It is trained reflex, the same way a nurse’s hands find a pulse without being told to, the same way a driver’s foot finds the brake.

My professional self, the one I had spent three years suppressing to keep the peace, was still awake underneath all that suppression, still watching, still ready — and when the danger came, it acted, without waiting for my permission, and it preserved the truth of what happened in a form no one could later deny.

I have come to think of that recording as a message from my own buried self, sent forward in time to the woman I would become.

The competent, fearless professional I had folded away was still in there, and when I could not protect myself, she did it for me, with the one tool she had never stopped knowing how to use.