"Hm," Maggie returns. She understands the feeling he is describing: an anxious adrenal high that tightens your bowels in to a stone and shrinks your perspective until a singular point of anticipatory dread is all that remains. During the last few years of her PhD program, when she was left alone to write, she felt this way all the time. She never really found a fix for this feeling, but she believes wholeheartedly in the curative power of food, so she instead developed little tricks to force herself to eat when eating felt impossible.

"I like to pretend sometimes that I am a soldier in the trenches and this is my only chance to eat." She unpacks two quarter-inch thick bars made of sunflower seeds and honey and four small sour apples. She offers him half of her rations, holding them out to him expectantly, and instructs him to, "Look straight ahead and let your eyes unfocus. Try to think of something nice or think of nothing at all, if you can."