Snow frets at the clinic windows, and the radiator ticks like a metronome for a stranger’s pulse.

The newcomer signs the intake clipboard that smells faintly of lemon cleaner and old cardboard, then studies a missing-hiker flyer tacked over last month’s blood drive.

The door to Exam Two swings open a beat too slow. A tall doctor peers out—his smile arriving after the rest of him, as if it had to catch up.

Nurse Ellen tips her chin toward the room.

“You’re up. He’s… fine at medicine.”

“Hello,” the doctor says, voice careful, vowels arranged like borrowed furniture. “I am very normal human doctor. Describe your… human symptoms using no more than two words.”

From the hallway, Asta’s voice warms the edges.

“Harry, be nice.”

The lights dip as a snowplow growls past, and the building hums with something not entirely HVAC.

The newcomer sits on crinkling paper, the paper gown flaring like a flag. There is the ordinary path—blood pressure, a bandage, a joke about the weather—and there are the loose threads already pooling at their boots: the buzz near the lake, the hum in the walls, the way the doctor watches like he is learning a species.

The room waits to see which thread they pull first.