Every time my brother-in-law drove me home, I would lose consciousness and wake up with unexplained aches and pains. My husband would only laugh and say, “You’re just out of shape, that’s all.” After the fourth ride, I secretly slipped a voice recorder into my purse and said nothing. That night, I listened to a phone conversation between the two of them that revealed my blackouts had never been accidental.

“Did you believe her?”

Dana took a long breath.

“I wanted to.

I had a mortgage.

I told myself somebody else had checked.”

She did not ask me to absolve her, and I did not.

She told us that staff had been required to sign unusually broad confidentiality agreements, that some charts carried authorization forms with identical scanned signatures, and that the annex billed a corporate client instead of insurance for certain nighttime visits.

She had kept a list of reference numbers because she feared she would be blamed when auditors came.