By the twelfth night the pattern had stopped feeling like a secret and started feeling like a shift I simply worked.

I arrived eleven minutes early. The parking lot was almost empty. Only Dr. Hale’s dark sedan sat under the far light. Inside, the clinic had already settled into its after-midnight quiet—the low hum of the refrigeration units, the soft glow of the exit signs, the faint antiseptic smell that never fully left the halls. I walked past the deserted nurses’ station and straight to his office.

The door was open.

Dr. Hale stood near the examination table with his back to me, reviewing something on a tablet. He didn’t...