I put Esme in the car seat and I supported the left leg with my hand while I did the straps, and I drove twenty-eight minutes to the children’s hospital, and I did not speed, which two separate people have since told me is unusual and which I think is just how I am.

And in the parking structure, before I got her out of the car, I did the thing that turned out to matter more than anything else I did that year.

I opened the notes app on my phone and I typed for ninety seconds.

I did it because it is a reflex.

I have spent sixteen years being the person in a room whose job is to preserve what happened, and when something happens to me my hands go to a keyboard the way other people’s hands go to their mouths.

Here is what I typed, verbatim, and I have never edited it and it has been entered as an exhibit twice.