Next came the medical record from May. Judge Hanley read the recommendation for cardiac monitoring and asked Daniel’s attorney whether that record had been available before the earlier hearing. The attorney admitted it had. The judge reminded him that telling the court there had been no objective reason to suspect a physical cause was not the same thing as saying there had been no final diagnosis.
Daniel testified that he never intentionally misled anyone. He insisted he thought my symptoms were connected to anxiety because that was how they looked to him. I showed him the hospital message where he called my courtroom collapse a “stunt,” and he said he had been angry because the hearing was delayed. I asked why my medical emergency made him angry, and for once he had no clean answer.
Then I asked him the question I had carried since the day I hit the floor. “When I collapsed, why didn’t you come to me?” His attorney objected, but Judge Hanley allowed the question. Daniel finally said, “I thought you were doing what you always do—making things bigger than they are.”
