They came home on a Thursday afternoon.

The hospital had released her with instructions, the particular and specific instructions of a medical establishment satisfied that the immediate crisis had resolved but unwilling to let the resolution become carelessness: rest, she was told, meaning real rest, and hydration, and the particular and specific directive that stress was to be managed, which the doctor had delivered with the particular and specific look of a woman who understood she was recommending something the patient would find structurally challenging but was recommending it anyway.

Lena had said: "Yes." She had said it with the particular and specific compliance of a woman who intended to...