The room felt like it was spinning. I thought back to the week before that. Robert had brought me a stack of papers and a fancy pen. “It’s just for the house, Mama,” he had told me, his voice smooth as silk. “Just so I can manage the taxes for you.” I had signed over my $300,000 house without a second thought. I had worked for thirty years at the bank to pay that mortgage off. I had saved every nickel. And I had signed it all away for a cup of lukewarm tea and a lie.

My heart was pounding against my ribs like a trapped bird. I tried to stand up, but my legs felt like lead. Teresa reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She pressed it into my palm and closed my fingers over it. “I made a copy of your chart,” she whispered, looking toward the hallway. “Look what they changed on the 14th.” She stood up quickly and walked out of the room before I could even say thank you.

I waited until I heard the heavy click of the nurse’s station door. I unfolded the paper with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking. It was a medication log. There, in neat, typed print, was a list of drugs I had never even heard of. They were sedatives. Heavy ones. My son had been drugging me into a stupor so I wouldn’t notice him stripping my life away.

The betrayal felt like a jagged piece of glass in my gut.

I didn’t sleep that night. I laid there and watched the shadows dance on the wall, thinking about all the times I had defended Robert to Clara. I thought about the house, my home where I had raised my children, now belonging to a man who saw me as nothing more than a liability to be sedated. I felt a cold, hard resolve settle into my bones. I wasn’t as confused as they thought. I was just tired. But I was done being tired.

The next morning, I didn’t take the blue pill. I tucked it under my tongue and waited until the nurse left, then I spit it into my water glass. I did it again at lunch. By the next afternoon, the fog in my head was starting to thin out. I felt like I was coming up for air after being held under water. I called Clara from the bedside phone. I told her to come get me, but not to tell Robert.