The phone was on the table, on speaker, so I could take notes. Otherwise I wasn’t going to remember anything. That had become true at some point, and I had stopped pretending it hadn’t.
I was on the orange floral sofa. Helix and Poppy were asleep on the chairs across from me. The afternoon sun had already started its daily setting on the opposite side of the house. For such a beautiful day, a darkness had entered the room.
My lawyer was explaining the neuropsychological evaluation.
“Your neuropsychological evaluation will cover your entire life, not just the accident. Be ready to talk about your childhood, your entire mental health history, everything.”
I froze. The pen stopped above the page. My stomach did the thing where it feels like it is about to leave the body.
“Alex? Alex, are you there?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m just processing that.”
He kept going. He was not unkind. He was matter-of-fact. He does this all the time, and he expects you to play ball, which is what you promised when you signed with him. He is one of the best for a reason. I had done my research. He is empathetic, but only to a point, and the point arrives quickly, because the point is where the work begins, and the work is what you hired him for.
“You don’t really have a choice in the matter,” he said. “If our expert doesn’t, theirs will, and will attack you viciously.”
