The consent forms for electroconvulsive therapy were a cold, clinical prose poem of potential horrors: memory loss, confusion, headache, rare risk of cardiac complications. Alex signed each one with a hand that wanted to tremble but didn’t. He held the pen like a weapon, aiming it at the fortress walls surrounding his wife. If the cost was fragments of the past, so be it. The past was a poisoned country anyway.

The treatment room was nothing like the stark, frightening images from old films. It was a small, brightly lit procedure room adjacent to the surgical wing at the general hospital. It smelled of antiseptic and ozone, not fear. Lara, dressed in a hospital gown, was already on the gurney, an anesthesiologist gently inserting an IV into her arm. She was placid, her eyes open and vacant, completely unaware of the pact he had made on her behalf.