The Workshop Address Led Us To A Locked Empty Bay

"I haven't seen any records removed," I told the reviewer. "I have seen numbers that don't match."

"Keep those two facts separate," she said.

Her name was Marta Cho. Preston paid her firm for yearly compliance reviews. The agreement also gave staff a way to report problems without going through him.

I had never used it before.

"Your report reached me yesterday," she said. "The trust called this afternoon. Your owner has received a request to preserve records."

"Can he fire me?"

"I can't promise what he'll do. I can document what he does."

That was less comfort than I wanted. It was more honest than anything I had heard upstairs.

On Monday, Safiya collected her packet at reception. She paid the posted copying charge of $12 and insisted on a receipt.

Then she called me during my lunch break.

"You've got to see this address."

"Don't send me other people's records."

"It's my chair, Daniel. And their public workshop brochure."

She sent the brochure first.

Cedar Reach Seating Works occupied Bay Four of an old brick building near the rail line. According to Preston's printed account, twelve craftspeople worked there. The shop had an accessible fitting room and a small training floor.

Safiya had already called the property manager.

"Bay Four's empty," she said. "He'll meet us outside at six."

I went after work. I needed to see whether there was a reasonable answer I had missed.

Rain had left dark patches on the brick. A freight train moved beyond the building, its wheels making a slow hard beat.

The manager, Luis Calder, showed us the number beside a steel door.

"Four," he said. "Used to store restaurant tables."

Safiya looked at the step below the entrance.

"That's their accessible fitting room?"

Luis unlocked the bay and stood aside. We stayed at the open doorway.

Inside were bare walls, a broken broom, and pale squares where shelves had once stood. No benches. No dust lines from machines. No place to wash up. A curled leaf moved across the floor.

"Could they have moved out recently?" I asked.

"Been vacant twenty months."

I showed him the brochure's date. Four months earlier.

He frowned.

"A man named Vale toured it. Never signed a lease."

"Would you tell the trust's lawyer that?" Safiya asked.

"If someone is using my address, yes."

She took a picture of the bay number with his permission. She didn't pose in front of the empty room. Neither of us had anything to smile about.

"I signed a release for him to use my story," she said as we left. "I didn't give him permission to add a building."

I had no answer that would make that smaller. I held the gate while she rolled through.

On the way back, we stopped near the Roanoke River. She had brought sandwiches in a cooler, because she treated every outing like a race with poor food service.

"Was my chair safe?" she asked.

I put my sandwich down.

"The loaner fit you when we checked it. That doesn't make the billing true. It doesn't mean you received what you were promised. We should arrange a fresh equipment review somewhere independent."

She watched the water.

"I thought maybe you'd tell me I was lucky to get anything."

"No."

"He did. When I asked about the eight hundred sixty."

I remembered Preston's speeches about giving people choices. I wished I had asked harder questions sooner.

"I saw separate delays," I said. "I didn't put them together until patients brought the insurance letters."

"Then put them together now."

That night, I wrote down what Luis had said and marked it as my account of a conversation, not proof of a lease. Safiya sent her own notes to Ruth. The trust's lawyer could ask for the actual records.

Tuesday morning, Marta met me at the archive cabinet.

I showed her the seal log and Preston's old order naming me custodian. She read the part about paired photographs twice.

"How many packets?"

"I haven't checked the full group. I reported the three I knew about."

She requested access to the related files through the clinic and asked me to locate them in place. I wrote each movement in the bound book while she watched.

By noon, seven of the first eight packets had initial measurements, loaner photographs, and no signed record of finished custom seating.

One had a real completed fitting. I made sure she saw that one too.

"Different facts," she said.

"Different facts," I agreed.

At three, Preston sent Marta away, saying her contract was under review.

At four, he put a paper on my workbench.

It was called a Corrective Equipment Summary. It said all missing delivery signatures were clerical errors, and it had a line for my name.

"Sign by tomorrow," he said, "or your employment ends."