She had rescheduled the removal four times, and Tomás had stopped asking why, which was the reason she kept coming back.
The waiting room had emptied hours ago. Now there was only the subsonic hum from the back room, the refrigerated hardware breathing cold through the wall, and the two of them at the intake desk where he wasn't supposed to still be sitting. Brine came through the glass. Outside, a cargo barge repositioned itself in the dark, patient as a continent.
"You don't have to decide tonight," he said. His right hand rested flat on the desk, the tremor barely visible. She had learned to read it the way she read everything — involuntary data, a body confessing.
"I know."
Sixty centimeters between them. She could smell the solder on him, and underneath it, cardamom. Her port warmed behind her ear, a familiar heat she no longer trusted.
He leaned forward. Forty centimeters. Her nipples tightened against her shirt and she did not move to hide it, did not move at all, kept her hands very still on her knees. That was the only thing she had ever known how to do with want — hold it level, let no instrument find it.
"It came out three weeks ago," she said.
His breath changed. He understood before she explained — that the node was scar now, that she had booked the appointments to sit in a room with a man whose whole craft was releasing what once felt load-bearing.
She found his inner wrist and pressed two fingers to the pulse.
"Then I'm not reading anything," he said, and brought his fingertips to the nape of her neck.
