No Ticket

Today, I close part of the most recent chapter of my life. Today, I ride down to a law firm and collect a settlement check from the crash. Today, I swallow hard and accept that there will be no justice.

Today fucking sucks.

Because today, I accept payment. Not from the woman who hit me, but from my own insurance company. My money. My coverage. My safety net. Not hers.

And today, whether I like it or not, I accept something else too: Negligence, apparently, is forgivable.

Or at least… ignorable.

I’ve spent weeks trying to get a simple answer out of the City of Santa Fe. One question: Did she get a citation? That’s it. According to the crash report, she should have. Failure to yield the right of way. Clear as day.

So I asked.

First the officer. Then the traffic unit supervisor. Then the chief and the deputy chief. Then the city manager. Then the mayor’s office.

Nothing.

Fucking crickets.

Apparently, asking whether someone was held accountable for a crash that could have killed me just isn’t worth anyone’s time.

Bigger fish to fry, I guess.

When I tell people, coworkers, the few friends I still talk to, that she didn’t even get a ticket, they just stare at me. Their jaw drops.

“Yeah,” I tell them. “I know.”

Because it is bullshit.

And I know what some people are thinking: It’s just a ticket. Why does it matter?

Here’s why. Because a ticket, even a small one, means something. It’s not about the money. Hell, I’ll pay the damn fine myself. Fifty bucks? Whatever.

It’s about acknowledgment. It’s about someone, somewhere, officially saying: Yeah, this was wrong. And you weren’t the one who caused it. It’s about the system doing the bare minimum of what it was designed to do: recognize harm, assign responsibility, and attempt, in some small way, to make it right.

And that didn’t happen. Not even a little.

From where I’m standing, she drove off into her life without so much as a ripple. No citation. No consequence. No acknowledgment.

Just gone.

Like the night didn’t matter. Like the moment she hit the gas and told her drunk passenger, “I got this,” didn’t change anything.

But it did. It changed everything for me.

And the City of Santa Fe? They won’t even respond. Not a “we’re looking into it.” Not a “we can’t comment.” Not even a half-assed brush-off.

Just silence.

So yeah, thanks for that.

I guess commercial development projects matter more than the people who actually live here. The people who ride these roads. The people who bleed on them.

So this morning, I sit here waiting to go to breakfast. And my heart is heavy. Because today, I get paid. And somehow, that feels like losing.