But two years ago, his own hands had started to betray him. A tremor. Then a stillness in the last two fingers of his right hand, as if they had turned to stone. The diagnosis sat in his chest like a cold coin: a neuropathy that would crawl up his arm, then his spine, then silence him entirely.
“Well,” he said.
Lena finally looked at him. She was young — thirty, maybe — with the clean, merciless posture of the new school. Laser tools. Digital mapping. Chemical stabilizers that smelled of laboratories, not linseed oil. She respected him. She also pitied him, which was worse. attingo