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Chapter nine
Colt
The following Tuesday my left hand starts tingling before I reach the clinic.
Nothing dramatic, just pins and needles across the fingertips while I hold the wheel, gone by the time I park and back again when I sign in.
It comes and goes. Annoying enough to notice. Easy enough to explain badly if I want to.
Gabi slides a form across the desk. “You skipped the back last time.”
“I considered it optional.”
“It wasn’t.”
I switch the pen to my right hand.
The left does every job I give it. Grips. Moves. Drops nothing. The sensation fades while I write my address, then comes back across the index finger and thumb.
Number two sits in my head.
Tell me when something changes, not afterward.
Finn comes through the front doors carrying one coffee and wearing the face of a man who didn’t come here for banter.
I give him some anyway. “One coffee. You’ve changed.”
“One of us planned ahead.”
“Selfish.”
His mouth moves. The smile doesn’t stay.
Astrid opens the corridor door. “Morning, Finn.”
He doesn’t make her work for it.
“Twice this month I’ve gone for a word and it hasn’t been there.”
Everything else in the room goes quiet in my head.
Finn had two concussions last season. He still comes for follow-ups when he looks fine enough that nobody outside this building would know there was anything to follow.
Astrid steps closer. “What kind of word?”
“Normal words. Once it was garage. Yesterday it was kettle. I knew what the thing was. Couldn’t get the word.”
“How long?”
“Few seconds.”
“Anything else with it?”
“No headache. No vision thing. Nothing I noticed.”
Gabi’s hand is already on the phone.
“You tell Maren?” I ask.
