Noura Signed Her Own Account And Returned The Prepared Statement

The new statement had room for Noura's signature beneath three neat paragraphs.

It said she had worn harness 6B.

It said Ben Vale had freed her inside the launch.

It said my claim came from confusion over a surface support task.

Russell had included a note asking for a quick return so the matter would not disturb upcoming personnel decisions.

Noura laid both pages on Ruth's desk.

“I want my own lawyer,” she said. “I don't want Kou's lawyer telling me what I should say.”

“That's the right choice,” Ruth said.

For the first time since the reunion, Noura's shoulders dropped a little.

Her lawyer took a week to go through the records with her. I worked during that week. I mailed fins to a woman in Tuscaloosa and fixed a strap at no charge for a swimmer who had pulled it through a car door.

Ruth told me not to call Noura about her statement.

So I didn't.

When the call finally came, Noura asked to meet by the bay in daylight.

We sat on separate ends of a bench near the causeway. The air smelled of mud and fried fish from the road behind us.

“I've signed it,” she said.

“The truth?”

“All I can remember. Including what I signed before.”

She gave me a copy that her lawyer had cleared her to share.

It was seven pages long.

She named the harness swap, the loose hatch plate, Russell's order, and my hand on the trapped webbing. She described meeting Vale near the ascent line after we had left the wreck.

She also admitted that she had let the wrong account support her commendation and later applications.

“They might take my award,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I asked them to review it.”

I read that sentence twice.

“I can't tell you we're fine now,” I said.

“I didn't come for that.”

A child dropped a cracker near the bench. Three gulls fought over it with more noise than the prize deserved.

We both watched until they left.

Noura had been brave when the water went black. I had seen her guide a shaking young diver through a tangled line without raising her voice. Now she had done something that scared her more than that water ever had.

I could respect the act without pretending the years between us had vanished.

“Thank you for signing your name,” I said.

She nodded.

Ben Vale gave his statement the next week.

He had left the service and worked on tugboats out of Pascagoula. The investigator reached him through his old contact information, not through me.

He said he had met us on the ascent line. He had steadied Noura and helped guide the last section upward.

“I never entered that launch,” he wrote.

His own award citation had placed him inside it.

He said he had challenged the wording once. Russell had told him the citation used a broad description of the whole rescue team. Vale had accepted that answer.

Now he asked that his citation be corrected, too.

The file grew heavier.

The investigator, Erin Voss, asked to examine the original gear sheet under good light. She compared Calvin's signature with forms from the same month. She interviewed him separately.

She asked me how I knew the recorder's dive date was right.

“I don't know it from the screen alone,” I said.

That answer seemed to matter to her.

The lab compared the stored profile with the old printed depth summary in the equipment file. The unusual bottom readings matched. The original sheet placed NH04 on my harness for that dive, and the medical entries placed Noura and me back on deck before Vale could have made the rescue described in his citation.

Nothing stood alone anymore.

Voss sent me a page of follow-up questions. One asked whether I had spoken to Vale before he gave his account. Another asked whether Noura and I had compared details before she met her lawyer.

I listed our calls and the visit to my shop. I gave her the packing slip on which I had written Ruth's number.

“They'll check our side, too,” I told Ruth.

“They should,” she said.

I had wanted someone to believe me for so long that being checked still hurt. I answered anyway. A record that could survive those questions would be stronger than somebody's promise to trust me.

Then the missing audio turned up.

The safety office had kept a separate archive under the launch's recovery number. Our first request had reached the incident file. Voss's wider request reached the safety file as well.

Ruth called me to her office.

“You should hear this with me,” she said.

She opened the supplied file and checked its label against the index.

Static filled the room. Then Calvin's voice warned that the plate needed lifting before we used the hatch.

Russell answered, clear enough to recognize.

“Use Access B. We do not need a second lift.”