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I blink. Then I smile despite myself.

Me: Wow.

I don’t know why one plain word from an unknown number can feel like someone setting a paperweight down on a stack of flying pages, but it does.

I clear my throat even though I’m alone.

Then I look at the time. 12:26.

The test is in less than eight hours. I still need to review lesions, reflexes, and the part of the diagram where my brain quietly leaves its own body.

I could stop now. I probably should. But the thought of going back to the atlas alone makes my chest sink. Just a little.

Me: Can you keep teaching me?

There. Plain. No joke to hide it.

I regret that immediately.

My thumb hovers over the screen like I can reach through time and snatch the message back.

The dots appear. My stomach tightens.

The reply comes.

Not Evan: Sure.

Not Evan: Start with lesions.

Chapter Three

DALTON

I come out of surgery with blood dried in a half-moon under one fingernail and the particular silence in my head that follows a successful surgery.

The patient is alive. The graft is holding.

The room behind me is still bright, still moving, still full of people finishing the last part of what I started. Instruments being counted. Suction discarded. A resident trying not to look as relieved as he is.

He will feel it in twenty minutes, probably in the stairwell, when his body realizes nobody is asking it to hold still anymore.

“Good work,” I tell him.

He nods once, too quickly. “Thank you, Dr. Price.”

I leave before he can turn gratitude into a speech.

I strip off my gown and gloves.

Marcus is waiting near the scrub sink, arms folded, cap still on, eyes tired behind his glasses. “You look annoyingly pleased with yourself,” he says.

I turn on the tap with my elbow. “It went well.”

“You say that like you changed a tire.”

I scrub the dried edge of blood from my thumb. “More expensive tire.”

Marcus snorts.