The Trial (Part 3)
He saw her between two other appointments, with his lunch still in its bag on the desk.
“Show me exactly what you wrote,” he said.
He read the booklet slowly, page by page. Then he turned his tablet around so that she could see it too. She hadn’t expected that.
On the screen were her Friday answers, drawn as a line. Week one, four. Week two, four. Week three, seven. Week four, seven. The line went up and stayed up.
“That’s the part you already know,” Omar said. “Here’s the part you don’t.”
Underneath it was a second line, from the band she wore at night, and that one went up as well.
“So it’s the drug,” Nadia said. “The good part and the bad part are the same thing.”
“Maybe. You might be in the other half, and this might be a warm spring and a hard month.” He didn’t say it unkindly. “You feel better. I believe you. But one person feeling better isn’t evidence, it’s a story. In eight weeks I’ll have sixty stories, and then it’s evidence.”
“Are the others…”
“Four people have written down nights like yours. That’s all I can tell you, and I’m not going to guess in front of you.”
Then he laid it out plainly, the way he had the first time. She could stop today; nobody would be angry, and her results up to now would still count. Or she could go on for the last eight weeks at a lower amount, come in every Friday, and be part of the answer.
“What would you do?” Nadia asked.
“I don’t get to answer that,” Omar said. “Not while neither of us knows which box you’re taking home.”
She put the white box on her kitchen counter that evening and looked at it for a long time. Her heart was perfectly quiet. Somehow that made it harder.