The shock of seeing Holly looking the same plus better, sleeker but still distant, threw me. I’d been reminiscing about her on the drive over. Once, on the way to some college class, we’d been singing along to Hootie and the Blowfish. I only ever sang in the car with Holly and was deep into shouting the lyrics “I wanna love you, the bear said, the bear said I can.” With hilarious outrage she said, “That’s not right! Who is the bear? What bear? How do you get ‘bear said’ out of ‘best that I can’?” I didn’t believe her, and we laughed until she had to pull the car over. She’d hit the horn three times, and I’d clutched my stomach and gasped for breath. I never laughed with abandon with anyone like I did with Holly. She had a way of pointing out foolishness without making me the fool.

For a moment I’d had the ridiculous notion that maybe Holly was past the misery of whatever had ended us. Maybe we could laugh again. But now, in the room with her, I saw that Holly was neck deep in discomfort. A spotty flush crept up her jaw, something that despite her polish she couldn’t hide. This was not how Holly greeted a friend, and I knew it. Shame, guilt, and my old, dear companion conflict avoidance reared up and muted those memories of our friendship long gone.

The nurse taking Katie’s blood pressure bent her head, and Holly put her finger to her lips to keep me quiet. As if I didn’t know to be silent during procedures. As if I hadn’t been by Katie’s side during hundreds of blood pressure measurements. The sudden urge to go somewhere quiet and slip into a quick, dreamless sleep would have swamped me if not for a competing urge to slap Holly.

In a way, that urge to fight and nap characterized my life in general and any difficult relationship I had. If someone—my father, or my husband—made me mad, I got stressed and then lethargic, in that order. That was how my sleep disorder worked.

My hypersomnia began in my high school economics class, a subject my taskmaster of a father excelled in. He’d make me work after dinner and into the night, angrily saying, “Clear the fluff out of your head.”

If I made a mistake and tried to explain why I was confused, he’d tap my forehead hard and say, “Stop talking.”

My mother would notice my eyelids drooping and rescue me by sending me to bed. Maybe my body got the message: Once you get to the end of your rope, sleep is next. She’d smooth the spot on my forehead where I could still feel my father’s finger.

“You’re lucky, Sam. If I could play dead around your dad, I’d roll like a possum into my pajamas and never take them off.” She’d switch the light off and say, “It’s okay to give up some ground to keep the peace.”

Even when my doctor prescribed different medications during my sleepiest of semesters at college, my mom would say over long distance, “It’s not a terrible thing to have a shutoff switch. Don’t drug a gift horse in the nap.” I realized later that she was battling learned helplessness and depression that came from living with a mean control freak. My mom would sigh her own resigned sigh and say, “Oh, Sam. Just take a nap. Not everything is worth fighting for.” She was both right and wrong about that.

I’d remind my mom that a sleep disorder was serious, and I was having trouble in all my classes. She’d sigh and say, “Who’s to know?” And I saw that was the stunning truth. After years of negating yourself, in the end there was no self. No knowing.

Holly, my roommate and best friend, took care of me. She’d set alarms so I wouldn’t miss class, watched for stress, made excuses to friends when I needed a quick sleep.

My abrupt sleeping continued to roll like a determined fog through to the present, and just seeing Holly after all these years kicked off my fatigue.

“You have great blood pressure, 120/70,” the nurse said.

“Is it?” Holly asked. “Maybe you should take it again to make sure.”

The nurse didn’t engage. Instead, she said to Katie, “Anything you need?”

Katie shook her head and reached out to me.

I shoved my phone into my pocket. “Sorry, you guys. I would have been here sooner, but I stopped to get some things.”

I held my collection of recycled bags with Goodwill, IKEA, and Trader Joe’s logos and knocked into an off-white wall with my funny bone trying to get to the other side of the bed. The side Holly was not on. I was late to the party and feeling all the knotty feelings I experienced when all three of us were together, which hadn’t been since the night Maddie was born, eighteen years ago.

I took Katie’s petite hand. Her cool fingers gave me a squeeze. I tried humor borrowed from my eighteen-year-old daughter’s vocabulary. “What’s the tea, bitches?” but it came out, “What’s the bee, bitches?” I corrected. “The tea. What’s the tea?” I tried to explain. “Maddie says that’s like, ‘What’s happening? What’s the news? The 911.’ And bitch isn’t bitchy, it’s a compliment.”

“411?” said Holly.

“What?”

“I love you so much, Sam,” Katie said in a way that meant, You’re so cute, like an idiot is cute.

“411 is for information. 911 is for emergencies,” said Holly.

“Okay, then. What’s the 411? What’s going on?” I dropped the bags and tried to shove them under the bed. I was such a “Try Hard.” When your friend might be out of remission, you didn’t come with essential oils and fancy slang from another generation. You came with a fully charged phone and your big know-it-all brain, like Holly.

“My blood counts are wonky, and they’ve admitted me for a workup,” said Katie.

“Oh, okay.” I bent and kissed Katie on the cheek. From that angle I saw she wore a pulse oximeter, and an intravenous port had been inserted and taped onto the back of her hand. Katie hated that spot for an IV. I should have been there to advocate. Her wristband lay under the tubing, and I read her name, Kate Martin. The same birthday as mine.

“All this for a few tests?” I asked.

Holly’s phone buzzed, and she picked it up. “Ralph. Great. What do you have for me?” She stood, high-powered lawyer Holly, and moved to the doorway.

“Thank you so much for coming, Sam,” Katie said.

“Of course. I mean, seriously, Katie. Of course, you know I always come.”

“I know.” She pulled my hand to her cheek and snuggled my knuckles.

“What’s Holly doing?”

“There’s some weird thing in my insurance she’s checking on. If I have to go through everything all over again, I need to be covered.”

I heard Holly in the hall. “Don’t screw with me here. Just find out what we need to do.”

“It’s good you called her, then. I mean, if you need someone yelled at, call Holly. If you need an in-hospital manicure, I’m your gal.” So I didn’t sound completely pathetic, I added, “We make a good team.”

Holly reentered the room and said, “Out of pocket.” A phrase I knew sometimes meant unavailable and sometimes meant a form of payment. That was Holly, though: if she could use a buzzword instead of a full sentence, she was all over it. The fewer words spoken, the greater your personal value. I had loved it when we’d lived together. We’d had our own language that was flexible and clear only to us. For example, the word skirt could mean we were ready to leave a party or a bar or that we liked what someone was wearing. “Those pants are skirt!” she’d say, and I’d feel stylish all day. Nugget meant the boy in front of us in class or at the bar was delish, but it could also be used as a pet name for each other. “Hey, Nugget,” I’d say, and we’d toss each other a kiss. Holly had created the vocabulary. We deciphered and expanded the meanings, and no one but the three of us were in on the game.

Katie scooted over an inch and patted the bed for me to sit, and when she motioned for Holly to get closer, I took another second-long assessment. The natural blush in Katie’s cheeks sat high, as if she’d stepped in from a walk in the spring air. The chicken pox scar on her temple was present and accounted for, and her beautiful head of hair fell to her shoulders. We saved her chestnut locks the first time around with a cold-cap system: an icy hat that patients wore during their chemotherapy infusions that helped keep hair on heads rather than falling out in hairbrushes. By all outward accounts, she looked better than I did after a full makeover at Sephora.

“Okay, you two. We gotta talk. Bradley and Bebe will be here soon,” said Katie.