Chapter Text
“No! No, this is a mistake!” She isn’t being gripped too forcefully, but the hand on Fanny Minafer’s arm is just tight enough to stop her from breaking free. She can feel her heart beating rapidly, accompanied by a sinking feeling in her stomach as her nephew signs his name to the bottom of a paper.
“George! George, please! Please don’t let them take me! I...I...I can still take care of you, I promise! I’ll find us something, we-we’ll have a place to go!” Each word is pierced with a sob, and perhaps now she looks every inch of what she’s being labeled. Crazy. Hysterical. Not fit to be out in public.
“You’re going to be alright, Aunt Fanny. They’re going to help you. You’re not well, this is for the best. But George’s words are delivered without any warmth or assurance. They both know where she’s headed, and she at least has heard the terrible stories to come out of those institutions.
I don’t belong there, tell me I don’t belong there! But Fanny can’t find the strength to utter those words, and instead she begins to hyperventilate, finding it hard to catch her breath as a deep sense of fear overtakes her. She can no longer hear herself, isn’t certain whether she’s crying or silent. Giving George a final pleading look, one that doesn’t seem to faze him, she faints dead away, her convulsing body going limp in the arms of the doctor.
The silence seems even harder to bear than her tears, and George makes a show of clearing his throat as his aunt is carried out of the mostly empty house. Roger Bronson’s hand on his shoulder nearly makes him jump out of his skin, and he turns to face the man.
“It really is the best place for her, George. I guess she’d been hysterical for a long time, but she just went over the edge when you lost this place. You heard her scream, a woman like that needs to be stopped from being a hazard to herself, not to mention a danger to others.”
A small voice in the back of George’s head starts to sound unsure, for after all, it is hard to imagine Aunt Fanny being a real danger to anyone. But he’s being told what he wants to hear, and she’s no longer his responsibility.
“Yes,” George agrees, gaining more confidence as he nods. “It is the right thing.”