I rummaged through my purse absentmindedly while we talked and found my prescription refills. One for Klonopin, one for Xanax. The Xanax pills were oblong and white, and bitter when I chewed on them. The Klonopin pills, meanwhile, were pink and perfect circles. They tasted sweet, and each had a line in the middle to demarcate half-doses. I pulled them out of the pharmacy bag and lined them up on my dining table. I pulled out the old bottles, which still had half a dozen of each pill inside.

“I appreciate what you’re doing. I don’t want to do it alone.”

I wanted to say: I don’t want you to do it at all.

I opened the pill bottles and went about consolidating each set.

“What are you doing?” Daphne asked.

I paused. I wasn’t sure if I should lie.

“I’m consolidating my anxiety medication,” I said quietly.

She burst out laughing.

“I didn’t think you could hear me.”

“I know the rattle of pill bottles!”

“I just got my refills,” I said, embarrassed.

“I’ll round mine up so you can have them after I go,” she said.

“Only the good ones.”

“Not the cancer medication. Too toxic,” she said. “The nurses have to wear gloves when they hand me the pill. And then I put it in my mouth.”

I stifled a sound.

“See you tomorrow, I guess,” Daphne said.

We weren’t supposed to get attached, but I could feel myself going there with Daphne. We weren’t supposed to have opinions on the deaths of our clients. In a way, we were simply service workers. Here to give the clients what they wanted.

Nathan met me at the Starbucks and we both ordered coffees—he ordered a Mocha Frappuccino, which I thought was weird, because he seemed like a person who cared about what he put in his body—and I trailed him to his car, scanning the parking lot filled almost entirely with white cars. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but he had an anonymous slate-gray Prius, one of thousands zipping around Los Angeles.

“I can drive,” he said.

“Great,” I said, thinking of the poppy fields and how I might bring them up.

Nathan didn’t know which surface streets and sneaky routes to take to avoid sitting in congestion. We sat in traffic on the 5 Freeway almost all the way up to Six Flags. Nathan wanted to talk about Daphne and her exit. He wanted to know if she was in good spirits during our follow-up call, and I considered telling him about her breast request, but thought it was too soon. Also, there was a chance she might just ask him herself.

After we ran out of Daphne things to discuss, I asked, “Why do you do this?”

“My father,” he said. “I hated watching him die. I thought there had to be a better way.”