Captain Shaw offered to contact the state attorney’s office on Camille’s behalf. Camille refused before the offer was finished.
“I will make my own calls.”
She heard how sharp she sounded and decided not to soften it. For most of the afternoon, other people had decided when she could explain herself, where her identification should be, and which facts counted. She was entitled to choose who heard her voice first.
Shaw gave her privacy and a station phone because her own remained inside the SUV. Camille called Naomi.
Her sister answered with a complaint about a bakery being out of the cake they ordered. Then she heard Camille say her name differently and stopped.
“What’s happened?”
Camille had argued serious cases before judges who interrupted every third sentence. She had stood beside families waiting for verdicts. She had told voters why public power required limits. Now the simple task of explaining a parking lot made her throat close.
“I’m at Central Station. I’m free to leave. I need a ride.”
Naomi did not demand the rest immediately. “I’m coming. Which entrance?”
Camille looked through the glass toward the public lobby. The front door seemed like a difficult place to stand.
“I’ll meet you outside when you get here.”
While she waited, a medical professional examined her wrists and documented her symptoms. There was no dramatic injury for a camera to understand. There were red lines, tenderness, and intermittent tingling that might resolve with time. The clinician explained what to monitor and arranged the appropriate follow-up without making promises.
Camille listened carefully. She had already spent enough of the day being told discomfort could wait.
Ellis brought a property receipt and copies of the available release documentation. Camille read each page. One line still said suspected vehicle theft pending investigation. She asked what that meant now that ownership had been confirmed.
Ellis checked with Shaw and returned with a corrected status entry and an explanation of the records that would remain associated with the incident. Camille requested the relevant reference numbers. She was not asking for a private erasure. She wanted an accurate account of what the station held about her.
“Do you want to make a complaint now?” Ellis asked.
Camille looked at the clock. “I want the records preserved now. My representative can arrange the complaint.”
Ellis wrote down the request and provided acknowledgment.
The sergeant seemed about to say something else. Camille waited.
“I recognized your name,” Ellis said. “I should tell you that.”
“I know.”
“It shouldn’t have needed that.”
Camille looked at her for a long moment. “Then make sure your account includes when you started asking questions and why.”
It was not an easy answer. Ellis accepted it anyway.
Naomi arrived twenty-three minutes after the call, wearing sandals and the expression of a person holding several dangerous feelings behind her teeth. She saw the marks on Camille’s wrists and reached for her hands, then stopped to ask whether touching would hurt.
That small question almost made Camille cry.
In the car, Naomi asked whether they should return to the SUV. Camille said she could not drive it yet. The pharmacy agreed it could remain secured briefly while collection was arranged. An officer had returned the purse and keys through the documented process, but the car itself had become, for the moment, another room she did not want to enter.
“He left my birthday card inside,” she said suddenly.
Naomi stared at her. “Camille.”
“I was picking it up for you. It’s ridiculous. That’s what I keep thinking about.”
“Then we’ll get the card later. I can survive an unrecognized birthday.”
Camille laughed once, and the laugh broke into tears before she could control it. Naomi pulled into a quiet street and parked. She did not tell her sister to calm down. She did not praise her for staying dignified. She sat beside her while the body Camille had kept obedient all afternoon finally admitted it had been frightened.
After a while, Camille wiped her face with a tissue and looked through the windshield.
“He said women like me don’t run that office.”
Naomi’s face changed.
“And you told him?”
“I told him who I was.”
“I mean what he meant.”
Camille shook her head. “He wouldn’t explain.”
Naomi took a breath and started the engine when her sister was ready.
At home, there would be calls, lawyers, paperwork, and the problem of being a public official with a private wound.
For the next ten minutes, Camille wanted only to be someone whose sister had come to get her.