I stepped into an empty corridor before making the call. There was flour on her forehead when she picked up the call. She wiped it away with the back of her hand.

“We’ll be coming in a few weeks,” she said. “Dr. Rossi told us you could stay out of the institute for a day or two.”

“Outside?” I asked. I didn’t know if I was ready for the outside. It was one thing to be exposed to the world bit by bit within the safe space of the institute. The outside world came with an unknown quantity of unknown quantities.

“We’ll just be going to Laila auntie’s house,” she said. “They want to see you too.”

I remembered Laila auntie. She used to slip a twenty dollar bill into Ravi’s pockets when they said goodbye. Her husband was a quiet, staid man who worked in an insurance company. They lived together in their rustic little house, the same home since they were newlyweds. A peaceful constant despite everything that had changed over the course of Ravi’s life. I’d be able to handle that much.

“That’s cool,” I said. “How’s Papa?”

“He’s trying to fix one of the loose stairs,” she said. “I’ve told him we should call someone, but he thinks he can do it.”

She shrugged, as if she knew they’d end up calling a repairman anyway, after Papa was done being stubborn.

“Dr. Rossi said we can expect you to be home in a few months,” she said. “Maybe even a few weeks, if the rest of your treatment goes well. Thank god.”

She offered a silent prayer to one of the paintings of deities hanging on the kitchen wall, and the smiled.

“We thought you’d die, when we first saw you, you know. All that blood…”

She turned away from the camera for a second. She could hide the tears in her eyes, but not in her voice.

“Thank goodness Leviotte agreed to admit you,” she said.

I did not like the bitter feeling forming in my throat. Their happiness was artificial, and would be for the rest of their lives. I was a fake, an incomplete replacement for what they’d lost. While Ravi’s memories filled me to the brim, I found that I was inheriting none of his personality.

He was a pacifist and a thinker, someone who liked exercising his mind more than his body. Soon they would no doubt discover that I had changed more than they expected, and perhaps more than they could bear.

“I miss you,” I said. It wasn’t a lie. I could at least try to keep them from finding the differences for as long as possible. Delaying their disappointment.

Her tears melted away. “All of a sudden you love us so much, huh?”

“I’ve gotta go, Ma,” I said, unwilling and unable to answer her question. “I think the painkillers are making me sleepier than usual.”

She nodded. “Go to sleep early. It’ll help you recover faster. I’ll call you when we get to Laila auntie’s house.”

I could tell she wanted to talk more, but there was nothing more to say. I could ask about what they’d had for dinner, where Varsha was, but they would all be empty excuses to keep hearing her voice.

Was it a good idea to let myself get attached? There was no guarantee that I would see much of them after I was discharged. Perhaps I would be the kind of son who only visited for Thanksgiving and Christmas, who begged off visiting for birthdays or special occasions with some pitiful excuse. In my case, a generic lie after a generic lie.

“I love you, Ma,” I said, the words coming out of my mouth so easily I wondered if for a moment, I’d been possessed by Ravi’s ghost. It was an easy white lie, and before I cut the call, I saw the smile on her face, more resplendent than the sun.

“Already?” Lina asked. It was amateurish of me to not be aware of my surroundings, but Lina was light-footed and my mind was a few thousand miles away, in a small three-bedroom house that constantly smelled of cooking rice.

“It’s just something you say,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

“It’s not something you would say,” Lina commented. She dug her hands into her pockets and rocked on the balls of her feet. “I’m happy you like them, though. I hear some of the others haven’t been so lucky when it comes to their new families.”

“Does it matter, the luck we have?” I asked. “Perhaps we’ll just be workaholics once we get out there. I wonder how much of the hundred years we’ll be working and how little at home.”

“Dennis says we spend our lives much like other people do in this world. A nine-to-five kind of life, with some business trips and transfers.”

“We just do different things in those hours,” I commented.

Catch and kill, I thought, remembering the words Dr. Rossi said to me when I woke up.