“Orlando and I want you to know,” the woman said in a cloying, floaty voice, “that we’ve read your file, and we understand with open hearts that you are wounded, and we will honor and respect that.”

“I’m— You may have someone else’s paperwork,” I said. “I’m totally healthy.”

She smiled the way a person might smile at a dog wearing an uncomfortable Halloween costume. “Oh, dear one,” she said. “Wounded. In here.” And she reached up, a million jangly bracelets sliding down to her elbow, to put her hand over my heart. I put my own hand on her wrist and gave her hand back to her.

“Sorry,” I said. “What is this, now?”

She put one of the books on my lap, a dog-eared paperback with a giant glossy author photo. White lady smiling. Not a scientist. Not a doctor. Lady with a bad haircut and some kind of “spiritual theory.”

“You’re suffering from what is known as a primal wound.”

“I am?”

“Yes,” Orlando said, also very softly, which made my skin crawl. “This means you are not, nor will you ever be, a whole, complete person. The trauma of being separated, ripped from your mother, has altered your molecular structure and left a void in you that can never be filled, but we can show you how to honor and nurture that void.”

I sat and blinked stupidly. “I don’t understand. This is in my file?”

“It’s not like you can’t have some kind of a fulfilling life someday,” the woman said. “Just that your relationships will suffer; you won’t be able to develop healthy attachments to those you may love. You will always be wounded. Primal—the wound is in the very fabric of your being, and will never heal. Due to the trauma.”

“Wait, so which trauma is this?”

“Of the separation. From your mother.”

“Oh,” I said, relieved. “No, there was no separation, I never met her. I was never with her—in my file, didn’t you see? She left me at the hospital; I didn’t know her.”

“You knew her,” the woman said, her eyes closed, head nodding. “You knew her for nine months; you bonded; you were together—one soul, one heart—and now that part of your soul is missing. Muiriel, I am so sorry to have to tell you this, but we want you to know we care for you—” And she broke down, sobbing on the floor.

The man rubbed the woman’s back through her patterned tunic top.

“What about the dad?” I asked. “Do I have a wound from him, too?”

The man put his hands together in prayer position and touched them to his forehead.