Chapter 4: The Welfare Form

The van drove up to my inner gate at eight o'clock on Sunday morning.

Two people stepped out in matching grey coats.

One was a tall woman with a clipboard. The other was a heavy man with a tablet under his arm.

They stopped in front of the camera and smiled.

I stood in the scale house with the intercom button under my thumb.

Nolan stood beside me. He had not put on his coat.

"Good morning, Miss Hartigan," the woman said. "We're from the Calder Wellness Foundation. Your mother asked us to take you somewhere comfortable."

"I'm comfortable here."

"We understand." She said it very warmly. "But we do have a signed request from your next of kin."

"Show me."

She held a sheet of paper up to the lens.

It took the camera a moment to focus.

The page had the Calder logo at the top, a line for the patient and a line for the family.

The patient line said Robin Hartigan.

The family line was signed in my mother's looping hand.

"That is not a court order," I said.

"A voluntary transfer doesn't need one, if the family agrees and the patient is a danger to herself."

"Am I a danger to myself?"

"Four hundred thousand dollars on canned beans is a concern," the man with the tablet said.

He was very pleasant about it, too.

I should have been angrier. I looked at the signature instead, and the small date under it.