The word felt good.
“We,” she said firmly.
I looked at her, at the way her eyes flicked to the servers, to the whiteboard, to the bare walls.
“We’ll do it as partners,” I said.
Her eyebrows shot up.
“Partners?” she echoed. “You mean… equity?”
“Yes,” I said simply. “Real equity. Not imaginary pedestal equity. You’ll own part of whatever we build. And so will everyone else who joins us.”
She swallowed.
“What about you?” she asked. “Don’t you want to… you know… be the statue this time?”
I thought of my father and his statues.
I shook my head.
“I want to build a table,” I said. “One where everyone sits. Where no one is just support structure. Including me.”
She smiled, slow and bright.
“I’m in,” she said.
We shook hands.
Outside, cars hissed by on wet streets. Upstairs, someone dropped something heavy. The world went on.
Inside, in that little office that smelled like dust and possibility, the future shifted.
It didn’t happen overnight.
Nothing ever does.
There were days when the weight of what had happened at Aries sat on my chest so heavily I could barely breathe. Days when headlines about “rogue engineers” or “the MedTech meltdown” made me want to throw my phone into traffic.
There were nights when I woke up thinking I’d heard my old 5 p.m. prompt buzz and reached for a device that wasn’t there.
There were moments, early on, when potential clients looked at my name and hesitated.
“Aren’t you the one who shut your father’s system down?” they’d ask, wary.
“Yes,” I’d say. “Because it was operating illegally. Because it was my job to keep patients safe. Because I built things to fail safe, not fail catastrophically.”
Some walked away.
Others stayed.
“Good,” one small clinic owner said, after listening to my story start to finish. “We need someone who’s willing to hit decline when it matters.”
Slowly, word spread.
Not the sensational, headline-kind of word. The quiet kind that moves through networks of professionals who actually care about their work.
If you want your devices to be safe, people said, you talk to Mia.
If you don’t want to end up like Aries, you talk to Mia.
Regulators started inviting me to panels. Not as an example of what goes wrong—but as someone who had designed systems that, even when abused by others, had ultimately worked as intended.
“You built an emergency brake,” one FDA official said after a conference presentation. “Your father tried to cut the lines. He failed. That’s the story.”
I nodded.
“It cost me everything,” I said.
“Did it?” she asked. “You seem to be doing all right.”
I thought of the ghost I’d been.
I thought of the woman I was becoming, sitting in a room full of other experts, being listened to.
I thought of the line of code that had frozen that arm mid-sonata and how, in that moment, I’d felt more powerful than I ever had with a badge around my neck.
“Maybe not everything,” I said.
Jaren na die avond, als mensen het over Aries MedTech hebben, hebben ze het niet over Brents toespraken of Edwards grootse visies.
Ze praten over de sluiting.
Ze vertellen over de dag dat een hele reeks machines stilviel in plaats van zonder toezicht te werken.
Ze praten over de monteur die wegliep en haar vingerafdruk meenam.
Ze onthouden mijn naam niet altijd.
Dat is prima.
Mijn naam staat nu op andere documenten.
Op de oprichtingsdocumenten sta ik niet vermeld als ‘werknemer’ maar als ‘oprichter’. Op patenten staan meerdere uitvinders vermeld, niet één overschat ‘genie’. Op aandelenovereenkomsten die ingenieurs, technici, kwaliteitscontroleurs en projectmanagers een deel van de winst geven.
Mijn duim opent nu een ander systeem – een systeem dat uiteindelijk zo is ontworpen dat de duim van geen enkele persoon meer nodig is.
Mijn ouders verkochten mijn bedrijf voor 1,2 miljard dollar en ontsloegen me.
Ze waren vergeten dat ik de eigenaar van de code was.
Ze waren vergeten dat ik mijn rijbewijs had.
Wat ze echt vergaten, was dat ik mezelf bezat.
Soms is de enige weg vooruit het laten instorten van het verkeerde systeem.
Om van het voetstuk af te stappen.
Om te zien hoe het standbeeld in stukken breekt.
En dan, met je eigen handen, iets nieuws opbouwen – niet om iemand te steunen, maar om samen verder te kunnen.
EINDE.
