Medical school and residency desensitized Suhani to the jarring parts of the hospital. She gazes around her and tries to see the surroundings the way Natasha would. A drunk man curses as he’s brought in on a stretcher. In one of the neighboring beds, a petite doctor frantically presses on an old woman’s chest as a team surrounds her. Nurses scurry from computers to patient beds and back to computers.

“I know it’s not easy to be here.” Suhani is careful to weigh each word. “But I’m not sure we can leave soon.”

Natasha’s eyes are bloodshot. “Why not?”

“You’ve obviously been struggling for a long time, longer than any of us realized. Because you did something really serious.” Suhani tries to block out the image of Natasha taking pill after pill. If she’d swallowed even a few more or hadn’t thrown up, they wouldn’t be having this conversation. The thought lodges in the corners of her mind and threatens to launch her into an all-consuming panic. She almost lost her sister. Forever.

But she can’t focus on that now. All her energy has to go toward making sure Natasha is okay. She takes deep breaths until the panic lifts and leaves behind a tangled knot of protectiveness, sadness, and regret. What she’d give to wave a magic wand over the situation and make it all better.

“Yeah, but I can meet with someone and talk all that out. Go to weekly therapy. I’ll even go twice a week if you want!” Natasha pleads. “Isn’t that what you and Dad recommend to the people who are really messed up like me?”

She says the last part with a half smile, an attempt to make light of the situation.

“You’re not really messed up,” Suhani says. “We just all have to do what’s best for you. What’s safest for you.”

Suhani’s had this conversation with patients dozens of times. This should be easy. An attending once told her that everything’s different when your own family member is the patient, and now she understands how true that is. All her years of training feel irrelevant.

She clutches Natasha’s hands and keeps thinking, We could never lose you. “Look, it’s one thing to have thoughts about wanting to hurt yourself, which is already so tough, but taking that step to put pills in your mouth, multiple pills . . . that takes things to another level.”

She waits for a flicker of understanding on her sister’s face.

“But I’m fine now. Really,” Natasha insists.

My sister tried to kill herself. My sister tried to kill herself. My sister tried to kill herself.