“Good,” he said. “I’m tired of shaving three times a day.”

Fox folded the report closed and picked the clipboard up off the bed table. Her eyes quickly scanned the checklist of questions he had to answer every time he came in.

“No fever at all?”

“No, I’m clean.”

“And no diarrhea.”

“Nope.”

He knew from her constant drilling and double-checking that fever and diarrhea were the twin harbingers of organ rejection. He took his temperature a minimum of twice a day, along with readings of blood pressure and pulse.

“The vitals look good. Why don’t you lean forward?”

She put the clipboard down. With a stethoscope she first warmed with her breath, she listened to his heart at three different spots on his back. Then he lay back and she listened through his chest. She took her own measure of his pulse with two fingers on his neck while she looked at her watch. She was very close to him as she did this. She wore a perfume of orange blossoms, which McCaleb had always associated with older women. And Bonnie Fox was not one of them. He looked up at her, studying her face while she studied her watch.

“Do you ever wonder if we should be doing this?” he asked.

“Don’t talk.”

Eventually, she moved her fingers to his wrist and measured the pulse there. After that she pulled the pressure collar off the wall, put it on his arm and took a blood pressure reading, maintaining her silence all the time. “Good,” she said when she was done.

“Good,” he said.

“Whether we should be doing what?”

It was like her to suddenly continue an interrupted or forgotten bit of conversation.