“Hey, do you have, like, that document that we’re supposed to fill out?” she said. “I think it was for health insurance maybe?”

“Yeah, I can forward it to you,” Cassie said.

“Okay, cool,” Greta said. “But also, maybe, when you have time, could you, like, explain it to me? Like, just which one I should do, I guess?”

“You should do the cheaper one,” Cassie said. “Unless you have some complicated medical issues that need attention.”

Greta’s eyes rose toward the ceiling, reviewing, presumably, her short medical history. They nearly reached her low-hanging blond bangs. She was wearing a purple jumpsuit that bagged around her torso like a full-body diaper, yet somehow looked extremely stylish on her.

“I don’t … think I do?” she said. “I mean, I have pretty bad allergies and need to, like, get checked out for some stuff. But hopefully it won’t be, you know, complicated.”

“Do the cheaper one,” Cassie said. “You’ll be fine.”

Greta nodded, hesitated.

“When you were my age, did you even, like, have health insurance? Wasn’t it like a million dollars?”

Cassie grappled internally with the simplest way to explain an aspect of very recent history. How old did Greta think she was?

“When I was your age, I had a decent job, so I had good insurance. But a couple of years later I didn’t, and I got through it. I got lucky. I got some basic stuff through Planned Parenthood and didn’t really go to the doctor unless I had to. It was shitty, but, you know, I figured it out.”

Greta ventured a small, victorious smile.

“So … it’s possible—I’m not saying good, just possible—that it wouldn’t be, like, the end of the world if the healthcare thing ends up getting killed.”

Where did one begin? Where could one possibly end? She didn’t blame the kid for the world’s evil.

“It … it just isn’t right,” Cassie said. “We’re young—or you are—and if you feel weird it’s probably not going to turn out to be cancer. And if, God forbid, it is, your young body will fight it with your child blood. But if it’s a thirty-five-year-old mom with two kids, and it’s cancer, she’s fucked, right? And if she dies, that’s another generation fucked over, at least. If you die, no offense, your parents will be really sad, and your friends will, like, read poems off their phones at your funeral. I’ll be really sad, obviously, because you’re great. But it won’t be a case study in the evils of late capitalism.”

Greta shifted her weight, studied Cassie’s messy desk thoughtfully.

“So … I really don’t want to get cancer. If I don’t want to get cancer, I should maybe just get the expensive plan?”

“Sure,” Cassandra said. “Yes.”