Although she should have had someone else—her supervisor, anyone else—conduct the interview, given the circumstances, George was Rebecca’s final appointment that Friday afternoon of her first week, after his meeting with someone in clinical genetics to review his family history, the results of his blood test, and all that could be surmised about his own situation. She had decided on her lunch break, during which she had taken a depressing walk through the ugliest, most blighted part of New Haven, behind the medical school, that she was going to quit the study, even though she needed the job both for the money and for the experience, which was essential for her graduate studies in public health. It was just too hard, too grim. Now it was almost five o’clock, and the previous two patients had taken extra time to placate and mollify and baby through the survey questions, so he had been kept waiting for nearly an hour. George didn’t complain to her as he sat down in her little office, which set him apart from almost everyone else she had seen all week. But she wasn’t about to start sleeping with any of the other patients.

“So, I have to ask you these questions like you were just anyone else, okay?” she began apologetically, after taking a moment to glance over the basic profile questionnaire he had filled out in the waiting area, to make sure he hadn’t skipped any details. She read the first question off her clipboard, though by now she knew all the study questions by heart.

“Do you understand your health profile? That the blood test revealed that you do carry the genetic marker on chromosome four, but without access to other family members this is an ambiguous result?”

“Yes. No. I mean, yes, I understand what it means, but I have no idea what it signifies,” he replied. “Do you?”

Her pen poised over the yes and no boxes for question 1, Rebecca had glanced up and looked at George. She would always remember this moment, though she couldn’t really say why. It seemed all wrong to have him sitting there across from her this way. He was wearing a Bing Crosby kind of cheerful orange and yellow short-sleeved golf shirt (where did he get these shirts?), which gave him the look of someone on vacation.

“Gosh, your job sucks,” he added after a moment, watching her pen hover. “You can check yes. Go ahead. For the purposes of the study. Go on. What next? Is this study about my feelings, about my emotional response to the possibility, about my relationship with Huntington’s, or is it more for tracking everyone in this cohort long term to see who gets sick after all?”

“Both. But you’re not really supposed to know that.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Okay, next question. Did the doctor answer all your questions satisfactorily?”

“Sure, yes.”

“Which one?”

“Which one what?”

“Which doctor did you see?”

“Is that the next question?”

“No, I’m just asking.”