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.

On his final afternoon on the porch, Arthur didn't think about the dust or the shipyards. He watched the waves, grateful for the advocate who had turned his lifetime of hard work into a final act of justice.

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.