There’d been no sense of crisis until now. Just exasperation and despair. But once we decided to visit the doctor, we began to hurry, to fret. We looked for Wilder’s jacket and shoes, tried to remember what he’d eaten in the last twenty-four hours, anticipated questions the doctor would ask and rehearsed our answers carefully. It seemed vital to agree on the answers even if we weren’t sure they were correct. Doctors lose interest in people who contradict each other. This fear has long informed my relationship with doctors, that they would lose interest in me, instruct their receptionists to
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