“The foundation needs someone on it who understands, from the inside, exactly what a patient stands to lose when a powerful person is allowed to control their records.

I can’t think of anyone in the country who understands it better than you.”

I looked over at my daughters, asleep in the warm light of the front room, safe, in a house that was mine, with their whole enormous futures ahead of them.

And then I took the pen, and I signed my name.

Julian had once stood on a porch in the rain and told me, as a verdict, that I could never give anyone a family.

Sitting there with the pen in my hand and my daughters breathing softly across the room, I understood that he had been right about exactly one thing, and wrong about everything that grew out of it.