Read Chapter 34: — BEYOND THE SCAN

Years later, Daniel still visited Greyfell without warning.

He liked walking through the centre before anyone noticed him.

The waiting room had changed. The first Aurora unit had been replaced by a newer model. Clara's rehabilitation programme occupied two rooms. On the wall remained Margaret's name.

A young technologist recognised Daniel and hurried over.

"Professor Mercer, we didn't know you were coming."

"That was the idea."

"Do you want a tour?"

Daniel looked around.

An elderly couple sat holding hands. A farmer argued softly with a receptionist about parking reimbursement. A child played with a wooden train. Somewhere behind the doors, a tracer was being prepared, detectors were counting photons, software was reconstructing a map of invisible processes inside a human body.

"No," Daniel said. "I think I know the building."

He found Clara in the garden behind the centre.

She had finished a session and was watching patients plant spring bulbs.

"You're late," she said.

"For what?"

"Lunch. Life. Several conversations. Choose one."

Daniel sat beside her.

Beyond the low stone wall, fields ran toward the hills.

He thought of Marianne Cole. Margaret. Marcus. Helen. Dean Hall. Every patient whose image had taught him something. Every engineer whose work had disappeared inside a machine carrying someone else's name.

When he was nineteen, he had believed the useful problems lived between disciplines.

He still believed that.

He had simply learned that the most important distance was not between engineering and medicine.

It was between knowledge and the person waiting for it.

Clara slipped her hand into his.

"What are you thinking?"

Daniel watched the first green shoots breaking through the soil.

"That spring always looks impossible in winter."

Clara smiled.

"Mum used to say that."

"I know."

They sat there until the light changed.

Inside the centre, another scan began.