Eight months after the marble floor changed my brain’s weather, I sat in Patricia’s office while she stacked outcomes like files: civil verdict, criminal sentences, restitution schedules. “They want to settle,” she said at one point. I thought about money as apology and decided I preferred truth as record. We went to trial. The jury listened to the ER doctor outline injury patterns that don’t come from “discipline” and to a detective describe a belt in a plastic bag. They awarded damages that lo