Page 50 of Soft Erasure

The me on the chair had not.

I felt him behind me, watching me watch it. Not moving.

Reading the number on my wrist instead of my face, because the number was the truer thing and he had built it to be.

He was a row back and he had never been closer.

My skin came up for a man who wasn’t in front of me and hadn’t lifted a hand.

The attention was the contact now.

He had built that too.

I wanted him on my side. He’d put me in that chair, on that screen, with my own hand forged pressing a word I never said, and I knew it.

That was what he had made of me, and he was behind me, watching it total.

A woman in a salmon sweater applauded when the clip ended, the applause of an audience told what to do.

I didn’t applaud.

Dr. Callow took the chair beside me. Sixty. White coat that still read as staff.

The key pin on her lapel, the one I’d last seen in the discharge room.

She didn’t look at me.

She put a folded square of paper into my palm, low, between the chairs where no lens sat, and nothing on my wrist moved.

They watched the number, not the hands, and a number could be held still while a hand worked.

I closed my fingers on it.

Penelope turned back to the room. “Are there concerns? About the footage. The lobby protocol. The consent process. We invite questions.”

I stood up.

The body rose. It rose because the number had held at sixty-seven through the clip, and sixty-seven was low. Low enough that the system, busy closing the pool, had not yet written a rule for a woman getting to her feet in a Community Care Update. The gap was small. I stood in it.

“Penelope.”

She turned. She smiled. She had been ready for me for a month. “Ms. Vale.”

“The clip cuts one word early. The word after choosing was not. I did not say I agree. The button was pressed by a hand that wasn’t mine. I’d like the unedited file shown in this room, on this screen, in front of these women, with the room as my witness.”

The room didn’t breathe.

Penelope kept the smile. Her eyes went to Caleb. Caleb’s went to the back of the room. The man with the portfolio didn’t move his at all.

“That isn’t the protocol of this meeting, Ms. Vale.” She said it gently. The gentleness was a knife handed to a woman who had been promised she would not need one. “We can arrange a private review with Counsel next week.”

“By next week the room won’t be here,” I said. “I want the room.”

Caleb stood. “Amb.” The laugh under it, ready. “Come on. Let’s step out a second.”

“Caleb.” I kept my eyes on the screen. “Sit down.”

He sat down.