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"Clearly." Rowan paused, then made a decision — calculated, instinctive, the kind of risk assessment that happened faster than conscious thought. "I like the ink, by the way."

Sage's eyebrows went up. Rowan nodded toward the edge of the tattoo visible at Sage's collarbone — dark lines, what looked like the beginning of flowers and thorns, the kind of design that told a story in its choices.

"What is it?"

"Wild roses and thorns." Sage's hand drifted up, touching it through the flannel. A different kind of touch than she'd used for anything else — proprietary, gentle, the way you touched something that was yours. "For someone I lost. She used to—" A flicker. "She loved roses."

"It's beautiful work. Can I—" Rowan gestured. Can I see?

Sage hesitated for half a second, then pulled the flannel collar aside. The tattoo cascaded down from her collarbone — wild roses tangled with blackthorn branches, thorns rendered in precise, almost architectural detail, the roses themselves soft and full and alive against the sharp angles of the thorns. The work was exceptional. Dense, detailed, clearly done over multiple sessions. It covered her left clavicle and reached toward her shoulder.

"God, that's gorgeous," Rowan said, and meant it. "The detail on the thorns⁠—"

"My artist was insane. Twenty hours over four sessions." Sage pulled the collar back. But something had shifted — the wariness had dropped one degree. Maybe two. "You have ink?"

"Mmm." Rowan turned and tugged the collar of her scrub top aside, showing the edge of the tattoo on her left shoulder blade — precise black lines, anatomical, detailed. "Anatomical heart. Surgeon joke. Well — surgeon memorial, more accurately." She let the collar fall back. "I sat for four hours and the artist told me I was the calmest client he'd ever had. I told him I'd held a human heart in my hands while it was still beating, so a needle wasn't really going to move the dial."

Sage stared at her. "You held a human heart⁠—"

"That's a story for another visit." Rowan reached for the new pair of gloves on the counter, snapping them on with unconscious efficiency. A motion she performed ten thousand times. "Right now, I want to do a more thorough physical, if you're okay with that. Temperature, blood work, and given that you've been on your own for a while — a full exam. Pelvic included."

The shift was immediate. Not dramatic — Sage didn't flinch, didn't freeze, didn't do any of the things a less experienced doctor might have been looking for. She went still. A complicated quality of stillness that Rowan recognized from the inside out, because it wasn't the stillness of calm. It was the stillness of someone who had learned that being very, very still sometimes made things end faster.

"It's completely your choice," Rowan said. Quietly. No pressure in her voice, no urgency, no clinical insistence. Just the fact. "I won't do anything you don't want me to do. And anything we find stays between us — patient confidentiality. Not even Cal."

Sage's eyes snapped to hers. The “not even Cal” had landed. Rowan could see it — the relief, fleeting and quickly masked, that some things might be allowed to remain private.

"Fine," Sage said. Too casual. "Whatever. I don’t care."

"You can stop me at any time. For any reason. That's not a courtesy — it's your right. Okay?"

Sage swallowed. Nodded once.

"I'm going to step out so you can change into the gown. Open side to the back. Take your time — I'll knock before I come in."

She stepped into the hallway and pulled the door shut behind her and stood there for four seconds with her hand on the knob and her eyes closed.

The ribs.

Two healed fractures, improperly mended, different ages. Which meant at minimum two separate incidents of force significant enough to crack bone, spread across enough time that the first had healed before the second occurred. Which meant pattern. Which meant this wasn't an accident, wasn't a fall, wasn't a rough childhood with one bad incident. This was sustained. Repeated. Systematic.

And the girl was eighteen.

How long?, Rowan thought, and her hand tightened on the doorknob until the metal bit into her palm.

She took the breath. The surgical breath — in through the nose, four counts, hold, out through the mouth, six counts. The one that said, “whatever you're feeling comes after. The patient comes first.”

She walked to the reception window. Cal was in the waiting room, not sitting — standing, near the door, in the position of a man who had placed himself between the room's only exit and everything else. His arms were crossed.

He was watching the hallway she'd come from with an intense stillness. Like a predator who had been asked to wait and was complying against every instinct.

"Cal." She kept her voice low. Clinical. "Can I ask — how long has she been with you?"

"Less than twenty-four hours"

The words hit Rowan like a blunt instrument. Not even a day. The ribs were years old. The malnutrition was chronic. The way this girl moved through the world — the guarding, the scanning, the stillness — that was built over years. A decade, maybe. Whatever had happened to Sage had happened long before Cal found her, and he'd had her less than a full day, and he'd already gotten her new clothes and fed her and brought her to a doctor and looked at her like she was the gravitational center of his entire existence.

That’s that then. Okay…okay.