Chương 170: CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY: THE PROCEEDING

The message came on the afternoon of the sixteenth day, and Sennet ran it down to the study herself rather than sending for Marcus, which was not protocol and which Marcus never mentioned to her. He read it standing in the middle of the room. ADMISSIBILITY GRANTED. KESSLING RULED FROM THE TEXT. HE READ THE CLAUSE ALOUD — THE WHOLE CLAUSE INCLUDING THE PURPOSE STATEMENT — AND THEN ASKED THE ACCUSED THREE QUESTIONS IN THE REGIONAL DIALECT. SHE COULD NOT ANSWER THE SECOND OR THIRD.

HE RULED THAT SHE STOOD MUTE WITHIN THE MEANING OF THE PROVISION AND THAT REPRESENTATION WAS THEREFORE NOT MERELY PERMITTED BUT REQUIRED. HE SAID: "THE CHARTER DOES NOT SAY THE COURT MAY ALLOW A VOICE. IT SAYS THE ACCUSED SHALL NOT STAND MUTE. THAT IS AN OBLIGATION ON THIS COURT, NOT A COURTESY TO THE ACCUSED." I DID NOT HAVE TO MAKE MY ARGUMENT. HE MADE IT. SUBSTANTIVE PROCEEDING BEGINS TOMORROW. HOLLOWAY AND I WILL SPLIT — HE TAKES THE MEDICAL CAUSATION, I TAKE THE ACCOUNTABILITY QUESTION AND THE OVERSIGHT OFFER.

THE PRIOR HAS READ BOTH OKAFOR DOCUMENTS. HE ASKED TO MEET HER. I SAID SHE WAS NINE DAYS AWAY. HE SAID: "THEN I SHALL HAVE TO JUDGE HER BY HER WRITING." I COULD NOT TELL WHETHER THIS WAS GOOD. ONE MORE THING. THE ACCUSED ASKED ME TO SEND A MESSAGE. SHE SAID SHE DID NOT KNOW WHAT TO SAY. THEN SHE SAID: "TELL THEM I KEPT THE RECORDS." SHE HAS NINE YEARS OF PATIENT RECORDS IN THE COTTAGE. EVERY CASE. WRITTEN IN ENGLISH. C. Marcus read the last three lines four times. Tell them I kept the records. Nine years alone.

No colleague, no review, no institution, no one to send them to and no reason to believe anyone would ever read them. And she kept the records. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. Because that was what you did. Because a practitioner documented. Because somewhere under nine years of isolation was a specialist who had been trained that the record was part of the care, and she had kept doing the training's work in the absence of anything that made it matter.

He sat down slowly in the chair at his desk. Then he stood up again and went to find Okafor, because she needed to know, and because he wanted to be in the room when she did. He found her in the clinic. He handed her the sheet without saying anything. She read it. He watched her get to the last three lines. He watched her stop. She stood very still for a moment with the paper in both hands.

"Nine years of records," she said.

"Yes."

"Every case." Her voice was not entirely steady, which in nine years Marcus had heard perhaps three times.

"That's — Marcus, that's the largest single-practitioner clinical record in this world. Nine years of continuous documented practice by someone with modern training." She looked up.

"It's not just evidence for the proceeding. Although it is that — Holloway can use it, the causation argument is much stronger with contemporaneous notes. But that's not—" She stopped.

"Say it," Marcus said.

"She was writing to someone," Okafor said.

"That's what a record is. You write it because someone will read it. She had no one to read it and she wrote it for nine years anyway." She set the sheet down on the desk very carefully.

"She was writing to whoever came." Marcus did not say anything.

"We came," Okafor said.

"Yes," he said. She turned away for a moment and did something with a stack of papers that did not need doing.

"When she's out," she said, without turning around, "I want her here for six months minimum. Not as a patient. As a colleague. She needs to sit in a room with other practitioners and discuss cases until it stops being strange to her." She paused.

"And I want those records copied before anything happens to them. All of them. Before she travels, before the cottage sits empty, before anything."

"I'll send instruction on the evening relay," Marcus said.

"Tonight," she said.

"Tonight," he agreed. He wrote the instruction himself at the tower station as the light went. C — COPY THE RECORDS BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE. ALL NINE YEARS. HIRE COPYISTS LOCALLY IF NEEDED, DRAW ON THE LETTER OF CREDIT, DO NOT WAIT FOR THE PROCEEDING'S OUTCOME. IF THE OUTCOME IS BAD THE RECORDS ARE THE ONLY THING THAT SURVIVES HER. IF IT IS GOOD THEY ARE THE FIRST THING SHE BRINGS. TELL HER: THE RECORDS WERE RECEIVED. TELL HER THAT EXACTLY. M. Sennet sent it.

The mirror flashed east into the failing light, station to station, four relays across a hundred and eighty miles, carrying eleven words that a woman in a cell had been waiting nine years to hear without knowing she was waiting. Marcus stood at the tower's east-facing window until the last relay confirmation came back. Then he went down and walked the walls.