Year ten. The palpitations began.

Year eleven. At Christmas, Emily said, in her mother’s kitchen, apropos of nothing, “Do you think you can be tired of somebody and not know it?”

Margaret said, “Everybody’s tired at thirty-five.”

Emily laughed and changed the subject and Margaret spent the next four years wishing she had asked one more question.

She wants to be clear about something, and she says it to every group of nurses she has ever spoken to since.

There was no violence that anyone saw.