Kavita bites her lower lip as she listens to the ring, three times.

“Kavs!” Chi booms at last. “She lives!”

“Hi, Chi,” Kavita mumbles. She’s unprepared for her friend’s cheerfulness, as if suddenly remembering there is another world, intact, even joyful, which exists on the other end of the line. “Sorry it’s been a while.”

“I’ve been swamped, too. I don’t have long to chat, though. Just on a smoke break before heading back to the clinic.” Chi promised to quit smoking after her residency in emergency medicine.

“I can call you back later.”

“You sound out of it. What’s up?”

Kavita takes a bracing breath. Clenches her left fist. Stares at the crumpled script on her desk, wishing she hadn’t crumpled it. “I don’t know how to tell you this.”

“Tell me what?”

She hoods her eyes. “It’s about Sunil.”

“Has hc gotten himself into trouble? He better not be engaged!”

Engaged, Kavita thinks. Something else he’ll never do. The realization slams into her like a sandbag swinging on a rope. Kavita sees him dressed in wedding finery, taking the seven steps around the sacred fire with an unknown woman, promising the commitment of seven lifetimes. Seven. “Oh, Chi,” she whimpers. Her heart pounds thickly in her ears. “He’s gone.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s gone,” Kavita hears herself repeating.

“You mean he’s missing?”

“No, not anymore.”

“He was missing?”

“Yes,” she says. “But not anymore.”

“Kavita, I don’t understand. If he’s not missing anymore, then how can he be gone?”

“He’s…he died.” The words take everything Kavita has—blood, air, bones. She feels as if she might collapse into a sack of skin on her bedroom floor.

“Oh my God,” Chi says, horrified. “What happened?”

As she stands at the precipice of the truth she has yet to voice, Kavita feels herself sway, her body preparing to surrender to the freefall. She swallows, saliva thick in her throat. There is no other way to tell Chi but plainly. “He was having a tough time, recently.” Key moments of regret flash inside Kavita’s head. “Things didn’t go the way they were supposed to. He….” She trails off. Even now, she can’t bring herself to say it. “He’s gone, Chi. He’s just gone.”

The silence stretches on long enough for Kavita to start wondering if her call has been dropped. Then, in the background, she hears the distant chatter of passers-by, the horn of a car, Chi pulling a drag and exhaling deeply.

“Chi?” she says, unable to bear the nothingness any longer. “Please, say something.” Please reach back.