“I would have been fine.” Natasha gazes around the room. “I guess this is our last time meeting here. Weird, right?”

“It is,” Bina agrees.

She’s surprised at how much she’s started to enjoy showing up for visiting hours. Somehow, the confining nature of the ward has given her and Natasha the space to just be. This is no longer only a place for people who are mentally ill. It’s a place where she’s had some sense of understanding with her daughter for the first time in years. The structured environment distilled them down to their essentials, and during these visits, Natasha was both a daughter and a friend. They shared celebrity gossip. They laughed about Deepak’s many quirks around the house, from his tendency to fall asleep watching Shark Tank; to calling several times, overwhelmed, when he went to the grocery store; to how, even though he’d never admit it out loud, he loved gossiping with them.

“Do you feel that being here helped you, beta?” Bina strokes Natasha’s tangled curls. She resists the urge to talk about the YouTube videos.

“I do. I know there’s still a long way to go and staying better is going to take daily work,” Natasha says. “But when I first got here, I felt like I was trapped, like this mood was a living thing and I was caught in its tight, unyielding grip. Now I can see that I was trapped in some ways but I was also tired. So tired. Tired of pretending I was fine. In a way, I was putting on this constant performance that I was okay enough. And it all caught up to me. But now it doesn’t feel that way.”

Bina stops herself from saying she knows exactly how Natasha felt and she wants to make sure Natasha never has to pretend she’s fine again.

“You really made the most of your time here, beta,” Bina says.

“It wasn’t as terrible as I thought it’d be.” Natasha pulls her hair into a ponytail. Bina ignores the urge to fix it for her. Her daughter’s hair is a perfect match for her spirit: unruly, stubborn, unique. Hair that Bina spent hours pulling into neat braids until she discovered Natasha went to school and undid them. Hair that made beauticians at the threading salon murmur, That’s some difficult and tough hair, which made Bina always say, Yes, she’s my tough girl so I expect nothing less.

“I’m glad it wasn’t as bad as you thought.” Bina hugs Natasha. “So, Devi Auntie did want me to pass something along to you.”

Bina tells Natasha about the internship. (Why don’t they call it what it really is: cheap labor?)

Natasha gasps. “Oh my God! The late-night show? In LA?!”

“So you’re interested?” Bina doesn’t mean to sound so weary.

“Yes. I really am! I’ll call Devi Auntie tonight.”