What Martha would remember most from that conversation was not the medicine.

It was her daughter’s face while the specialist spoke.

For as long as this had been going on, every adult voice with authority over Irene’s body had told her, in one way or another, that the problem was in her head — that she was anxious, dramatic, oversensitive, seeking something.

And now here was a doctor, a calm woman with the scan on the screen behind her, describing in plain clinical terms the precise physical thing that had been wrong the entire time.

There was a blockage.