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Me: That was an objective peer review.

Marco: You also said his hands looked like they knew how to label diagrams.

The elevator stops at the third floor. A woman in a navy coat steps in, holding a toddler with one shoe missing. The toddler looks at me. I look at the toddler. The toddler has the expression of someone who knows exactly where the shoe is and will never tell.

Respect.

I angle my phone away like Marco is sending state secrets instead of harassing me about a man with excellent flash cards.

Me: Send the number or I’m telling Singh you called the dorsal scapular nerve “the shoulder noodle.”

Marco: You wouldn’t.

Me: I have hormones and no mercy.

Marco: Fine.

A second later, he sends a number.

Marco: Use your powers responsibly.

I stare at it.

Evan Cole’s number. Probably.

This feels weird. Not morally weird. It’s not a marriage proposal. It’s a number. A string of digits. Humans invented them to coordinate study sessions and ruin their own lives. Still, my thumb hesitates.

The toddler drops a cracker onto the elevator floor. We all look at it. Nobody moves. A tiny funeral occurs.

The elevator starts again with a jolt, and my thumb lands on the screen.

Fantastic. Now I’m both socially awkward and physically compromised by vertical transportation.

I open a new contact.

First name: Evan

Last name: Cole

Company: Brachial Plexus Emergency Services

I delete that.

Then I undelete it.

Then I delete it again because if I die and someone finds my phone, I cannot have my legacy be “saved a crush like a medical hotline.”

First name: Evan

Last name: Cole

I type the phone number carefully. The elevator lurches again. I glance up because the toddler has begun chanting “shoe” in a low, ominous voice. The woman in the navy coat says, “Almost there, baby.”

I look back down. The number is entered.

I squint. The screen blurs for half a second because my eyes are dry and my body is mostly caffeine and synthetic hormones.

It looks right. Probably.