Chapter 17: Dr. Mina Park
Mina Park had been moved underground.
Five years ago, she directed clinical safety. Her name led every AURORA review calendar and every request that scientists slow down for an uncomfortable question.
The current staff directory listed her as Senior Documentation Adviser.
Location: B2.
No direct reports.
No committee memberships.
I found her in a records room between boxed training manuals and retired equipment inventories.
Mina once stopped an executive presentation because a slide used safe without support. Conrad disliked the embarrassment. My mother sent her a note thanking her for protecting the difference between confidence and proof.
I had expected Mina to leave long before I did.
Mina looked up from her monitor when my temporary badge opened the door. She had more silver in her hair and the same square black glasses. For one second, neither of us moved.
"Evelyn."
"Mina."
The custodian remained at the doorway. Under the protocol, any conversation about the historic review had to be logged. Mina noticed the badge on his jacket before she noticed Rhea.
"I am working," she said.
"I can see that."
"Then you should let me."
Her voice was precise, but her cursor had stopped blinking in the middle of a sentence because her hand covered the screen.
I did not ask why she had stayed. People who survived institutions often received that question from people who had escaped them.
"Meeting Forty-Four is missing," I said.
Her face gave me almost nothing.
"Many old records are incomplete."
"Your name is first on the attendance list."
"Attendance lists are not minutes."
"Did the meeting happen?"
She looked at the custodian.
Rhea stepped forward. "Dr. Park, you are not required to answer without counsel. The independent committee can arrange an interview and protect the scope."
"Sterling pays my salary."
"That is not the same as owning your memory."
Mina removed her glasses and cleaned one lens with the edge of her sleeve.
"I did not see the complete process," she said.
The phrase sounded rehearsed.
"Which process?"
"The one everyone now wants me to describe."
"Did you say the same thing five years ago?"
"No one asked me that question five years ago."
"The investigation listed you as consulted."
"Consulted is a word people use when they want your title without your answer."
It was the longest sentence she had given me. She seemed to regret it immediately.
"I am asking about a meeting."
"And I am telling you I did not see everything."
She put her glasses back on and opened the door wider, ending the conversation without saying leave.
I turned.
"Did you see enough to know I was locked out?"
Mina's breathing changed.
Then a young employee entered carrying a carton of disposable gloves for storage. Mina took the box, signed the delivery screen, and set it on the counter.
"These belong upstairs," the employee said.
"I know."
After he left, Mina removed a pen from her pocket. She wrote a short code on the cardboard underside where the inventory sticker had begun to peel.
SR-12.4.
Then she pushed the box toward the custodian.
"The current storage list is wrong," she said. "Please return this according to the policy, not the directory."
He looked at Rhea.
Rhea nodded and logged the instruction exactly as spoken.
Mina faced her monitor again.
"I did not give you a document."
"No," I said.
"I did not tell you what the policy contains."
"No."
"And I did not see the complete process."
This time I heard the part she needed us to understand.
She had seen one part.
Rhea asked the custodian to retrieve only the policy history and its retention map. No message would say Mina directed us. No interview summary would be created from a hallway conversation she had not chosen to give.
That boundary mattered. I had spent five years furious at people who remained silent. I would not repay Mina's first movement by forcing her into a role before she had counsel.
The custodian carried the glove box upstairs. On its underside, Mina's old safety policy number traveled with us.
Policies were safer witnesses than frightened employees.
They could remember without asking permission.