I want to describe what happened in the family lounge when the rib was explained, because it is the only time I have ever watched a room of people receive the same sentence and go four different directions.

Dr.

Adeyemi was not the one who said it; a resident began to and then a more senior person took over, which I noticed.

My mother said, “A rib?

From what?”

My father did not say anything at all and left the room after about forty seconds and stood in the corridor.

Curtis said: “She’s been on a swing at daycare.”

Which is a sentence I have thought about several hundred times, because Esme was six months old and had never been to daycare, and because nobody in that room corrected him, and because I am fairly sure now that he did not know he had said it.