She met with Irene’s high school guidance counselor and arranged the accommodations that would let her daughter miss what she needed to miss and make it up without penalty.

And she took every appointment herself, personally, sitting in every waiting room, hearing every word from every doctor with her own ears, so that never again would her daughter’s medical truth pass through a filter before it reached the people responsible for her.

And she made one more rule, quiet and absolute, and she held to it even when it would have been easier not to.

She refused to use Irene as a messenger between the adults.