Where do we get this shit? Bridal shower and wedding gifts, stocking stuffers, spur-of-the-moment purchases at Ikea. They’re all so goddamned useless, hidden in the backs of kitchen drawers, taken for granted and never taken out. This is what goes through my mind as Thomas frees me with the high-tech equivalent of a can opener.

“You can speak now, Dr. McClellan.” Reverend Carl extends a hand toward my living room, like he’s turned magnanimous host.

It isn’t the only role reversal today. Everything they want is being broadcast on CNN as the story of the president’s brother’s skiing accident unfolds. As further details are reported—posterior left hemisphere, alert but uncommunicative, babbling—I know what else Reverend Carl and his crew want.

They want me.

If it were Anna Myers who had skied her way off-piste into a tree, I’d be out the door without a second thought. Although I doubt there would be any SUV-driving men here if it were the president’s wife lying in an intensive care unit.

“What do you want me to say?” My words come out slowly, tentatively, while I move out of the kitchen, past the television—which I click off—and over to one of the wing chairs. I don’t want to have to share space with any of these people.

“Hot in here,” Reverend Carl says, glancing toward the fridge with its built-in water and ice dispensers.

“Yep,” I say.

One of the other men, not Thomas, coughs.

I take the cue. “Patrick, why don’t you get our guests a glass of water, hon? Since you’re right there.”

He does, and neither of us misses the slight shake of Reverend Carl’s head. I’m the wife. I should be the one serving.

“So?” I say. “Sounds like Bobby Myers might have brain damage. Locus?”

Reverend Carl arranges himself on the love seat opposite my chair. “You’re the medical man, Patrick. Show her the reports the hospital faxed over this morning.”

My husband, who is on a first-name basis with the individual who single-handedly put that metal cuff on me, comes into the room with a tray of water glasses and a slim folder. He stops in front of me before passing around the drinks. “I think you’ll be interested in this, Jean.”

And I am. The first page is all text, and on the second line my eyes find the reason for Reverend Carl’s unexpected visit: lesion in posterior section of STG. Superior temporal gyrus. Left hemisphere. Patient is right-handed, therefore left-brain dominant.