On this morning, though, for the first time in a long time, Henry stopped in front of the cart and looked at the fruit and vegetables as if he had never seen them before. In the clean fall light, with the cars and trucks barreling past and a construction worker jackhammering asphalt, the fruit stand struck him as an almost surreal oasis that had somehow dropped out of the sky and landed in Manhattan. With its neatly banked, tightly packed mounds of oranges, apples, and lemons, its spikily crowned, sweet-smelling pineapples, its baskets of grapes and peaches, string beans and broccoli, its tiny transparent jewel boxes of raspberries and blueberries and gooseberries (gooseberries!), this improbable cornucopia reminded him of a European or Middle Eastern open-air market, sized down for a New York street corner. How did all this gorgeous fruit come to be here, and where did it go at night, and who was the fruit seller, with his rheumy eyes and incongruous straw hat and knowing smile, and why hadn’t he ever encouraged Henry to expand his morning repertoire? He loved blueberries. And peaches too. And apricots, and oranges. He loved them, and this morning, he bought them all.

By his midmorning break, Henry had seen six patients, and he was flagging. His usually solid barricade was pitted. Starting with Julia Bergman, with her multiple miscarriages and her heartsick husband, Henry had been letting himself feel. That was a mistake. Not because a physician should be an automaton, but because when he let himself feel, he got involved, and when he got involved, he didn’t think crisply, and when he didn’t think crisply, he wasn’t doing his job. There were hundreds (thousands) of them, but there was just one of him, and if he gave himself to even a handful of them, there would be little of him left at the end of the day. Yet here he was, at the beginning of a new fall cycle, full of all this unusual feeling. He felt for Julia. He felt for “Miss Brown,” the actress who booked her appointments under a pseudonym and was raw and genuine beneath all her polish and secrecy. He even felt for Arlene Brookner, closing a business deal on two iPhones—and scared to death. He was more open to these people, to their quests and their anguish, than he could remember being in a long time. Yet nothing in his morning consultations set them so far apart from the women that had preceded them. They were no different; but he was.

After his last patient, Henry worked his way down his phone list. When he reached the end, it was already seven thirty. That left him no time to go home to shower or change his clothes. He had wanted to bring Costanza some kind of gift, but he had no time for that either. Then he realized he already had one.