Three Breakdowns A Year Was All I Was Allowed novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Yellow Hat

The publisher's rep met me at ten the next morning in a coffee shop with no music.

She had ordered two teas before I arrived and had not touched hers.

"I'll be quick," she said. "I'm not here to be your friend. I'm here because I have a job, and last night I watched a woman stand up in a bookstore and say a sentence I had read in a manuscript."

"Chapter Three."

"Page forty-one." She opened the leather folio. "I want to show you what he sent us in March."

She laid out a printed email and turned it to face me.

The date was March twelfth, the morning after my surgery.

Subject is cooperative and has given consent at the bedside, it said. Her grief is the spine of the book. She will be our most authentic voice.

I read it, and I read the date again.

"I was in a recovery ward," I said.

"I know that now. I didn't last night." She tapped the corner. "I've seen the permission page. Legal checked it and called it in order."

"The loop on the P in your signature is wrong."

"You could tell."

"Last night I looked at it again, and this time I could see it." She pulled out another sheet. "This is the Release of Medical Information, the one that names us as the publisher. It carries a signature line. Do you know who signed it?"

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