I Bought My Parents a $425,000 Beach House and Came Back to Find It Taken Over

optimism. Around noon it becomes cafeteria warmth mixed with antiseptic, as if the building itself is sweating under the weight of being responsible for everyone who walks through its doors.

I’m thirty-seven years old. Neurosurgeon. The kind of person who keeps spare socks in a locker and thinks in checklists, because checklists don’t spiral, and I continue reading …