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“Yes.”

“Amazing,” I say, and he closes down even more. I don’t understand.

“Can you taste with all of them? This is unprecedented.”

“The ones around my lips are most sensitive.” He pulls away and fumbles with his mask, starting to put it on. “I’m sorry I wasted your time. I think I should go.”

Something I did offended him—the touching during the examination or something I said—but I don’t know what. Everything about this interaction is new, but I can’t give up on him so quickly.

“Mr. Foxhill…Orion, please. I apologize if I’ve made you uncomfortable. Please stay and talk to me. If I said something off-putting, it wasn’t intended.”

He gives me a hard look, and then takes a seat again.

“I’ve had some bad experiences with doctors.”

“Ah,” I say, beginning to understand. I retreat to the other side of the room and give him plenty of space. “Please tell me.”

“The first time was back when I was a kid. I was having some growing pains and my tentacles were starting to get really active. Our regular doctor referred us to a research hospital, and the doctors there said things like remarkable and unprecedented.”

“And you don’t want to be a research subject. Again.”

He looks up at me and we make a connection…or at least I hope we do.

“No, I don’t.”

“I understand completely,” I say, striving to put him at ease, and reconfirming my own commitment to my unique patient. “Please know that I’m here for you, and only for you. I’m not trying to make my career with your case. I simply want to work with you to find the best way to address your needs. Is this acceptable?”

“Yes,” he says quietly, and I see just a glimmer of hope in his eyes. I ponder again the experiences he must have suffered, but I’m determined: he’s not going to get any crap from me.

“I’ll probably slip and say words like that, but it’s simply because this is a new challenge for me. Please call me on it anytime I make you feel uncomfortable, and I’ll do my best to rein it in. Would you like to stay and continue?”

“Yes. Yes, that will be fine.”

“Good. So, the tentacles surrounding your lips are highly sensitive to taste. That will be an important consideration as we plan your treatment. You will probably lose that ability unless the sensitive regions extend across the entire tentacle and we can retain a portion of the sensory epithelium after the excision. How about touch? Are they sensitive to touch across the entire surface?”

4

ORION

As I return to the car, I feel everyone staring at me. It’s probably my imagination, but I don’t think so. I see the surreptitious glances, and the way they look away when I catch their eye. Not that I ever try to catch their eyes. Before I left Doctor Genji’s examination room, I hid my tentacles safely behind my mask, so maybe it’s just because I’m tall, or the red hair, or the mask. Likely, it’s everything.

Could I give up my sense of taste? Would it be worth it to be able to walk down the street without causing an accident?

I’d still have all the taste that normal people have, and the books I’ve read say that smell is 95% of taste anyway. I’d still have that, but my tentacles add so much more, taste and texture and pure pleasure…but I’d be able to walk down this street, invisible. I’d be able to visit Albert and have a coffee at the bakery, and flirt back. I could cook for Enzo’s friends, plan a grand holiday feast, without making them nauseous.

I don’t know. Maybe it would be worth it. Will it hurt? They’re so sensitive, but Doctor Genji must have anesthetics for procedures that involve…

My phone buzzes with a text, stopping this line of thought before it gets too gruesome, and I find there’s another message I missed while I had my phone turned off at the appointment.

Hi Orion, it’s Bertie. Turns out I’m going to bake some more kouign-amann on Friday. Let me know if I should set aside a few for you!

Thank you. Yes. I would love a few.

Drop by the bakery a little later than usual. See you then, handsome!

Always flirting. Maybe I should flirt back, just this once. A nice compliment should do the trick, but what can I say? Something about his baking, of course—that’s really our only connection.

Thank you, Master Baker.