This Is Where We Stop novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Statement

The county ambulance service held its review board in a training room with a drop ceiling and forty folding chairs.

Every chair was full by ten to nine.

The back wall was lined with dispatchers in gray polos, and the paramedics stood along the side in their uniform jackets.

Nobody talked. A projector hummed on a cart.

I sat in the second row with Padraig, and his knee was warm against mine.

Colson came in alone.

He wore the dress uniform from the gala without the medal, and he had a single sheet of paper in his hand.

The board sat at a long table, five people and a chair, and the chair was the woman who had once signed my husband's performance reviews.

"Mr. Teale," she said. "You asked to make a statement."

"Yes."

"Your counsel is not present."

"I don't have counsel."

A murmur went along the walls.

"Go ahead," the chair said.

Colson stepped up to the podium and put the page down.

His hands were steady, and I realized he had practiced this too.

"On the night of June ninth, six years ago, I was the supervisor on the dispatch desk," he said. "At eleven forty-one I sent Unit 4 to a motorcycle crash on the Ross Island Bridge ramp."

His voice was low, but the microphone carried it.

"At eleven forty-three I took Unit 4 off that call. I sent it to a non-injury collision at Burnside and Grand."

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