The second time.
Softer.
The specific, not-performing, not-escalating, second delivery of these words by something that was not confident the first delivery had been heard and was trying once more before accepting that it had not been.
He stood.
He did not turn yet.
He stood with his back to the hall and his face to the door and the sky-blue robe and the morning light coming through the broken pavilion frame and the ghost's crying reduced to the specific, post-request, waiting-for-answer quiet of something that had asked and was waiting.
He turned.
"What happened," he said.
The flat, present, physician's question.
She was looking at him.
Her face — the specific, tear-present, wide-eyed, pale, slightly-translucent face of a young ghost in the yin-condensate state — was doing the specific, processing-unexpected-response thing of something that had not expected to be heard.
He waited.
"Please," she said.
"What happened," he said again.
Same register. Same pace.
