And Livie would never have done this to me. If there were a problem, she would have told me.
Zolt didn’t move, just kept looking at the floor.
“Do you understand, Mr Farkas?” Sannier continued.
I translated, and he sat up, stared her down, and said, “Yes.”
“You are not to talk English, Zoltán. Only Hungarian. That way, we can be sure there is no misinterpretation.” She waited for me to repeat, the two of them locked in a death glare. Zolt’s leathers creaked as he crossed his arms.
“I understand,”he said, voice sharp.
“Do you know why you’re here?”
The look between them nearly made me go off topic and beg him to settle down.
“Enlighten me,” he told her through me.
Sannier breathed in deeply and lifted the papers in front of her. “These here are your real medical records, Zoltán. Not the fake ones you had translated. These paint a far different picture than what you have been presenting and what your team gave me.”
She placed them down to show CT scans I’d never seen. Words I’d never seen.
“You have a diagnosis of persistent post-concussive syndrome.”
I repeated that as best I could, without having ever heard of it.
Zolt shrugged.
“You’ve known?”
Another shrug. “It’s been mentioned.”
My hand stilled on his leathers and then slid off, hanging in the space between our chairs. A dead weight.
What?
He needed to find the right words. He needed to prove them wrong.For me. For us.
I blinked tears away while I translated, my voice breaking.
“So you knowingly raced despite brain fog, impaired focus, and delayed reactions?”
Zolt didn’t respond.
I hated that her angry words were in my voice, that mine was blending with hers, that the sympathy was trailing off.
“Okay, and so you know you’ve been diagnosed with vestibular dysfunction, in this case, post-traumatic vestibulopathy. You know that this impacts yourbalance, gives you blurred vision, nausea, and blackout episodes that can hit you at any moment? You know that you are not fit to race and have endangered not only yourself but all of your fellow racers? Fia’s own brother-in-law rides that track, and your negligence could have killed him. All because you were desperate to race and prove yourself.”
“Do you even understand the kind of liability we’re facing because of you?” Julian snapped. “Insurance has been null. You’re responsible for any damages because of your lies.”
I wrung my sweaty hands under the table, biting my lip through their words to hold back the tears. The seat was rigid and uncomfortable beneath me, but I didn’t feel like I was sitting on it. I didn’t feel like I was there.
Because this couldn’t be happening.
Zolt hung his head. Of course, he avoided looking at me. He didn’t need me to translate because he must have known all the symptoms of his own condition.
“Fia, please,” Julian said and nodded at Zolt.
Those words would leave a bad taste in my mouth.
