He remembered the dust. It had been everywhere in the sixties and seventies—clinging to the pipes he insulated, coating his coveralls, and dancing in the shafts of light inside the hulls of submarines. They hadn’t told him then that the "white dust" was asbestos, or that it would wait decades to steal his breath.

A week later, they sat in a sun-drenched office in Providence. The attorney, a woman named Elena who had grown up in Pawtucket, didn't lead with legal jargon. She led with a map. She pointed to the very docks where Arthur had spent his youth.

They didn't just need a doctor; they needed someone who understood the specific industrial history of the Ocean State. Rhode Island was small, but its history of textile mills and naval shipyards meant Arthur wasn't the first to face this.