CHAPTER FIFTEEN C: A NAME ON THE SHIFT BOARD
Pilar called me after the family’s attorney requested an additional interview.
She said a former assistant named Thomas Avery had contacted her about the disputed schedule.
Thomas had worked the afternoon of the injury but had been assigned to a different wing.
The revised schedule listed him as the second assistant in my room.
Pilar said Thomas was willing to speak but worried that the center would accuse him of abandoning his duties.
Vanessa arranged a meeting at her office and asked me not to attend the first conversation.
I spent that afternoon at work, reviewing instructions for a powered wheelchair that had been returned because the manual confused two different controls.
Every technical sentence reminded me of the importance of recording exactly what had happened.
At five, Vanessa called and asked me to come to her office.
Thomas sat beside the window in a blue work shirt with a small tear at the cuff.
He looked exhausted before anyone asked him a question.
He said he had been assisting a different patient during the transfer.
His supervisor had told him afterward to sign a corrected staffing sheet showing he had been available in my room.
Thomas refused because he knew the patient in the other wing could confirm his presence there.
The supervisor said he was misunderstanding the form and asked him to sign anyway.
Thomas had photographed the original assignment board before the shift because he often used it to organize transportation requests.
He showed Vanessa the photograph on his old phone.
The image displayed his name under the opposite wing,
along with the names of the two staff members who were supposed to help there.
Vanessa asked whether he could preserve the original file and provide a statement about when he took it.
He agreed.
Then he asked whether anyone could guarantee he would not lose his current job.
Vanessa said she could explain his rights and connect him with employment counsel, but she would not make promises about an employer’s behavior.
Thomas nodded slowly.
He said the center had already called him once and asked whether he had spoken to Pilar.
I asked what he had told them.
He said he had answered that he was free to speak about his own work.
I thanked him for coming.
He looked at me and said he had heard I was trying to blame the assistants for the accident.
I told him I was trying to establish who had been assigned and who had actually been present.
Thomas said that was the first answer anyone had given him without demanding he choose a side.
He left before dark because he had a night shift at a different facility.
Vanessa waited until the door closed before showing me the revised schedule.
Thomas’s name had been added in a different typeface from the surrounding entries.
I asked whether that mattered.
She said it mattered only when combined with the original photograph and his testimony.
She placed both versions beside each other and told me the case was finally becoming a question of documented actions rather than reputations.
