Even as Marilyn lies depleted on a stretcher, I can picture her stirring cans of paint and watching her daughter climb a ladder to reach the corners of her room. She wants to be her daughter’s mother forever, the mom who handed her brushes dipped in her favorite color, the mom who stood back and let her dress the world to her liking.

“I’ll talk to the rest of the team. Let’s see what we can do to get you home soon,” I say, and she nods.

I move mechanically through clinic, my head growing dense with pain as the hours pass. I shake another pill out of the little orange bottle and swallow it dry, wishing it were a different species of painkiller.

I sit at my desk and turn the computer on. The screen lights up, and I look away while I dim the monitor. My throat is parched, but I don’t get up. I find the website I need.

Lacey walks past my door.

“Everything all right, Doc?” she asks.

“Good as it gets,” I reply.

“All right. I’m headed out. I told you my idiot brother’s getting married, right? Tonight the families are meeting for the first time. The girl’s nice enough, but her parents think Obama is a closet Muslim and my boyfriend’s an actual Muslim. Wish me luck,” she says.

“Sounds like a good time,” I say, my eyes still navigating the screen. Lacey’s words hit me a second later and I look up.

“Wait, I mean, I didn’t know that,” I say. Why am I struggling to see Lacey dating anyone but a male version of herself? She must sense the regret in my voice.

“Of course you didn’t,” Lacey laughs. “You couldn’t know if I never told you.”

I wish her and her family good luck getting through this first dinner and watch her walk away, feeling embarrassed at the assumptions I’ve made.

I enter the numbers from my credit card into the website and submit payment. I print out a confirmation page and know there’s no turning back from this point.

I push my chair away from the desk and breathe. The office is dark and still, everyone having left long ago. My phone is quiet. I’ve not heard from Adam since I walked out of the restaurant, and part of me misses him. But a more rational part of me remembers that what I’m feeling is dressed-up loneliness. This is what I felt before I met Adam, when the scent of his cologne didn’t linger still on my sofa.