Gross Neglect

Francesca Ravelin has spent her career caring for people other clinicians struggle to reach. A home visit in the Nevada desert should take one afternoon.

The referral describes an elderly woman, suspected hoarding, and a son who has finally asked for help. Wendell Brask answers the phone promptly. He knows his mother's medications. He is waiting when Francesca arrives.

Inside, the house has narrowed into passages between walls of soaked paper and refuse. Odelle lies in a bed that should have been taken from her years ago. Francesca needs to get her to a hospital, but Wendell keeps finding reasons to delay. Somewhere beyond the bedroom, a carefully scrubbed chair waits beside a floor drain.

Then Francesca begins to recognize the things previous caregivers left behind.

Wendell has brought her here for her hands and everything they know how to do. As the routes out close around her, Francesca must survive a man who believes that keeping someone is a form of care.

Gross Neglect is a claustrophobic, medically graphic horror novella about captivity, bodily vulnerability, the obligation to help, and the damage a person can carry home.