A few days earlier, after watching a talk show segment on the symptoms of depression, Kavita pushed her fears aside, and reached out to Chi, confiding in her that things weren’t going well, and she thought she might be depressed. Kavita hoped Chi would be able to give her some advice or maybe even recommend one of her colleagues. At the very least, Kavita expected her to write back. Chi, her oldest friend, who was now treating her as if she was mildly toxic. “I don’t know why she said that,” Kavita tells him. “And I don’t understand why she would go to you and not me.”

“Maybe she doesn’t know what to say.”

Kavita knows the excuses. People didn’t know what to say. They didn’t want to say the wrong thing. She knows the excuses, and might have even thought they were acceptable at one time, but now, she sees how slanted they are. Saying nothing was worse than saying the wrong thing. So much worse.

“Maybe your frankness startled her.”

Her lips part a sliver. She turns to the window, gazes at the smoky sickle moon that casts the barest light, and considers her husband’s words. Considers how much she has kept bolted inside, mostly for his benefit, to save him from worry.

“Maybe you should try again.”

But she has tried. To explain the changes occurring inside her that she doesn’t understand. The foreign things that have no common language to express themselves, as if the distance between her pain and the world outside it is unbridgeable. If such a common language exists, she doesn’t know how to speak it, yet.

Neither have those around her developed an ear to hear it. She has tried, taken risks, put herself out there, in her way, always at a cost, with Nirav and Chi and even Dr. Jones. These attempts have been failures. These failures have taught her it is best to keep quiet. There is no safety in jumping faithfully into a pair of dead arms. There is only rejection, and condemnation, to an even deeper silence, an even blacker gloom.

“I’m tired,” she says.

“I suppose I should let you get some rest, then.”

Once they say goodnight, Kavita sits up in bed, and reaches for the only person who seems to listen.

“What’s wrong with me, Bear? I’m filled with such terrible dread. I know something bad is going to happen. I feel it in my gut. But I don’t know what or when. I promise to be ready, though. I’m scared. But I’m ready.”

Her chin starts to shake. “Being ready is wearing me out. I don’t know how long I can keep this up. I can’t seem to keep up, Sunil. But I’ll try. I promise you, I’ll try.”