By the time my husband graduated from medical school I had spent eight years paying for it. On the lawn afterward his mother took the flowers out of my hands, he pushed an envelope into them, and I opened it standing in front of eighty people.

I remember the night he sat on the floor of my apartment with a tuition statement in his hand, looking at it like it had done something to him personally.

“I think that’s it,” he said.

“It isn’t.”

“I can’t pay next semester.”

“We’ll figure it out.”

He gave me a look I did not understand at the time. “With what?”

That was the first time I saw what fear did to Teo. He got smaller. Not dramatic, not loud. He folded inward and I had no idea how to reach in after him.

Three weeks later I withdrew from medical school.

He argued. I want that in the record because it matters, and because for eight years it was the thing I used to reassure myself.

“No. Absolutely not.”

“One doctor in the family is enough.”

“Don’t joke about this.”

“I’m not joking.”

He looked stunned, and then angry, and then something that I read as heartbroken.