But what about your career? Your future? Suhani wants to ask. The truth is, she’s always felt a mixture of envy and awe toward Natasha for being able to do what she wants, be free in that way. But she also knows that if Natasha goes back to the life she had before she came here, there’s a risk she’ll continue to struggle.

But she doesn’t want Natasha to think she’s pushing her, so she keeps a smile on her face and says, “Sounds like a plan.”

Natasha stares at her nonslip socks. She wraps her arms around her legs.

“Do you think there’s something innately fucked up about me?” Natasha’s voice is soft.

“What? No! Why would you say that?”

“I don’t know. It’s like for as long as I can remember, it’s been hard for me to keep my emotions in control. Be the way other people expect me to be. And there are always these negative thoughts spiraling through my head. Even when I was a kid, I had them.”

“That doesn’t mean there’s something fucked up about you.” Suhani grabs Natasha’s hand. “You have an illness. And you’re getting help for it now. I’m just sorry you’ve been going through this alone for so long and that I was too blind to help you earlier.”

“But what about all of us? Have you ever thought that there’s maybe something that runs in our family?” Natasha asks.

“What do you mean? Mentally?” Suhani looks at her and wonders what she’s put together.

“Sort of, yeah. We talked about our family histories in group therapy the other day and I started wondering. Nanima”—Natasha says, referring to Mom’s mom, who passed away when Suhani was in high school—“always told me that Mom and I have a lot in common, even with our tempers and stuff. After being here, I wonder about Mom. She gets emotional so easily like I do and I remembered those drives she used to go on when we were little, how Dad tried to make them seem like no big deal, but we always knew. And Anuj has told me that his mind has gone to dark places sometimes. He’s more relaxed than all of us, obviously, but even he’s struggled.”

Suhani has been wondering the same thing since she started her residency training. When she sat in lectures that covered everything from personality traits to marital dynamics to birth order, she couldn’t help but link certain insights to her own family. She began putting things together that she never had before, like why she and her siblings were parented differently or what traits drew her and Zack to each other.