Saturday morning. Elizabeth is at yoga, Jonah is sleeping like the dead, and Nick is dressed and waiting for me in the kitchen when I meet him there at seven o’clock. He looks tired. I tell him this. He says he didn’t get much sleep, but when pressed, insists that the problem is internal, not environmental. My house is incredibly comfortable, he assures me, and he apologizes for dragging me to work on a weekend, complains about how bad he feels. I tell him it’s no trouble at all and that if he wants to feel guilty, he should pick another sin, to which he says nothing at all. The drive takes nine minutes. No radio, almost no small talk. Nine minutes of silence to accompany Nick’s window-framed view of my beautiful world.

I park in my otherwise empty lot and enter through the back door, flip on fluorescent lights and lead Nick to Exam Room Four, where I line the table with sanitary paper and tell him to change into a cotton gown—atypical, but peak vulnerable—while I scavenge for a blank intake questionnaire, clipboard, and ballpoint pen. Mimicking my nurses’ daily spiel, I say, “Answer as much as possible, but don’t overthink it,” and close the door, leaving him alone. In the staff lounge, I make and drink an espresso from a regularly descaled Keurig, take a seat, take a load off, debate whether a lab coat would heighten my authority or make me look like I’m trying too hard. Authority wins.

Five minutes. Ten. Enough time for Nick to grow antsy, but not so much that he’ll come looking for me. To pass the time, I visit my in-office lab, where I load a stainless-steel tray with instruments from my nurses’ wheelhouse—test tubes, syringes, swabs, quick tests: objects I rarely, if ever, handle, but Nick doesn’t need to know how rusty I am with a needle.

In the exam room, Nick hands me his questionnaire, sparsely answered. His brevity is disappointing, but the cotton gown is delightful. Boxers would’ve been inappropriate for Jonah’s friend, but street clothes are security blankets. The cotton smock with yellow dots democratizes.

Nick takes a seat on the table while I wash my hands with antibacterial soap, stepping on a hot water pedal, scalding my knuckles, suddenly aware that neither of us really knows why we’re here. My good ideas flicker too rapidly these days. Logic fades, but not the urges, so these I can trace, at least, and I do—following my urge back to the desire to assess Nick on my terms, my turf. Following my desire to choke the daylights out of him.