He turned when I walked in and came toward me with his hand out and a smile calibrated to a frequency somewhere between professional and reassuring.
“Mrs. Richter,” he said. “I’m Dr. Fischer. Your children asked me to assess your mental well-being.”
I looked at my son, who did not look up from his hands. I looked at Lena, who moved to Dr. Fischer’s side and reached for my wrist with her fingers, a gesture designed to look like affection.
“At your age,” she said, her voice arranged into something that was meant to sound like tenderness, “episodes of confusion are completely normal.”
I looked at the folder on my table. It was thick, already labeled, already tabbed, the product of preparation that had taken more than an afternoon. I thought about how long this had been planned, how many conversations had happened in rooms I was not in, how many logistics had been arranged before this moment. And I noticed, in the particular way you notice things when shock has been replaced by clarity, that no one in the room had asked me a single question. No one had said hello. No one had checked whether I’d eaten or slept or needed anything. I was not a person to be concerned about in this room. I was a problem to be processed.
Lena’s voice shifted, dropping the tenderness for something harder underneath.
“Everything you have will belong to us one day anyway,” she said. “We’re just speeding up the process.”
There it was. No more wrapper.
I looked at the folder on my table for a long moment. Then I picked it up, crossed the room, and dropped it into my kitchen trash can. The sound it made when it hit the bottom was satisfying in a way I hadn’t expected. I walked back to the center of my living room and pointed to my front door.
“Out,” I said.
