It’s a terrible (and terribly personal) context, but they are both so very good at that clinical detachment. This is easier to broach when it’s little parcels of impersonal fact, giving a report: this is simply what happened. The doctor would sooner set himself on fire than ask and how did you feel about that, emotionally?

“Also reasonable,” Strange concludes. “With some drugs, the withdrawal symptoms are simply too dangerous to field going off it all at once. But it seems you must have made the right call if the side-effects were… manageable. What about physically? Fevers, aches and pains, nausea, any of that? Nothing that seemed life-threatening?”