Oh Dear! I Shall Be Too Late!

Diary Entry: June 17, 2024

My preparation for JSD studies have begun not with quiet matriculation, but with the cacophony of a car crash. A bad sign, I’d say, if not an outright warning from the universe to turn back. About ten days ago, as soon as I could lift an arm and the room agreed to stop spinning, I pieced together a sprawling letter to Professor Pigou. It was an exercise in due diligence, thinly veiling a faint hope for empathy. While my anxieties were fixed on the distant wreckage of my academic future, I learned today that a more immediate blade was being sharpened. A default judgment had been prepared in my absence — a guillotine I only narrowly ducked.

It all started on the way to the Batumi City Court. Just as I was gearing up for my studies, my academic plans were nearly thrown out the window — or, more accurately, through the side of an overturned minivan. I was a passenger, one of seven or eight, in a van driven by a man with a deep-seated philosophical objection to staying in his own lane. He’d been treating the road signs as suggestions all trip, but as we hit the mountain pass they call “Perevali,” he attempted a feat of truly ambitious stupidity. He failed, clipping the rocky side of the road, and the world abruptly flipped. In an instant, all seven or eight of my fellow travelers were piled on top of me. We stayed that way for a moment, a grim human Jenga tower, until someone managed to shove the van upright. My nose was bleeding with an impressive, almost cinematic force. It turned out to be broken, along with several surrounding facial bones, a few ribs, and an elbow. A real winning lottery ticket of fractures. Once I was past the initial fog of surgery, my first priority was to salvage my academic life. I never imagined the more immediate danger would come from my own countrymen!

This whole affair has brought a darker side of human nature to the surface. While I was still laid up, a court date approached. My opposing counsels knew perfectly well what had happened to me; they had the official medical records. Yet they stood before the judge and insisted there was no valid reason to postpone the hearing. They tried to ram through a default judgment, a maneuver so blatantly against the code of ethics, so contrary to basic human decency, that it felt fascistic. They wanted to win, and they were willing to build their victory on my broken bones. Thankfully, the judge held her ground and refused their motion. But the court clerk who told me the story said there had been a “battle.” There’s no question I will be filing an ethics complaint!

There’s a strange, primal instinct that kicks in when it comes to your own survival, a switch that flips inside you, turning on a state of simultaneous aggression and defense. It’s hard to explain — one of those things you have to feel in your bones to understand. And this isn’t the first time. The feeling is so familiar it sent me spiraling down a memory to my first car accident, back in 2015.

That one was a true character-builder. It was early morning, and I was in a taxi on my way to court — a fitting start to a day of judgment. The driver and I were making small talk on the highway when, without warning, another car decided to become intimately acquainted with our rear bumper. My head, in turn, became intimately acquainted with the headrest. The taxi screeched to a stop. We climbed out, and there they were: the two young men responsible, already on the side of the road. One of them, a budding diplomat, strode over to inform our driver that police involvement would be a terrible inconvenience and that we could surely handle things “ourselves.” He skipped the trivial formality of asking if we were okay. A part of me will always regret not offering him a swift, non-verbal rebuttal to his philosophy, right to the face. But in the moment, the sheer absurdity of it all — and maybe the concussion just starting to bloom — kept me still.

My driver, a man of company policy, had to call the police for insurance, so I, having a trial to get to, just left the scene and walked the rest of the way. It wasn’t until after the trial, back at the office, that the real fun began. An intense, white-hot pain bloomed just over my eyes. I found I couldn’t look up without my skull lodging a formal complaint. The people in the next cubicles took one look at me and, with a sudden sense of alarm, suggested a hospital. It was then I had the clarifying thought that my brain might have sustained some minor shipping damage. I was discharged about a week later, but the headache stuck around for a few years, an unwelcome roommate who refused to take a hint.

The truly memorable part, though, came two weeks after the accident. I received an email from a partner at my firm. Tucked neatly below a new assignment, she mentioned she’d “just learned” about my car accident and “felt obviously very sorry.” The sheer neglect was almost impressive. It took them fourteen days to giving me a new assignment! To be fair, she was the only partner who acknowledged it at all. It was in that moment, reading her profoundly efficient expression of sympathy — a footnote to a work assignment — that I knew my long-term future probably didn’t involve these people.

All of this came rushing back after this latest, more spectacular vehicular disaster. After surgery and a month of what could generously be called “recovery,” I finally got to a laptop and emailed my advisor. About three days ago, Professor Pigou’s reply landed in my inbox. He started with “Oh dear,” followed by words of encouragement and prayer. What a stark contrast to my former employer, who set the land-speed record for corporate indifference at two weeks; and to my colleagues, who plotted to profit from my devastation. It’s moments like these that reveal everything. Who feels for you. And who, in the end, has any regard for human life at all.