The Swimmers

Part 4’s narrator takes on the voice of Belavista, a long-term, for-profit memory residence, using second-person point of view to address Alice directly. Alice learns she has been sent to live there, like every other resident, because she failed cognitive and memory skills tests and because caring for her became too challenging for her family. She is urged to accept the fact that her condition—frontotemporal dementia—can’t be stemmed or reversed. It will only get worse. All the countermeasures people take to try to slow the disease’s progression have failed, and her experience won’t be the exception.

Dementia, Alice is told, can happen to anyone. It doesn’t respect wealth, intelligence, or any other qualifier. Nor is there a higher purpose to her getting this disease, as many people try to convince themselves. It won’t make her a better or more compassionate person, or change her priorities from the petty to the profound. Any hope Alice nurtures that she’ll be cured and able to return home is discouraged. In all likelihood, she will remain at Belavista until she dies, though how long that will be is anyone’s guess.