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She looks at me over the lid of her coffee. I hang my coat in the alcove and take longer than necessary with the loop.

“How was the final assessment?”

“His range improved. The handover is complete. Maren has the program and the discharge record.”

“That answered a question I didn’t ask.”

“It was a poorly specified question.”

Her mouth curves, and she lets it go.

The cart sits between us, repaired and ordinary. I see him on one knee beside it anyway, head down, palm open for the tool, and the small pleased lift of his eyebrows when the wheel finally obeyed him.

I reach for the schedule on the counter.

“Walt wants everyone in the conference room at eight,” Gabi says.

“Everyone has patients at eight.”

“Not anymore. They’ve been moved to nine.”

I check the screen. Four names have shifted, and the blank hour at the top of the day is already compressing everything underneath it.

“When did that happen?”

“Last night.”

“Did he say why?”

“No.”

She says it lightly. Her eyes do not.

We take the last two chairs.

Walt does not sit down. There is a woman beside him in a charcoal jacket and a man I recognize from the clinic’s legal office, and a stack of folders at the end of the table.

The woman introduces herself, and her name is gone out of my head before she reaches the name of the regional group that has acquired us.

Acquired. It is a smoother word than sold and it does the same work.

She talks about continuity of care, and expanded resources, and alignment across facilities, and she does it well, because she has done it before.

Nobody interrupts her. Priya has stopped clicking her pen. Gabi’s knee is against mine under the table.

“The transaction closed Friday,” the woman says. “Operational changes begin today.”

Today.

The legal man starts passing the blue folders down the table. He has the manner of a person who has been warned there may be crying.

There are only two.

One stops in front of a billing coordinator at the far end. Walt carries the second to me himself.

My name is printed on the label.

“Astrid,” he says. “We should speak privately.”