The Lawyer Read The Threat Beside My Yellow Dive Register

Maren Ellis read Nolan's message twice, then turned my phone face down.

"Has anyone contacted your employer?"

"Not yet."

"We'll preserve this. We won't answer it in anger."

She was a lawyer in southern Indiana who took some cases through a veterans' legal fund. The fund had approved my application. Her letter spelled out the work it would cover and said I owed no fee for those hours.

I had read that part three times before signing.

"I don't have $75,000," I told her.

"A demand isn't a judgment. Show me the records."

Her office had no flags, swords, or pictures of judges. There was a coat rack and a dying fern.

I liked it.

We spread the papers over her meeting table. She put Nolan's signed nomination beside the daily register.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"My name in the right line. His out of mine."

"And money?"

"I want to keep the money I earn fixing gates."

She made a note.

Her reply to his lawyer was two pages. It denied that my statements were false, listed the supporting records, and asked that all related files be preserved.

She did not call him names.

I watched her put the attachments in order. It looked like laying out tools before opening a gearbox.

Two days later, Nolan called from a number I did not know.

"You're making this expensive," he said.

I moved the phone to my right ear.

"Please speak to Maren."

"We're old friends."

"Then you know which side I hear on."

He went quiet.

"I held that team together after you got hurt," he said. "Someone had to tell the story."

"You could have used my name."

"People needed a clear account."

"They got one. It was false."

He offered to add me to the council website as a supporting rescuer. He said there might even be a paid spot at a seminar.

"How much?" I asked.

"Three hundred dollars for an afternoon."

I wrote the offer on the back of an envelope, with the time.

"Send that through your lawyer."

He ended the call.

For six weeks, the work moved at paper speed.

I greased bearings, changed seals, and checked knots twice on the safety ropes. Some nights I woke with the feel of that steel brace against my helmet.

The next morning, I still went to work.

Once, my foreman found me staring at a blank maintenance form.

"Need help with that bearing?" he asked.

"No. Just a minute."

He gave me the minute. Then we lifted the cover together, and I found that I could still finish a useful job while another one waited.

Saira called every Thursday. She never began with how I felt.

"What came in?" she asked.

It was an easier question to answer.

The independent examiner's report came first. The file showed no sign of cuts or added sound. Its clock ran steadily through the rescue. The card held footage before and after the copied section.

The slate's times matched the visible counter closely enough to support Saira's notes. The examiner explained the small difference between the camera clock and the surface watch.

Then the service records arrived.

I opened the thick envelope at Maren's office.

The official daily register matched my yellow copy. Same entries. Same signatures. My dive had lasted fourteen minutes.

A later summary, prepared by Nolan, called me language support and named him as the sole recovering diver.

No medical officer had signed away my memory. No supervisor had changed the diver log. Nolan's summary had simply traveled farther than the source beneath it.

"That explains the two versions," Maren said. "It doesn't excuse them."

Bell's statement came the next day.

She had left the service and moved west to care for her father. Saira had found her through an old training contact.

Bell confirmed the route change, my return with both workers, and the helmet strike. She also confirmed that Nolan had not dressed for a dive.

"Why hadn't she corrected it before?" I asked.

"She says she never received the final summary or the civilian nomination. We'll include that statement, too."

Ellen sent notice that the remaining grant payment had been frozen. The council's board had placed Nolan on leave while it reviewed his expense report.

Those were temporary steps, written as temporary steps.

I began to trust the process because it did not pretend to be finished.

On Friday, June delivered the public review notice.

The foundation would meet in Madison on October ninth. Nolan could bring counsel and submit an answer. Saira and I had been asked to attend.

The last page listed a witness I had not seen since the ambulance doors closed.

Dana Webb, survey crew member, had agreed to come.