The heat rising inside of Kavita stops. She can’t be angry at her husband for this reasoning, at least. She knows it is possible to believe someone is in as much danger as they insist, and also believe the danger will not come to pass. The conceit of it sickens her now. Or is it the ignorance? What can she say in her defence, other than, she didn’t know what she was really up against at the time. After a few moments, when her larynx softens, she manages to mutter, “So did I.”

Kavita sat vigil on the basement stairs—the couch was too comfortable—watching Netflix on her iPad, the waterline of the coffee pot, slowly lowering, as daylight rose.

They were the gp’s first appointment of the day. Kavita sat with Sunil in the examination room, while their parents waited outside.

He dangled his legs back and forth over the edge of the examination table, rustling the crisp white sanitary paper. Over the years, he had confided in her about his aversion to doctor appointments, a hostility he had carried since childhood. He hated the undressing and weighing and measuring. Having to stick out his tongue, breathe deeply, endure the pricks of needles. The power of doctors made him nervous. A relative stranger who told him if he was too heavy or too light, if his blood pressure was too high or low, if he needed to be switched to this or that medication. Always, the doctor judged if he was normal or abnormal, within the curve or an outlier.

Fifteen minutes later, Dr. Jones tapped on the door. He was a silver-haired, middle-aged man with a sombre countenance. Not unfriendly exactly, just to the point, like a hastily written prescription. Sunil saw him every few months. The GP made him fill out quizzes to verify that his symptoms were still in remission and wrote him new prescriptions and told him to keep doing what he was doing—eat right, exercise, take his pills, get enough sleep. Sunil had thought of him more as a pharmacist than a doctor, really.

“So,” Dr. Jones said as he took a seat at the desk. “What can I do for you today?”

Sunil spoke to the tiles.

“You shouldn’t have tried weaning off your medication by yourself,” Dr. Jones said. “By the sound of it, you did it too quickly. It can take months to wean properly. And you did it in, what? About a month?” Dr. Jones shook his head. “Some people have to stay on medication for their whole lives.”

“I know.”

“Of course, having said that, you can come off them at any time. They aren’t the problem.”