Fellowship Point

In September, Heidi moves to Friends Hospital, established by Quakers in 1813. Maud visits just before Thanksgiving. Heidi is unresponsive, which the staff says is a result of adjusting to new medication. Maud speaks with a physician, who invites in a second physician. Both feel that Heidi isn’t improving because of her hormone levels and want Maud to reconsider electroshock therapy. They assert that otherwise Heidi will need to be placed in a facility permanently. Maud agrees to consider their recommendation.

Dr. Goodman, a female doctor, walks Maud out and asks to speak with her further. She has found a series of handwritten words in Heidi’s file. She wonders whether Maud can glean meaning from them, but Maud can’t. Goodman suggests that the words could indicate past trauma, beyond the car accident that caused the death of Heidi’s parents when she was young.

Maud returns to Agnes’s Philadelphia apartment, where she’s staying. Agnes is in Maine, and Maud is content to have the apartment to herself. She pulls one of the Franklin Square novels from the shelves, but then a note from Agnes catches her eye. In it, Agnes explains that she’s allowing Maud to read notebooks she kept beginning in 1960 and that they contain the information Maud has been asking for.