Agnes shook her head. In scientific places, Agnes tended to look in charge. People approached her to ask where things were: elevators, restrooms, the maternity ward. She did not dress like a nurse, but she had a face that could be as smooth as a rounded pane of glass, the shape and color of those windows medical students watch surgeries through. I think people understood from this that she had knowledge of secret anatomies, that she could open things with her hands.

This time, under the LED and the antiseptic smell, Agnes looked lost. The worried line between her eyes, the gooseflesh rising on her arms and chest. She looked estranged from her insides, like they might do something they weren’t supposed to. She reached for the paper gown to put it on. “These things are an exercise in humiliation,” she said.

I reached up to pet her hair. A little greasy, because she hadn’t showered that morning. “You should at least tie it in the front, like a robe. They’re looking in your breasts anyway.”

“That’s not the way it goes on,” Agnes muttered. She rubbed her cheek, gestured one-handed to the gown’s open back. “Here, Doctor, look how fat my ass is. Do I have cancer? God.” Her voice went deep and damp as a plunge into wet earth. I was holding the strings of her gown, ready to tie it around her shoulders. She could wear it any way she wanted. “Give that to me.” Agnes took the strings.

She had to pull the gown away from her body to reverse it, and so I darted quick as a weasel between her and the paper, so she held it behind me, and caged me in her arms. “Geb.” Agnes put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m all right. Let’s just—” She stopped when I bent and put my mouth to the seam of her breast. I had intended just to kiss her there, but the tumor pressed against my lips and Agnes shivered, so I put it between my teeth. I pressed my teeth into it, just a little. When Agnes did not seem to feel it at all, I pressed harder, as if I might really bite the cancer off her, and then the tumor did, somehow, come off in my mouth.

I stumbled back a step and spat into my hand. “What?” Agnes said. Baffled, I shook my head. I looked down at what I held.

“What?” Agnes said again, setting the gown aside, putting her hands out to me palms first, like she was afraid I’d hurt myself.