“How.”
“According to her,” Bea continued, tilting the phone slightly like the evidence might somehow make more sense from a different angle, “this is ‘a critical observational moment in high-stress emotional adaptation,’ and she’s now ‘deeply inspired’ to double down on sports psychology.”
I leaned back a fraction, not breaking contact where our shoulders met. “She was already headed there.”
“I know.” Bea glanced up at me, one brow lifting, her expression caught somewhere between fond and resigned. “I just didn’t realize I was going to be cited as part of the case study.”
“You are,” I returned evenly. “She’s been collecting data on you since the first time you disagreed with her.”
Bea’s lips curved—quick, real—before she dropped her gaze back to the screen, her thumb moving again, slower now.
“She says she’s calling me later,” Bea added, her tone flattening slightly in anticipation. “And I need to be ‘emotionally available and intellectually honest.’”
“You won’t be.”
“I absolutely will not be.”
“Chicago’s not ready for her,” I said.
Bea exhaled softly, something warmer settling into it now, the earlier tension easing without disappearing completely. “Chicago created her,” she murmured.
“That’s worse.”
Bea’s shoulder bumped mine once, light, automatic—agreement without looking up. She typed something, hit send, and let the phone fall back into her lap, her hand drifting down again to where it had been before.
My thumb followed.
Steady.
Right where she needed it.
Her phone buzzed again in her hand. She typed something quickly, then set it aside, her attention shifting back to the space around us as the door at the end of the hall opened again.
This time—“Ribeiro,” the nurse called, her tone warm, practiced, her gaze flicking between us.
Bea straightened immediately, instinct kicking in before anything else. Her shoulders squared, her hand dropping from her stomach as she reached for her coat—I caught her wrist gently.
My thumb brushed once over the inside of her wrist, slow, deliberate, grounding.
Her eyes lifted to mine.
Her throat moved as she swallowed, something soft breaking through the edges of her composure again—not panic, not fear—just honesty.
She let out a breath that almost shook, then steadied, her fingers tightening briefly around mine before she pulled back, grabbing her coat and slipping it on with efficient, practiced movements.
Then she turned toward the nurse. “We’re ready.”
The monitor flickered.
Static gave way to motion, the image catching, slipping, then resolving again in uneven pulses that should have felt mechanical, routine, nothing more than the expected progression of a process that happened in rooms like this every day.
It didn’t.
Nothing in the room shifted in any obvious way. The lighting remained low and controlled, the steady hum of the equipment continuing without interruption, the doctor’s movements efficient and unremarkable as she adjusted the angle.
But everything narrowed anyway.
Not around the screen.