Chapter 5: Box to Tick

At 8:40 on Friday morning I walked out of the front doors of Larch Hollow in the charcoal suit.

Two safety pins were still hidden in the left cuff.

The clerk at the lobby desk was the same woman who had turned my mother away for three years.

She slid a clear plastic bag across the counter.

It held my wallet, my keys and a phone with a dead battery.

"One form," she said, not looking up. "Tick the box for leaving."

I ticked it.

Nobody asked me for a doctor's signature, because nobody had needed one for a long time.

"Have a nice day, Mr. Ostrow," she said.

"I will," I said.

Behind me, Maura had come out in jeans and a gray sweater, with a laptop bag over her shoulder.

It was the first time I had seen her without scrubs.

She looked younger, and tired, and a little nervous.

"You're staring," she said.

"I'm checking you're real."

"Pulse?"

"Ninety-eight," I said.

She almost laughed, and then she looked away.

My mother was waiting at the curb in her old Buick with the engine running and the heater on high.

She had a thermos of coffee on the dash.

"Real coffee," she said, passing it over. "Don't tell the nurse."

"The nurse can hear you," Maura said, and got in the back.

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