At first I thought it must be a trick of the light, some particular wavelength that shimmered and flicked with an orangish sheen across his skin, like tea gone cold in a porcelain cup. With a tooth-free grin he asked to leave, felt 100 percent now we’d fixed him right up. Or at least—he whispered close—well enough to go home. His labs told me something else. Blood-borne secrets like spies unmasked. Cancer markers off the charts, pending CT. So I said, “Not yet,” though it caught in my throat, while outside the sun rose, red in a flocculent sky.
Sneha Mantri is Director of Medical Humanities at Duke University. She is currently working on a historical novel about eugenics in the early 20th century. Find Sneha on Twitter @offwhitecoat.