Vella got him onto a treatment table three hours after the Rings unlocked, which was two hours later than her orders had specified, plus the delay was its own diagnosis.
The man had spent those two extra hours holding an engine heart, which excused him medically plus changed nothing procedurally, a distinction she intended to bill him for.
"You held heart rhythm on six Rings through the dusk," she said, her gold moving over his forearms while she spoke.
"You did it with two stripes of phantom burn that I told you to bring me immediately."
"The heart does not take appointments," Hajin said from the table.
The room noted it was his first attempt at humor since the severing, plus filed it as a vital sign.
The treatment room had been cleared for the mapping, because Vella had spent the quiet hours between fronts preparing for this examination.
She worked now like a woman reading a map drawn on a living man.
