The staff had not given it to him.

They had told him plainly that the referral was mandatory, that the clinical reason for it had not changed, and they had handed him a fresh duplicate packet of the same orders — the packet, Martha realized, that had been sitting in the envelope in his jacket ever since.

He had asked the system to release him from his daughter’s need, and the system had refused, and he had pocketed the refusal and gone home and buried it with everything else.

“I told myself,” Mark said, staring at the floor, “that if she just rested, she’d get better on her own.