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"She hasn't eaten properly in—" He paused. Reconsidered, maybe, whatever he'd been about to say. "A while."

"Oh my God. You jerk⁠—"

"She was living in her car."

"I am going to murder you in your sleep⁠—"

"I'd appreciate it if you'd give her a full workup." Cal's voice was even, his eyes on Rowan, and underneath the calm there was something else — a sense she'd learned to hear over five years of stitching this man back together. Something that said, It's bad. I don't know how bad. Please look.

Rowan heard it.

She looked at Sage — really looked, the deep look, the surgeon's look, the one that saw past skin to structure — and said, in the voice she used with frightened children and grown men who wouldn't admit they were in pain: "How about this. You let me do a checkup — blood pressure, temperature, the boring stuff — and if everything looks fine, you can tell him I said so, and he'll have to live with that for the rest of his life."

Sage considered this. The negotiation played visibly across her face. “Can I tell him he's a dramatic dick wad?"

"I'll put it in writing."

Something happened in Sage's expression — a crack, tiny, the beginning of a smile she was trying very hard not to let through. "Fine."

Rowan nodded. Then she turned to Cal. "Out."

He didn't move. Not because he hadn't heard — but because he had heard and was deciding whether to comply. His eyes went to Sage. Back to Rowan. A muscle worked in his jaw.

Oh…okay...

Rowan had seen this before. Not in Cal specifically — in men who had someone to protect. The ones who sat through appointments with that stillness, that exact and final vigilance, the controlled tension of someone whose instincts were screaming stay while everything else said, she's safe here.

The fact that Cal — Cal, who walked through the world like nothing could touch him, who endured stitches and minor surgery without anesthetic and dislocated joints with a grunt, who moved through every space with the casual sovereignty of someone who knew deep down only God could stop them — was standing in her doorway with that expression for this girl.

Her heart broke and she ignored it.

"Patient privacy, Cal. You know the drill." She held the door open and gave him a look she'd perfected in her surgical residency — the one that communicated “I am a medical professional and this is not a negotiation,” with a warmth that took the edge off. "Don't worry. If terrorists start charging in through the window, I'll call for you."

The briefest pause. Something shifted behind his eyes — recognition, maybe, or surprise, and the awareness of a man who had just been seen more precisely than he expected.

Then he looked at Sage one more time. "I'll be in the waiting room."

"Shocking," Sage said.

He left. The door closed behind him with a quiet click, and the room changed — became smaller, closer, intimate. Two women alone in a clinical space, one of them in a white coat and one of them trying very hard to look like none of this mattered.

Rowan pulled a chair to the side of the exam table and sat. Not standing over her. Not across from her. Beside her. Rowan understood that power dynamics lived in spatial relationships and that a girl who flinched at large men in doorways might need to feel like she had the higher ground.

"So," she said. "Let's start with the boring stuff."

The boring stuff was not boring.

Temperature: 99.1. Still elevated. Recovering from whatever had spiked the 103 twenty-four hours ago, but not fully resolved. Blood pressure: Low. Not dangerous, but consistent with dehydration and poor nutrition. 94 over 62.

Heart rate: Slightly elevated. Nerves, probably — the girl was vibrating with the low-frequency tension of someone who was cooperating but not comfortable, the way a cat endured a vet visit.

Weight: 160 at five-three. Broad hips, large breasts, the skeletal structure of someone whose body sat heavier when it wasn't running on empty. The weight she did have sat on her like an afterthought, like her body was maintaining the minimum and had given up on the rest.

"When's the last time you saw a doctor?" Rowan asked, wrapping the blood pressure cuff around Sage's arm for the second time. Sometimes she repeated readings when she didn't like the first one. She didn't like this one.

Sage considered the ceiling. "Define 'saw a doctor.'"

"An actual medical professional examined you."