”
I had not eaten since early morning, and the nurse asked whether there was anyone who could bring something after the examination. Aaron offered to go, but I shook my head before he stood. He understood and asked the nurse about another option. The conversation lasted less than a minute; what mattered was that my answer changed what happened next, without an argument about whether I had earned the right to give it.
He did. While the doctor examined me and the phone continued vibrating inside my bag, my husband stayed beside the chair, and I allowed someone else to carry the next hour.