“Well,” she said. “He did this to himself.”

“He has a brain injury.”

“He drank for nine years, Claire, and he sued his own mother, and he spent every dollar he had doing it, and now it’s the middle of the night in a hospital and a nurse is calling my niece.

I’m sorry. That’s a series of decisions, and I’m not being cruel, I’m being accurate.”

She was being both. I have learned that most of the true things in my family are.

The social worker found me in the corridor at eight fifteen. Her name was Denise and she had the specific tiredness of someone who does this eleven times a shift.