I gave the company’s compliance officer two things and nothing more: the timestamped photograph of the text message, and the medical record documenting the twenty-minute gap between the onset of Roland’s symptoms and the call for help.

I laid the facts down plainly, without a single word of editorializing, because facts laid down plainly do not need help.

That restraint was deliberate, and it cost me something, because there was a great deal I wanted to say.

I wanted to march into that compliance office and describe exactly what Kayla had done — the twenty minutes, the deleted messages, the pajama pants, the whole cold arithmetic of a woman choosing her own protection over a dying man.

I wanted them to feel about her what I felt.