“You’re still annoyed,” Suhani says matter-of-factly as she prepares to apologize again. If she doesn’t get her act together, she can picture Zack twenty years from now, sprawled across a psychiatrist’s couch, some senior man who trained her at some point. Yeah, everything started going to shit when my wife embarrassed me at a work dinner. . . .

“I’m not,” Zack says. But one glance at him tells her otherwise. Zack has one of those honest and open faces that make people in coffee shops ask him to watch their laptops when they go to the bathroom.

Suhani takes a sip of her mimosa. “You are and it’s fine.”

Sometimes they have the exact same fights over and over again. Suhani’s lost count of the number of times her exhaustion has been a topic. She sees herself through her husband’s eyes and feels a twinge of guilt, then frustration. It has to be difficult for him to come home to someone who is always so drained.

Don’t let this job ruin what matters in life, Dad told Suhani the day she started as an intern at Atlanta Memorial Hospital. It’s too easy to take the people who love you for granted.

“Hey, look, it’s okay. I really am sorry for getting upset and I know things are hard for you. I want to be there for you.” Zack wraps his hands over hers.

“I want to be there for you, too,” Suhani says.

“You are,” Zack says. “And your schedule will get better. I’ll be so happy for you when you finally get a chance to just breathe.”

Suhani doesn’t tell Zack that as much as the long shifts drain her, she’s also tired from the undercurrents of pressure and judgment that simmer below the surface of each day. The awareness that being in medicine means she’s evaluated every second not only by her performance but also by her appearance. The having to smile whenever a patient asks her when the doctor is coming in. The mansplaining from male attendings. The fear that she can screw up and get criticized or, worse, lose it all at any given moment.

Sometimes Suhani wonders if she only exists in two extremes: either she’s moving at max speed, able to accomplish everything, or she’s stuck on the couch and can’t even respond to text messages. The last time she remembers feeling free and fully absorbed in the present was during their honeymoon and, before that, when Natasha came to visit her once in med school. They packed a cooler with bottles of wine and spent an entire morning doing handstands on the beach. The day ended with dinner and cocktails with Devi Auntie, Mom’s closest (and coolest) friend from Bombay, whom Suhani visited every few months when she was in med school.