“Save everything,” I said.

My voice sounded unfamiliar, yet it remained steady.

The nurse photographed the display, documented the time, and placed my phone beside the sealed evidence bag.

From beyond the wall came the muffled sound of a man arguing with someone in the lobby.

Aaron had apparently shifted from demanding access to presenting his professional credentials.

He informed the receptionist that I had a history of anxiety, that I had left home without my medication, and that the clinic could face liability if it allowed me to refuse care from the physician who understood my case best.

Dr. Reed listened for less than a minute before opening the examination-room door.

“You are not leaving this room through the lobby,” she told me. “We are arranging a direct transfer for monitoring and removal of the device.”

“Will he follow?”

“He may try.”

She lowered herself until we were at eye level.

“But he no longer decides who has access to you.”

Those words struck me harder than any speech ever could.

My eyes drifted to the purse on the chair, the phone Aaron had been tracking, and the empty hook where my car keys should have hung.

He had taken them three months earlier after I became dizzy in a grocery store parking lot.

I understood now that the dizziness had never proved I needed him.

It had simply made me easier to control.

Sirens drew closer from somewhere beyond the parking lot.

On the security monitor, Aaron reached toward the silver cup.

Sylvia stepped back.

He reached again, more forcefully this time, and she clutched it tightly against her cardigan.

“Give it to me,” he said loudly enough for the entrance microphone to record.

Sylvia kept staring at him.

“What was in those packets?” she asked.

Aaron glanced toward the camera.

“Her prenatal mixture.”

“That isn’t what you called it at home.”

He stepped closer.

Sylvia placed the cup on the concrete ledge beside the entrance and lifted both hands away from it.

“I’m not touching it again,” she said.

That was the moment Aaron stopped pretending his concern was about me.

He slammed his palm against the ledge and ordered his mother to pick up the cup before anyone came outside.

She refused.

When two police officers and the clinic’s security guard approached, Aaron immediately pointed toward Sylvia.

“My mother has been giving my wife unapproved herbal products,” he said. “I came here to stop her.”

Sylvia’s expression changed.

Not because he had blamed her, but because he had done so without the slightest hesitation.

She slowly reached into her handbag and removed several folded paper packets held together with a rubber band.

“Aaron gave me these,” she told the officers. “He wrote the days on them and told me to mix one into her drink every morning.”

Aaron insisted she was confused.

Sylvia looked through the glass directly at me.

“I thought they were herbs,” she said. “At first.”

Those final two words mattered more than everything else.

At first meant there had been a moment when she began to question.

At first meant she had chosen to continue anyway.

I rested one hand over my son’s movement beneath my ribs and told Dr. Reed that I did not want Sylvia allowed anywhere near me either.

Dr. Reed nodded without asking me to reconsider or soften that decision.

The ambulance crew entered through a side corridor while the officers kept Aaron occupied at the front entrance.

Before they moved me, Dr. Reed asked whether there was anyone I trusted enough to call.

My parents’ names came to mind with a wave of shame so overwhelming it nearly kept me from answering.