"Yes," I said finally. "I was there."
"I'd like to get a statement from you, if that's all right. For the supplemental."
I could have said no. I want to be clear that I could have. He couldn't make me. But he had a slow, patient, Appalachian-edged voice, a voice like the men at my mother's church, and he said, "The young lady's doing better. She's out of the ICU. I thought you might want to know that," and something in my chest unknotted a little, and I said all right.
He came to my apartment that Thursday evening, in uniform, and sat at my kitchen table with his campaign hat on his knee and a clipboard, and I told him what happened, and he wrote it down. He asked to see my hands, and I unwrapped the right one for him, and he looked at the stitches for a while without saying anything, and then he wrote something on his form. At the end, he turned the clipboard around and asked me to read what he had written and sign it if it was accurate, and I read it, and it was accurate, and I signed it, with my left hand, badly.
"There's going to be some interest in this," he said, standing up, putting his hat on. "The news has already been on it. They've been talking to the gentleman who stayed at the scene. Mr. Lockhart."
"I'd rather not," I said. "Be in it. The news."
He looked at me with his careful eyes. "It's a public record, ma'am, the crash report. The involved parties can request it. Insurance, the driver, whoever. Your name will be on the supplemental as a witness. I can't change that."
"I know," I said. "But I don't have to talk to anybody."