She is the best clinical nurse in that building including me. She runs the vaccine program.

She has restructured intake so that the ability-to-pay conversation happens before the patient is in a gown, which is a small thing that has changed the entire feeling of the place, and which was her idea, and which I should have thought of and didn’t.

She is not a gift I gave my mother. She is the reason the clinic didn’t fold in June.

“It’s not a house,” I said, the day the offer letter went out.

“No,” Laura said. “It’s better. A house is something you gave me.”

Chapter 13 — Question Seven

The county grant did not renew.