“You understand what I did with the last one somebody handed me.”

“I’ve watched it eleven times,” Megan said. “Yes.”

And then she said the thing that I’ve thought about nearly every day since.

“If you tear this up, that’s for you. That’s not for me and it isn’t for anybody sitting in your waiting room. If it makes you feel better, do it, and I’ll go, and I won’t come back. But don’t pretend it’s a moral act.”

I want to describe what happened in me, because I have spent five years being told I’m brave and I would like at least one accurate account on the record.

For five years, the defining thing about me was a torn check. That was the whole story — the girl who couldn’t be bought, the moment two thousand people stood up.