"Yes," she said. "That's what matters right now."
She hung up and sat in the warm afternoon of Sunita's courtyard and let herself, briefly, feel the full weight of what the last week had been. Not the managed version, not the diagnostic version, not the forward-moving version of herself who had been making decisions and executing plans. Just the weight of it. The hundred and nine people who had been named that morning. The programme that had been running for years in the basement of a beautiful hospital while she had been in Pune doing residency and building her career, while she had been recruited and brought in, while she had been in the OR using the exceptional hands she had trained for twelve years to complete the final step of a process that had started in a courtyard like this one.
She had not known. She knew now. She had done what knowing required.
It was enough, and it was not enough, and both of those things were true simultaneously, and the thing you did with that was continue.
Sunita brought more tea. They sat together in the courtyard while Mumbai made its enormous noise in every direction, and did not say anything for a while, which was correct.
