Arthur Peabody was one of the top stars at the most prestigious law firm in Boston when he cracked. They put him on sabbatical for six months and tried to rehabilitate their golden boy, but it was no use. Whatever had broken in his brain during those 300-billable-hour months couldn’t be fixed. It was for that reason, and also maybe because of his storybook face, that students over the years had come to call him Humpty Dumpty.

In the end, he was cradled back into the fold of the law school and given emeritus status as the head tutor of Legal Method. Now Humpty Dumpty was an old man, with droopy eyelids and hangdog cheeks. He wore the same soup-stained bow tie every day, and you could usually catch him stomping through the library, muttering to himself. Each year, he taught first-year law students how to do what he did best (and perhaps the only thing left he could do): take a legal question and dive into the endless sea of case law to craft an answer.

You see, in law, it isn’t enough to find the perfect case that makes your argument. You then have to find every case that came afterward and that refers back to your case. Maybe your case was overturned. Maybe it was expanded or transformed. And it doesn’t stop there. Each of those cases had cases that came after them. What if someone overruled the case that overruled your case? It was this endless branching chain of cases that could drive a man insane-or in the case of Humpty Dumpty, hold him together.

In 1873, a man named Frank Shepard was smart enough to create a book that cataloged this chain of citations for every case, making the process infinitely easier. Lawyers have been updating it ever since. Now you could go to his book and see every case that cited your case and whether it helped or hurt. It was such a good idea that his name become immortal: all over the country, thousands of lawyers are Shepardizing their cases every day.

And that’s what we were practicing in the gothic main hall of the library, while my mind was on Friday and what might happen. In fact, I was getting pretty grumpy flipping through volume after volume of Shepard’s, tracking my cases.

“This is ridiculous,” I whispered to Nigel, who sat next to me.

“Shh,” he said, not looking up.

“I mean, I get it. This isn’t rocket science. Do we actually have to go through every single stupid case?”

“Quiet,” Nigel said, barely moving his lips.

“Why can’t we do this on the computer? It takes seconds on the computer. Why is he making us go through twenty old books wasting our entire day?”

No response from Nigel, but now I knew why.

The stained glass wall behind us made a rainbow across our table, and a pudgy shadow had appeared in the middle of it.

“Suppose, Mr. Davis,” said a voice from behind me, “that the electricity fails the night before your motion is due in court…” Humpty Dumpty placed his gnarled hand on my shoulder. I looked down and saw wiry white hairs on the knuckles. “Suppose you work not at a large firm, but at a small office with limited computers…” His mouth was just behind my ear. “Or suppose, God forbid, that you represent not corporations but actual humans, who cannot afford the thousands of dollars computer research requires…”

He was close enough now that he either had to kiss me or bite my nose off. Abruptly he walked away and left us alone with the books.

I walked home in the dark through the freshman quad. The streetlamps were on, lighting each side of the path. I watched the leaves shake and fall in the wind and felt the chill in the air. I pulled my coat tighter. It was late; most of the windows of the dormitories were black.

I saw a woman walking toward me along the same path, carrying overstuffed grocery bags in each hand.

As we passed, I let myself sneak a look at her face. I’ll admit right here, I’m a hopeless romantic. Going to college in the small town where you grew up (and staying in your parents’ house) isn’t exactly a recipe for an active dating life. Maybe I hadn’t admitted it to myself yet, but I think the idea of meeting someone incredible was a big part of the appeal of coming here.

I was surprised at how pretty she was. She wasn’t striking, like Daphne with her red lips and black hair. She felt, I don’t know, real, unlike so many of the students I saw who seemed to order their universes by résumés and transcripts.

She had soft brown eyes and brownish blond hair, and full lips that were more warm than sensual. She wore no makeup, and her hair was tied in a simple ponytail. Her coat was too bulky for the fall, and she had on green surgical scrubs underneath. She gave me the briefest glance as we passed.

I know this sounds crazy, but I felt a connection when our eyes met. Like I said, hopeless romantic. I wanted to say something, but as the distance between us grew, everything I thought of sounded more and more absurd. What do you yell from twenty feet away: Hi? Stop? I love you?

I shook my head and kept walking.

Then fate intervened. I heard a crash, and the woman cried out. One of her grocery bags had split and oranges were rolling in every direction-down the hill, into bushes, past the statue of our noble founder.

“Shit,” she cried, “shit, shit, shit.” She started trying to scoop them up, but her other bags were dropping and spilling as she scrambled in too many directions at once. I noticed her eyes were full of tears.

“Hey,” I said. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s just groceries.”

She shook her head and put her face in her hands.

“I can get your oranges back,” I said, possibly the lamest courtship promise of all time. She began to cry in earnest.

“Are you okay?”

She wouldn’t answer me. I didn’t know what else to do, so I started picking up oranges.

After a while, she said, “I don’t care about the stupid oranges.”

“Oh.”

Now I felt truly ridiculous.

“That came out wrong. Just, please, you don’t have to do that.”

“Good. Because some of your oranges are in the creek.”

She laughed suddenly.

“Oh, God,” she said, wiping her eyes. “You must think I’m crazy.”

“No… no… you just seem like you’re having a really bad day.”

“More like a really bad year.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” I sat down against a retaining wall a few feet away. “Are you a medical student?”

She shook her head and gave a small, unhappy laugh. “No. I’m a doctor, sort of. I graduated from medical school last year. I’m doing my internship now.”

“What kind of a doctor are you?”

“No kind, really. I’m training in neurosurgery.”

“That’s amazing. I mean, isn’t that the hardest program to get into? Especially here.”

She looked at me like I’d slapped her across the face. Her eyes were fundamentally gentle, but there was something else there-a sort of self-reproach, as if the only anger she was capable of feeling was aimed at herself; and it was a righteous, intense anger.

“I shouldn’t even be here.”

Her eyes welled up again. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but she’d become even prettier since she started crying. Her eyes were damp and bright, with gold flecks in the brown irises.

“I know how you feel. I think everybody feels that way. It’s like, what am I doing here? How did I even get in? But we can’t all be mistakes, right?”

Somehow, that was the wrong thing to say. Something in her expression broke when I said that.

“Look, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m saying all the wrong things.”

She shook her head.

“No. It’s not your fault. It’s nice to talk to someone-especially someone new. I don’t get out of the hospital much.”

“It’s really hard, huh?”

“Honestly? It’s worse than I ever imagined. I barely sleep. I eat McDonald’s three times a day, usually standing up. When I’m not in the hospital, I’m supposed to be reading. I have no friends, no life. I have too many patients, and they’re always yelling at me for keeping them waiting…” She shook her head. “Sorry. I shouldn’t just unload on a total stranger like that.”