The Trial (Part 2)
The pills came in a white box with a number on it, 41, and one line of instructions on the label: consume one with food, every morning, at the same time.
Seven o’clock, then, standing at the kitchen counter with a piece of toast. Every Friday she drove to the clinic, a nurse took blood, and a tablet asked her the same eleven questions. Nadia answered honestly, which meant that for two weeks she answered no to all of them.
The third week was different.
She woke at ten to six, before her alarm, and lay there trying to work out what was wrong. Nothing was wrong. That was what was wrong.
On Thursday she carried two bags of soil out to the greenhouse, went back for two more, and at four in the afternoon she was still standing. On Saturday she worked the whole day, closed the register at six and drove home with the window down.
She didn’t tell anyone. Saying it out loud felt dangerous, the way it feels to read a test result before it is finished.
Then, on the second Sunday of the good weeks, she woke at three in the morning with her heart going as if she’d run up the stairs.
She sat on the edge of the bed and waited for it to stop. Eleven minutes. She counted.
It happened again on Monday, and on Wednesday, and on Wednesday her hands were shaking too, not badly, but enough that she put her coffee down with both of them.
The booklet from the clinic had a page for exactly this. Note anything unusual, even if you think it’s nothing. She wrote each one down in small letters and told herself she’d mention it at her check-up, which was eleven days away.
On Friday, in the parking lot, she read the page all the way through for the first time. Five entries in six days.
She went inside and asked to see Dr. Omar.