"Professional curiosity. Outcomes this good are unusual."
Sunita looked at her for a long moment. Then, very quietly: "Three years ago, a man named Mahesh Kale was in this programme. Thirty-four years old, construction worker. Very healthy. He came in for monthly monitoring and the Kalyani team took him for a scan at the main hospital. He never came back."
Priya was very still.
"His family was told he died in an accident at the construction site two days later. They received a compensation payment." Sunita's voice was absolutely level. "It was a very large payment. Large enough that asking questions about it would have seemed ungrateful. He was the fourth person from this programme to die in an 'accident' in three years."
"Why are you telling me this?" Priya said.
"Because you are asking about it. And that means something has changed. Before now, the Kalyani doctors who came here never asked. They did their hours and they left." She looked at Priya with the steady gaze of a woman who had been watching something terrible with insufficient power to stop it, waiting for someone who had enough access to matter. "You're looking at the numbers."
"I need more. Names, dates, whatever you have. Is there somewhere safe—"
"My house," Sunita said immediately. "Thursday evening. Come alone. Don't use the hospital car."
Priya nodded. The next patient knocked and came in, and Priya shifted into the clean register of a doctor doing her job, asking about the cough, looking at the throat, writing the prescription, being ordinary in a room that had just stopped being ordinary.
Outside, rain began. The specific Mumbai pre-monsoon rain that came too early and too hard and turned the streets briefly into something that looked like consequence.
