Page 3 of Vital Signs

But it was, wasn't it? This could have been me on that table. If Roche had succeeded.

The flashback slammed into me harder this time. Roche's lab. The examination table. Pills forced down my throat while I struggled. "This is for your own good. Hush now, darling. You'll get bruises if you fight. And nobody wants to photograph a model with bruises."

My knees buckled. I gripped the examination table, knuckles white against the metal edge. The coldness grounded me, unlike Roche's warm hands or soft leather restraints.

"You're safe now," I whispered to myself, the word "safe" still strange in English.

But was I? Standing here with another victim, rage built in my chest like a living thing.

It wasn't clean, professional anger anymore. This was something darker. More personal. The kind of rage that came from watching systems fail people over and over again.

This person had been someone's child. Someone's friend. He'd had a name, dreams, a life worth living. And the county had treated him like trash. Like his death didn't matter. Likehedidn't matter.

The same way Roche had treated me. Roche had walked free from their trial while I'd watched from the gallery, terrified of what they’d do to me. The defense had dismissed my testimony as “confused rambling from a spoiled model with gender identity and addiction issues.”

The world had looked away from me. And now it was looking away from the man on my table.

Both of us had been betrayed by systems meant to protect us. The only difference was I'd survived to tell my story.

There but for a few twists of fate lie I.

I imagined my hands around someone's throat. Squeezing. Watching the light fade from their eyes the way they'd watched Tyler's life fade without caring enough to even get his name right.

I forced myself to breathe. To document. To be professional.

I snapped photographs of the evidence of drug toxicity, the multiple pill bottles in the evidence bag, the signs of cardiac arrest the coroner had noted. Each click of the camera became a promise. Or a threat.

The cheap smartphone lay at the bottom of the evidence bag.

My hand hovered over it.

I wasn't supposed to do this. We had strict protocols. Document, store, release to next of kin. Never access. Never examine. Privacy was sacred, even in death. Especially in death.

Roche had gone through my things too. My phone, my messages, my photos. He'd read my texts out loud, analyzing my relationships, violating every boundary.

I'd sworn I would never do that to someone else. My fingers curled into a fist, pulling back from the phone.

But who would speak for this man if I didn't? The county had already failed him. They weren't looking for answers. They'd filled out their forms and moved on.

His tattoo flashed in my mind. He/him. Someone who'd fought to be seen correctly, only to be erased in death.

I reached for the phone again. Stopped.

This was exactly what Roche had done. Justified violation with noble purposes. "I'm preserving beauty," he'd said. "I'm creating art." Making it sound like he was doing us a favor.

Was I any different? "I'm helping," I told myself. "I'm fighting for justice."

The rationalization tasted like ash in my mouth.

I glanced toward the door. River trusted me to do this right. But "doing it right" had left Tyler Graham as Jane Doe. "Following protocol" meant no one would investigate. "Respecting the dead" meant letting whoever killed him walk free.

Maybe no one had even looked at the phone. Maybe it held all the answers.

My hand was shaking now. I plugged the phone into our charger and set it aside, positioning myself between it and the door.

The screen lit up.

I'm doing this FOR him, not TO him.