The Inconsistencies

The arbitrator lets me in, and the room is five rectangles. The arbitrator. My lawyer. The insurance company’s lawyer. A fourth person whose role is never explained to me. And then me.

The insurance company’s lawyer goes first, and he’s brought my own record to use against me.

The claimant’s statements are inconsistent, he says. In his earliest accounts, he claims no memory of the accident. In later statements, he describes the minutes leading up to it in detail, and still claims no memory of the accident itself. He told one doctor one thing and another doctor another. The accident report does not match the deposition. These inconsistencies, he says, go directly to his credibility.

My mind goes spinning, and I will be honest, not all of it is kind to myself. I look at my lawyer, which in this room means I look at a rectangle, and the rectangle does not look back. It isn’t very effective when you aren’t in an actual courtroom, to look at your lawyer with incredulity in your eyes.

I watch myself flush in my own tile, now a small red man on an orange floral sofa (which, I’m not small… but the screen sure makes me look small), in the corner of the argument, and I put my hands below the frame and find the breath I know how to find, and I ground myself.

Oh, he’s not finished. He has a list. That lists has dates. He does not understand what he is reading, or he understands it exactly. My memory of the lead-up came back across the first year, the way memory sometimes does around an injury like this, partially, out of order, without asking permission. Every statement was true on the day I made it. The record changed because I was healing, and healing, read aloud by an adversary, sounds exactly like I’m lying.

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The Mistake

And then, a worse thing beings to happen. The argument begins to work on me.

Did I make a mistake? Somewhere in that list, did I say a wrong thing, sign a wrong thing, remember a wrong thing?

I try to check my testimony against my memory and my memory does not answer. I can feel the familiar frustration rise within myself. The frustration with my new limitations. My memory is both healed and unhealed, and now, both halves have just been entered against me as evidence.

The opposing attorney closes: It is our position that the claimant is not believable and the injuries are not credible, and therefore, this claim must be dismissed.

My attorney prepared me for this. Not believable. This is what we were preparing for. I take deeper breaths.

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The Advocate

My lawyer unmutes.

I want to thank opposing counsel, he says, for acknowledging the depth of my client’s injury on the record.

The expert evaluation (the one I shared with you in part three) already entered into evidence, documents precisely this presentation: unreliable recall, particularly under pressure, persisting across time. What counsel calls inconsistency, our expert report documents as a common symptom of traumatic brain injury. This is simply further evidence of my client’s continuing injury and disability.

And then the sentence that haunts me:

My client does not need to be a witness to his own accident. There are corroborating accounts of that day more complete than his could ever be.

The insurance company’s lawyer has gone white, and I can see it, because the grid shows everyone everything. My flush with anger. His ghost whiteness of mistakehood.

I sit very still on the sofa while the argument that rescues me also simultaneously finishes hurting me. My lawyer is likely winning both the battle, and the war, by proving that I cannot be trusted with my own story.

I spent two years becoming the historian of my own body. But not of my own memory. The archive will speak. Other people saw the accident I cannot remember. Their accounts are better than mine. This is good news. It is the best news of the year, and I rejoice. But it costs me something. Once again, I know my experience, and I do not. Another thing taken from me.

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The Date

The motion is denied.

The arbitrator sets the final hearing date. No more maneuvering from the insurance company. Two years of procedure, resolving into one square on a calendar.

I am relieved and anxious, excited and fearful. I am a lot of things.

The tiles begin to wink out, one goodbye at a time, and then the screen is dark and the room is the living room again. Poppy has not moved from her chair. From where she sat, the afternoon contained nothing. Helix relocated about five minutes in.

My page of notes is blank.

I pick up the pen and write the date of the final hearing. For the first time since the phone was on speaker, the record doesn’t need anything else from me.

The Next Day

My attorney calls the next day.

Your insurance company settled. I gave them one last opportunity to settle in good faith before we made the case for penalties during arbitration. It’s over.

I’m stunned.

I thank him. He tells me his assistant will be in touch about next steps, and that he appreciates my willingness to fight, and that it made a difference in the outcome of this case.

It got the part of me it got. I’m still finding out what that was.