“Sixty-three percent through a family holding company.”
He leaned back.
“So you sat at your own bus stop.”
“It wasn’t mine personally.”
“Your company.”
“Yes.”
“In a wheelchair.”
“Yes.”
“During a blizzard.”
“Yes.”
“After the last bus.”
“Yes.”
He stared at her.
“That is incredibly stupid.”
The safety director looked at the floor.
The attorney coughed into his fist.
The woman blinked.
Most people probably did not call her stupid before breakfast.
The father continued.
“What if I hadn't stopped?”
“I had security nearby.”
“Where?”
“Two blocks away.”
“You were shaking too badly to work your phone.”
“I could have called.”
“You didn’t.”
“No.”
“You wanted the test to be real.”
Her expression shifted.
“Yes.”
He leaned back.
“That’s still stupid.”
She smiled.
“Noted.”
Then she became serious again.
“For six months my office has received accessibility complaints that did not match the performance reports I was seeing.”
The father’s eyes narrowed.
“Which complaints?”
“Missed pickups.”
“Vehicles marked rider-no-show despite passengers insisting they were present.”
“Lift failures.”
“Cancellations during cold weather.”
“Drivers arriving without functioning equipment.”
“Passengers left outside clinics, malls, workplaces.”
He said nothing.
She continued.
“I ordered internal reviews.”
“And?”
“Every review concluded there was no systemic pattern.”
The father looked toward the lawyer.
“Who ran the reviews?”
“Operations compliance.”
He laughed once.
The woman asked:
“What?”
“Your route-completion bonuses still based on service percentages?”
The safety director looked at him sharply.
“How do you know that?”
“They used the same structure when I worked there.”
The father looked toward the woman.
“If a vehicle arrives and the lift fails, what happens to your metrics?”
The safety director answered.
“Mechanical service failure.”
“If dispatch cancels before arrival and codes the rider weather-unavailable?”
The man’s expression changed.
“It may be excluded.”
“If they mark rider no-show?”
“Completed dispatch attempt.”
The father nodded.
“There’s your incentive.”
The woman’s face hardened.
The attorney began writing.
She pushed the folder toward the father.
“Look.”
He opened it.
Complaint summaries.
Photographs.
Maintenance logs.
Then one photograph stopped him.
A wheelchair lift assembly mounted inside an accessible van.
His breathing changed.
The woman noticed immediately.
“What?”
He did not answer.
His daughter looked toward him.
“Daddy?”
“I’m okay.”
He touched the photograph.
Not the whole page.
One corner.
As if the image itself might burn him.
“When was this taken?”
“Three weeks ago.”
He looked up.
“This is still in service?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
The safety director answered cautiously.
“Possibly more than eight hundred across the group.”
The father closed his eyes.
“No.”
The woman leaned forward.
“What?”
“These were supposed to be replaced.”
“When?”
“Seven years ago.”
Silence.
The safety director pulled the photograph closer.
“What failure?”
The father pointed.
“Secondary leveling circuit.”
“This assembly uses electromechanical deployment.”
“For the primary motion.”
He tapped the page.