He’s only 40, an age I’d still con­sid­er young for a doc­tor. I see the fea­tures of so many of my Chinese peers in his face, though he’s actu­al­ly an Irish expat. Family and a restau­rant sealed his par­ents deci­sion to emi­grate to the Emerald Isle when he was too young to speak. It explains why his con­ver­sa­tion­al dic­tion is impec­ca­ble while some spo­ken con­so­nants are merged or lost, a famil­iar accent from being born into a Cantonese fam­i­ly. This imme­di­ate­ly puts me on my guard. I’ve rarely got­ten along with those peers; the cul­ture has­n’t been kind.

But I’m not here for myself. I did­n’t even make the appoint­ment, which is why I don’t know what to say.

Thankfully, he takes the lead and takes his time. The ques­tions cov­er a mot­ley gamut, and I can tell how com­pre­hen­sive his notes are through the clack­ing of the key­board.

At some point he asks if any­one came with me, and I tell him who’s in the wait­ing room. He kind­ly offers to speak to her on my behalf, but she already knows. It’s the only rea­son I’m telling this sto­ry anoth­er time. I can’t help admit­ting how humil­i­at­ing it is to be so depen­dent on oth­ers, to need peo­ple like her so des­per­ate­ly some­times that I can’t imag­ine how I’d sur­vive with­out them.

Without any change in his pro­ce­dur­al tone, he says this sen­ti­ment is part of our Chinese guilt. We dis­ap­point our par­ents by not being strong enough to live up to their expec­ta­tions as self-reliant adults, but they pre­vent us from grow­ing up by treat­ing us like chil­dren and refus­ing to let us make our own deci­sions. He knows, cause he’s gone through the same thing. At the same time, he nev­er con­dones my feel­ings, offer­ing a reas­sur­ance that we all han­dle things dif­fer­ent­ly, and that we can’t do it alone some­times. It tells me he does­n’t just lis­ten; he cares.

Before send­ing me off with a dose of Pristiq, he hands me a sealed enve­lope — on it writ­ten “emer­gency room let­ter” — and tells me to give it to the doc­tor at the Queensway-Carleton, while care­ful­ly sug­gest­ing I have noth­ing to lose at this point. It makes sense, but I’m not ready. Not yet. This is good for now. She’ll thank me for tak­ing this step, one that’s as much for her as it is for me.

After, we hold hands in the car while wait­ing to be com­posed enough to be seen in pub­lic, bass lines wash­ing over us like heart­beats, an affir­ma­tion of rea­sons for and the things I love.