The recording began with the scrape of a kitchen chair.
Laura’s voice came through my phone speaker, quiet and amused.
“She’s stubborn, but the evaluation will finish it.
Once Daniel hears dementia from a doctor, he’ll sign anything.”
A faint voice answered from the other end of the call, too muffled to identify.
Laura laughed.
“No one will trust that old woman.”
The psychiatrist, Dr.
Patel, stopped turning the pages in my folder.
Laura did not move.
Her hand remained on the power-of-attorney documents in her lap, but her fingers had tightened until the paper bent beneath them.
“That isn’t what it sounds like,” she said.
I stopped the recording.
Dr.
Patel looked at me, then at Mom, then back at Laura.
“What does it sound like?”
Laura swallowed.
“A private conversation taken out of context.
I was overwhelmed.
Evelyn has been accusing me for months.
She wanders, she screams, she hurts herself.
Daniel has been away.
He doesn’t understand what I’ve dealt with.”
Mom sat beside me in the cardigan Laura had chosen to hide her wrists.
Her shoulders were rounded, her gaze unfocused, her mouth slightly open.
She looked exactly like the frightened, confused woman Laura wanted the doctor to see.
Dr.
Patel turned to her.
“Mrs.
Mercer, do you know where you are?”
Mom stared at the floor.
Laura exhaled through her nose.
I could feel her confidence returning.
Then Mom lifted her head.
“I am in the behavioral health wing of St.
Anne’s Medical Center,” she said.
“It is Tuesday, the fourteenth.
You are Dr.
Sameer Patel.
Your name is printed on the appointment card my daughter-in-law left beside the telephone three days ago.”
Laura’s face emptied.
Mom continued in the same measured voice.
“The telephone disappeared later that afternoon.”
Dr.
Patel leaned forward.
“Why did you pretend to be confused?”
“Because my son asked me to.”
Laura turned toward me.
“You set me up?”
“No,” I said.
“I documented what you were already doing.”
She stood so quickly that the chair struck the wall.
Dr.
Patel pressed a button beneath his desk.
“Please sit down, Mrs.
Mercer,” he said.
