By 5:00 a.m. the dog was stable enough for transfer talk. Isaiah drank coffee that had given up on being coffee. Gwen slid into the break-room chair across from him.
"You look like a man thinking about a park," she said.
Isaiah raised an eyebrow. "Are you psychic now?"
"I'm nosy. Also your sister liked my Instagram story from the staff holiday party two years ago and now we are spiritually entangled." Gwen peeled an orange. "Admin emailed. They're drafting a 'professional boundaries refresher' after someone at the day clinic got weird with a client. Timing's coincidental. Still. Don't be a case study."
"I'm not."
"I know." Gwen's voice gentled. "You're one of the ones who actually means the rules. That's why I ride you. The ones who don't mean them need different tools."
Isaiah turned the coffee cup in his hands. "There's a closed loop hanging over my head. Rain check. Post-chart. I'm doing it clean."
Gwen nodded once. "Good. Also take your lunch break like a human. Your blood sugar makes you noble and stupid."
"Those are my brand adjectives."
"Go away," Gwen said, fond, and threw an orange peel at his shoe.
Claire saw him once more before the chart closed—not by design.
Nash ate something in the park that might have been a stick and might have been a piece of someone's abandoned bagel, and then produced a vomit so ambitious that Claire's body slammed back into cereal-night mode. She called Maple Street. Maple Street was closed. The after-hours message redirected to Harbor Night.
Claire sat on the bathroom floor with Nash and whispered, "Please be bagel. Please be boring."
She drove in the rain again. Same windows. Same plant. Same shame trying to put on its coat. At the desk she said, carefully, "I have a primary now. I know. But he's vomiting and they're closed and I—"
"That's what we're for," the receptionist said.
Isaiah was on. Of course he was on. The universe had a sense of humor with poor boundaries.
When he came through the glass door, his professional face arrived first. Then recognition. Then the smallest wince of irony, shared.
"Claire. Nash. Talk to me."
She did: park, possible bagel, vomit volume, no lethargy yet, gums pink, the whole anxious inventory. Isaiah examined with the same thoroughness as the cereal night, no shortcuts for familiarity. Nash, traitor again, rallied enough to lick Isaiah's wrist.