“I like the work itself,” he said. “There’s something satisfying about diagnosing something, fixing it, making it right. It feels useful.”
“It is useful,” she agreed simply.
She asked about his family with the frank curiosity of someone who considered the question perfectly natural, and he found, a little to his surprise, that he didn’t mind answering. He told her about his mother, about the illness that had come on gradually and then more insistently, about the medication that kept things stable but needed to be kept up without gaps. He said it without complaint, just as a set of facts, the same way he might describe the condition of an engine.
“You take care of her alone?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “She has a sister across town, but she’s got her own family to manage. I don’t mind. She took care of me for twenty years by herself. It’s not a burden.”
