He looked at me directly then, something he had not really done since the day I collapsed in front of him. “I want to say, for the record, that this court takes seriously what happened here. A woman was disbelieved, in this very room, while experiencing a life-threatening medical event. I hope that this case serves as a reminder — to me as much as to anyone — that the absence of an immediate diagnosis is not evidence of dishonesty. It is often simply evidence that we have not looked hard enough yet.”
I did not expect an apology from a judge. I had stopped expecting apologies from almost anyone by that point. But something in that sentence settled a part of me that had been unsettled since the moment Patricia pointed at me across a courtroom and called me a liar.
Outside, in the hallway, Daniel caught up with me before I reached the elevator.
