When I’d finished unpacking, when I’d sat down at the desk in a wedge of sunlight and written out my grocery list, I was pleased to take my measure and conclude that I was in a reasonable state of calm. In one corner of the room stood a beautiful antique cheval looking glass. I will get through this, I assured it, and—smiling at the serendipitous wordplay—I went downstairs.

Where my calm was shattered by the sight of my friend slumped at the kitchen table in tears.

My first thought was that she had changed her mind. Now that we’d arrived she’d realized that she didn’t want to be here after all. For this, as I’ve said, I was prepared.

You won’t believe what I did, she wailed.

My whole body blazed into panic. Had she, in a wild impulsive moment, taken the drug just this minute? But she couldn’t have. She wouldn’t have.

I forgot them!

What?

The pills, of course. What else. I keep them hidden, you know, in my bedroom, in the back of a drawer, and when I was packing I forgot to take them out.

I nearly staggered from relief.

We have to go back, she said.

Of course! We can go first thing tomorrow.

Not tomorrow. Now.

I didn’t think she could be serious.

I have to be sure I didn’t lose them or misplace them, she said, her voice rising. I have to know they’re there. I have to know that they haven’t been stolen or something. That they haven’t somehow vanished into thin air. That I didn’t just dream them up in the first place.

She was clutching her hair in her fists. I was afraid she’d start tearing it out, like a madwoman.

We have to go, and we have to go now.

Later, with the pills safe in their new hiding place in her room, and the two of us at the end of our meal at the exquisite fish restaurant, where we were dining for the second night in a row, I quietly suggested that maybe her leaving the pills behind meant that she was conflicted about taking them. After all, she had remembered to bring all her other medications—and there were so many of them!

Fuck you, I am not conflicted. And I told you never to say that to me.

I don’t remember you telling me that.

Well, maybe not in so many words. Anyway, you’re wrong. I know exactly what it was that made me forget. Chemo brain.

I knew what chemo brain was, but when I didn’t say anything she went on to explain.