Chapter 6: The Retest

On Wednesday I worked on the fourth floor with the door closed.

The memory clinic is on the second.

I saw a woman with early Parkinson's at nine and a lacrosse concussion at ten.

I didn't look at my phone once between them.

Then I looked at it.

Polly, 9:52: "He's here. His mother is here. He's wearing a CARDIGAN."

Polly, 9:58: "He signed the consent for the extra measure. With a flourish. Like a famous person."

Polly, 10:03: "Going dark. Wish me luck."

After that, nothing for an hour and a half.

I ate four saltines and rearranged my pens.

I thought about Carter at my kitchen table, a year ago, twirling his wineglass.

"So how would you catch a guy who's faking? Hypothetically."

And me, laughing, flattered, drawing it out on a napkin for him.

I'd kept the napkin.

It had been on my fridge under a magnet shaped like a lobster, because he'd drawn a little heart in the corner.

I'd thrown it out on Saturday night.

At eleven forty-five there were raised voices in the hallway.

Then the fourth-floor waiting room door banged open, and I heard Carter's mother before I saw her.

"Where is she? I know she's up here. Hazel!"

My patient's mother looked at me.

"Excuse me," I said, and went out.

The waiting room was full.

An old man with a walker. A young couple holding hands. A mother with a boy in a cast.

And Carter's mother in the middle of the carpet in a cream linen suit, red to the hairline.

She was holding a folded sheet of paper.

Carter stood behind her by the coat rack, in a brown cardigan, looking at the floor.

"There you are," his mother said.

"This is a patient floor," I said. "Please lower your voice."

"Lower my voice? Do you know what your little friend just did to my son?"

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