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Something prickles under my skin. I shift the envelope from one hand to the other.

Petra notices. She notices everything. If a dust mote committed fraud in this hallway, Petra would already have it notarized.

“Are you feeling unwell?” she asks.

“No. Just tender.”

Her gaze drops again.

My face heats. I hate that it does.

“The injections can cause bloating,” she says.

“I’ve noticed.”

“It’s temporary.”

“I wasn’t worried.”

Petra’s expression doesn’t soften. If anything, it settles into something worse. Professional sympathy. The kind people use when they are being careful not to offend someone they have absolutely already offended in their head.

“I only meant,” she says, “that the physical changes can feel sudden.”

There it is. The polite little knife.

I smile. My best smile. My clinic smile. My yes-I-understand-the-consent-form smile. “Bodies are famously rude.”

Petra says nothing.

“Mine especially,” I add.

Still nothing.

Great. Excellent. I’m bombing in front of a woman whose natural habitat is probably a glass office and the blood pressure of junior staff.

I tuck the envelope into my bag.

The money matters. That’s the part I always come back to.

It matters more than Petra’s face. More than my bruised stomach. It matters because Nate’s last bill is sitting in my email like a hostage note. It matters because my loans are multiplying in the dark. It matters because I’m tired of being one unexpected expense away from becoming a cautionary tale with decent grades.

So yes. I take the poke allowance.

I take the appointments. I take the injections. I take Petra’s disapproval and fold it into a small, hard square inside myself. I can carry it.

Apparently carrying things is about to become my specialty.

My phone buzzes inside my bag. The sound is too loud in the quiet hallway.

Petra glances down, then back at me, like even my notifications should have been scheduled through her.

“Sorry,” I say, because women apologize to furniture if the room is tense enough.

I pull out my phone.

Marco.

Marco: Reminder that Singh moved the neuro test to tomorrow. 8 AM. Brachial plexus hell. Do not forget or I’m letting your ghost explain the roots, trunks, divisions, cords, branches.