It is that the specifics of how a body can be pushed to the edge of death are not knowledge that belongs in the open air of a hospital corridor with frightened people and a recording perhaps running on someone’s phone.
The exact nature of what was done to Gethin went into the sealed report I would hand the police, phrased in the clinical language that a court requires and that no one could ever use as a recipe.
In the corridor, out loud, in front of his family and the woman who had done it, I said only what needed saying: that it was deliberate, that it was nearly fatal, and that I knew.
The naming of the crime was necessary — his family had to understand what had happened, and Carys had to understand that I understood.
The mechanics of it were necessary too, but only in the one place they belonged, which was the evidence file.
I have spent my career at the border between the two, between the knowledge that heals and the same knowledge that harms, and I have learned exactly where to draw the line and to hold it without apology.