The Auditor Sealed My Samples While Celeste Claimed Them

Nora arrived Monday with a hard case, a camera, and a stack of numbered seals.

She wore wet boots and carried her own coffee. Celeste offered to start with a tour of the new therapy room.

"First, the held materials," Nora said.

At the fabrication bench, she asked who ordered stock, who received it, who made the shells, and who released finished work.

Celeste answered the first question with my name.

"Reid handled our materials."

"I checked deliveries against packing lists," I said. "I didn't place orders."

"He had input."

Nora wrote that down too.

"I'll need the approval trail."

She didn't argue with either of us. She asked for records that could settle it.

I had brought my boxes by appointment. We opened them in a room with a clear table. Nora photographed the sleeves, compared my index with the batch log, and recorded the gaps.

There were two batches with no coupon. I had been out sick.

"Don't fill those in from memory," she said.

"I won't."

Celeste folded her arms.

"So his collection isn't even complete."

"Then my report will say that."

Hector arrived with the two sockets. Nora checked Dana's loan form and asked him about each one. He signed a separate consent for the lab to remove small samples from their edges.

"The old one might not be usable afterward," she told him.

"It's in the bag for a reason," he said. "Find out."

She packed the shells and coupons in separate sealed bags. I received a custody receipt for every item I owned. Hector received his own.

Watching the boxes leave was harder than I expected.

Until then, I could open my cupboard and see my answer. Now I had a receipt and someone else's careful process.

The first week became three. Then six.

The lab had a queue. Nora also needed purchasing records that Celeste kept sending in pieces. Each missing page produced another written request.

Dana's team reached all twenty-six patients. Appointments, temporary arrangements, and replacement plans filled a board in her office. New fabrication used verified stock under tighter checks.

I stayed in the stockroom at $24 an hour.

Sometimes I brought the marmot to lunch. I smoothed its flat base with folded sandpaper while the microwave hummed.

Celeste stopped saying my name in meetings. She said "the fabrication issue" and looked at me.

On the tenth Friday after my demotion, Nora asked to speak to me privately.

"The lab found a material difference," she said. "The older shell matches the recorded carbon system. The replacement contains glass reinforcement and a different resin. Your matching coupons show the same change."

I gripped the edge of the chair.

"So the replacement wasn't made from what the record said?"

"That's what the tests support. I still need to finish tracing how the stock entered production."

She warned me that a sample alone could not name the person who approved a purchase.

"I understand."

"Do you? You sound relieved."

I looked at the plaster dust on my cuff.

"For ten weeks, I've been wondering if my hands forgot something they knew."

She let that sit before asking her next question.

That afternoon, Celeste called me in. My final check waited beside a cardboard box.

"We're ending your employment," she said.

The written reason was removal of company material and refusal to cooperate with a safety response.

"You saw the agreement," I said.

"Our attorney has a different view."

I asked for the reason, the pay statement, and a copy of everything she wanted me to sign. I signed only the receipt for my check.

The smaller checks had already cost me $4,000. I had stopped buying lunch and put off replacing two worn tires. Celeste's box had a handle cut into each side. I stared at those handles, trying to think how I would carry home the rest of the month.

Then I packed my mug, my carving towel, and a photograph of my father.

Dana met me at the back door.

"I gave Nora the full release logs," she said. "Including my signatures. Whatever this finds, I want it right."

I thanked her. It was the first thing all day that didn't feel like a trap.

Hector was waiting beside his pickup. I had called him when Celeste took my keys.

"Lunch?" he asked.

"I can't buy lunch."

"Didn't ask you to."

We had reached the sidewalk when a woman in a brown coat stepped away from the fence.

"Reid Pennington?"

I said yes.

She handed me a packet bearing the clinic's name and the heading SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF NEVADA.

Celeste was asking a judge to take my samples and stop me from sharing them.