Chapter 12: The Clinic

"It's mine," Gareth says again, to the whole ballroom.

Then he walks out, coat over his arm, and nobody stops him.

Claire stands up so fast her chair tips.

"Take me there."

"Claire."

"Now, Ava."

We take a cab to Jackson Heights.

Neither of us speaks.

The clinic is a narrow storefront between a laundromat and a bakery, with a hand-painted sign my mother's friend made twenty years ago.

SINCLAIR FAMILY CLINIC.

A white truck is double-parked out front with its back doors open.

Four men in gray coveralls are carrying out the exam tables.

An old woman stands on the sidewalk in a housecoat, holding a prescription bag to her chest.

"They told me to come back Monday," she says to Claire. "I don't have a Monday."

"Mrs. Ortiz, I'm so sorry."

"The boy with the fever, he's been sent home."

Claire's face crumples, then locks back into place.

I follow her inside.

The waiting room is half empty.

The chairs are gone. The rug is gone.

Pale rectangles on the wall mark where my parents' diplomas used to hang.

One of the workers wheels out the sterilizer on a hand truck.

A man with a clipboard stands at the door ticking boxes.

"Ma'am, you can't be in here."

"I work here."

"Not as of three o'clock."

"Show me the paper."

He shows me.

It says what Gareth said it would.

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