No amount felt meaningful compared with three lost years of certainty.
Paul Keating, my former supervisor, had not been part of scheme.
That surprised me.
He had forwarded my concerns to internal accounting.
But review moved too slowly.
After crash, my absence caused work to stall.
That was institutional failure.
Not conspiracy.
I met Paul once.
He said:
“I should have pushed harder.”
I replied:
“Yes.”
Sometimes apology can be true without being enough.
My memories returned in fragments.
Rain.
Headlights too close.
A horn.
My hands tightening wheel.
A pickup beside me.
Not face.
Not license plate.
I stopped trying to make memory perform in court.
Evidence had to stand independently.
That was important.
Trauma memory can be incomplete.
My inability to remember did not make me unreliable as a person.
It simply meant I could not testify to what I did not remember.
Daniel understood that better than anyone.
