The 87-year-old woman fired her home care nurse and hired a tattooed biker instead, and her family threatened to have her declared incompetent.

I’m her neighbor, and I watched the whole thing unfold from my apartment window across the hall. What her children didn’t know, what nobody knew except me, was why she did it.

Her name is Dorothy Mitchell. Dorothy has lived in apartment 4B for forty-three years. Her husband died in 2003. Her three children live in different states and visit maybe twice a year.

She has advanced Parkinson’s disease, osteoporosis, and the kind of loneliness that makes your bones ache.

I moved in across from her two years ago. I’m a journalist, work from home, and I started noticing things. The home care agency sent different nurses every few weeks.