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Ren came back down to the clinic after the penthouse.
He let himself in through the connecting door, flipped on the reception light, and stood for a moment. The examination table was still visible through the open treatment room door, unchanged from the morning before. His coat on the hook. The coffee cup from yesterday still on the counter beside the phone.
He picked up the phone.
Seventy-four missed calls. Most of them resolved now. Lily and Martinez, handled. Lucy, someone else's problem until morning.
One name still at the top.
Rhea Jensen. Forty-four calls.
He set the phone back on the counter.
He had known he would have to call her. He had been not-calling her for the past hour, which he recognized as the specific kind of avoidance that accomplished nothing. She would have seen the news. She would have watched the coverage. She would have seen the casualty numbers.
He picked up the phone.
Pressed dial before he could think about it further.
She picked up before it finished ringing.
The line was quiet for a second. She had grabbed the phone before the ring finished and was holding it with both hands, and that was all the silence was.
Then he heard it.
Not words. A sound that was not quite a breath and not quite a word, the kind of sound people made when they had been holding something for a very long time and something suddenly gave way.
She was crying.
Ren had prepared himself to be shouted at. He had prepared himself for the specific version of Rhea that came out when she was annoyed, the one that called him mister in a tone that meant he was in trouble. He had not prepared himself for this.
"Rhea," he said.
She made a sound.
"I'm here," he said.
A breath. Another one. He could hear her pulling herself back together: quietly, no production of it.
"Are you hurt?" she said. Her voice was rough.
"No."
"Okay." Another breath. "Okay. Good. Good."
She was quiet for a moment. He could hear her moving, a soft sound like she was sitting down somewhere.
"I kept calling," she said.
"I know. I'm sorry."
"Your phone—" She stopped. Started again. "I kept thinking you just had bad signal or something. And then the number on the news kept going up." A pause. "It got to eleven thousand, mister."
"I know."
"And I didn't—" Her voice cracked on the last word. She breathed through it. "I didn't know if you were in it."
"I wasn't."
"I know that now." She exhaled. "I know that now. You're on the phone. You're talking to me. I know."
She sounded like she was saying it to herself as much as to him.
Ren leaned against the counter.
He had nothing ready to say. He usually had something ready. The particular kind of deflection that let him redirect a conversation, the clinical observation that gave him something to do with his hands. None of it was available right now.
"Thank god," Rhea said, very quietly. "Thank god."
He heard the sincerity of it. Not performance, not a figure of speech, just two words she had been sitting on for seventeen hours.
A pause. Then, quieter still:
"If something had happened to you—" She stopped. "I don't think I could have forgiven myself. For not— I don't even know. For not doing something. I don't know what I would have done."
"Rhea—"
"I know," she said, quickly. "I know you're fine. You're on the phone. I know." A breath. "I just needed to say it."
"I should have called," he said.
"Yes."
"There were moments. Between things. I should have."
"Yes," she said.
"I didn't think—"
"You didn't think I'd be like this," she said. It was not a question.
Ren was quiet.
"Mister." Her voice had come back, mostly. "Forty-four times. I called you forty-four times. I don't do that. I don't even call my mother that many times."
"I understand."
"Do you?"
He looked at the counter. At the cold coffee cup still sitting where he had left it yesterday morning.
"I'm working on it," he said.
Rhea made a sound that was almost a laugh. Almost. Not quite there yet.
"You're so strange, mister." A breath that was almost a laugh. "Normal people say sorry. You say you're working on it."
"It's more accurate."
"I know." A breath. "That's why I like it."
He heard her shifting again, settling somewhere. He imagined her on the floor of her apartment, back against the couch, knees up.
"Are you actually okay?" she said.
"Yes."
"Not hurt anywhere?"
"Minor wear from the engagement. Nothing that needs attention."
"Minor wear," she repeated. "You talk like a medical report."
"I am a medical professional."
"You're a disaster with a white coat," she said, and it came out the way it did when she was nearly back to normal.
He did not argue with this.
"Mister," she said.
"Yes."
A pause. He heard her breathing, slow and settled now.
"I'm glad you're okay," she said. "That's all. I just— I'm really glad."
He held the phone.
He thought about Lily's hand over his on the table. Martinez's shoulders dropping one centimeter when he said okay. The bowl filled without asking. And now this: forty-four calls from a person who would not say she loved him but had been counting rings for seventeen hours.
Unknown to me, he thought again.
But smaller this time. Not a revelation. An accumulation.
"I know," he said.
"Good." She took a breath. "Good."
Outside the clinic window the street was quiet, the dark district four blocks east blocked from view by the building angle, the ordinary city going on in front of it.
"Mister," Rhea said.
"Yes."
"I'm coming to see you."
He blinked. "Now?"
"Right now. At the clinic. Are you staying?"
"I was going to—"
"I'll be there in twenty minutes. Don't go anywhere."
"Rhea—"
"Twenty minutes, mister. Stay put."
She hung up.
Ren stood in the empty clinic with the phone in his hand and looked at the door.
He set the phone down on the counter next to the cold coffee cup.
He did not go anywhere.