“I know politics isn’t your thing, Ary, but it’ll still be fun for you to have a front-row seat to it all,” he says, putting his hands over mine and landing a kiss on my lips. I touch his cheek and laugh with him because I want to get this moment right.

Adam asks me about my week, checking in on the status of patients I’d described to him. He’s so caring that way, remembering details I’ve relayed. He hears everything I say. He doesn’t tune out while I complain about the new electronic charts at the hospital, or when I tell him the neighbor’s cat crawled through the torn screen of my bedroom window for the third time this month.

We leave the coffee shop. Adam is buzzing with a new energy, an excitement he wants to share, and yet I can’t help feeling blindsided. We’re not married, and even if we were, I wouldn’t dream of stopping him. We thrive this way. I have a one-bedroom apartment to my name, and Adam has a place his father passed down to him. We let each other keep our ambitions and independence, even if it keeps us in two different boroughs.

I’ve carved the life I have out of stone, and stones are not easily carved.

It is Saturday night and neither of us is working tomorrow, so Adam stays over. He has Thai food delivered while I slip away for a quick run. We watch a movie together, and I can see his eyes trained on the car chase on the television screen. His feet are propped on the coffee table, and mine are curled under me, the scar on my sole hidden from him just like the box in my closet.

Though I want to reveal it all to him, it will not be tonight. I envy the look on his face, the ability to focus all his attention in a single direction. I only feel that way in the operating room. Anywhere else, my thoughts are restless and fleeting.

I fall asleep with my head resting on Adam’s shoulder, tilted toward him, though I sense we will spend the night dreaming in opposite directions.

Chapter 36

“And that’s with only one girls’ school. If this model were to be replicated, well, I don’t have to do the math for you.”

Mom is the least retired retiree there is, which is why I can call her at seven in the morning and chat with her as I’m getting ready for clinic. She doesn’t play bridge or watch game shows. She might not be able to keep a plant alive for more than forty-eight hours, but she can get a hundred families to keep their girls in school after they get their periods. She volunteers and serves on boards and still finds time to check in on me.