The examination room smelled like iodine and cold metal. Georgia stayed against the wall, shoulder blades flat to the plaster, and watched the overhead lamp buzz its flat yellow light across the steel tray. Clamp. Scissors, small and curved. A row of sutures laid out like tiny gray fish. The tray clicked once under the lamp's heat and Georgia felt the sound in his back teeth.

Samantha lay on the table with his floral dress bunched up around his waist, the fabric twisted in a knot somebody had made of it, not him. His uncut cock lay soft against his thigh, pale and strange in the lamplight, the foreskin a small hood that Georgia had never seen on a grown man before tonight. Samantha's fingers were white on the edge of the table. Not gripping. Just white.

"It's a clean procedure," Dr. Whitfield said. He was washing his hands at a small sink in the corner, sleeves rolled to the elbow, forearms pale and roped with veins. "Twenty minutes. You'll feel a pull, then a sting, then nothing. I've done hundreds."

"Hundreds," Samantha said. His voice came out thin.

"Hundreds." Whitfield dried his hands on a towel that had been boiled white. "Mostly boys. Some men. You're not the oldest I've had, if that helps."

"It doesn't."

"Didn't think so." Whitfield turned. He had a face like a folded map, all the lines going the same direction, and he didn't smile. "Mr. Miller. You're here as — what did Mrs. Reyes call it — moral support?"

"Something like that."

"Then stand where he can see you. Not behind his head. Beside."

Georgia pushed off the wall. His stilettos made one clean click on the tile and he crossed to the head of the table, where Samantha's face was turned sideways against the paper, hazel eyes tracking him the whole way. Up close Samantha looked younger than twenty-three. Clean-shaven, brown hair damp at the temples, mouth working like he was chewing something he couldn't swallow.

"Hey," Georgia said.

"Hey."

"You're doing fine."

"I'm not doing anything. I'm lying here with my cock out for a stranger."

"That's doing something."

Samantha laughed — a short, wet sound that died fast. "You're funny. I didn't know you were funny."

"I'm full of surprises." Georgia set his hand on the table's edge, an inch from Samantha's. Not touching yet. Just there. "You want me to hold your hand or you want me to stand here and look pretty?"

"Both."

"Greedy."

Whitfield pulled a stool up to the foot of the table. The legs scraped. Samantha's whole body flinched at the sound and Georgia felt his own shoulders answer, a small tightening he covered by shifting his weight onto one hip.

"Count backward from ten," Whitfield said. He picked up the clamp. "Out loud. Steady as you can."

"Ten," Samantha said.

"Good."

"Nine."

Whitfield's hand moved. Georgia watched the clamp open, close, watched the foreskin drawn forward and held, and his own stomach turned over once — not from the blood, there wasn't any yet, but from the wrongness of it, the way the body could just be arranged like that, laid out and pinned while somebody decided what it should look like.

"Eight—"

Samantha's voice cracked. Broke clean in the middle of the word, the vowel splitting into two pieces. His fingers scrabbled on the table edge and found nothing to hold.

Georgia moved before he decided to. His hand closed over Samantha's, palm to palm, and Samantha's grip came back so hard his knuckles ground against the table. Georgia leaned down. Put his face between Samantha and the lamp.

"Look at me."

Samantha's eyes jumped to his. Hazel. Wet at the corners already. Georgia held them, kept his own face still, and behind him he heard the small metal sound of the scissors opening.

"Don't look down there," Georgia said. "Look at me. What color are my eyes?"

"Blue."

"Good. Keep naming things. What color's my dress?"

"Blue."

"You're not trying."

A breath that was almost a laugh. "Blue. It's blue. It's the same blue as mine, it's the diner blue, it's—"

The scissors closed.

Samantha gasped. Not a scream — a gasp, sharp and high, all the air pulled out of him at once, and his hand crushed down on Georgia's until Georgia felt the bones shift. Georgia didn't pull away. He held on, and he watched Samantha's face go white and then red and then white again, watched his mouth open and close around a sound that didn't come out.

"There," Whitfield said, mild as a man reading a weather report. "First cut. You did that part. The rest is quieter."

Samantha's eyes were still on Georgia's. Wet, wide, and something else moving under the wet — a flicker, quick and strange, like he'd just noticed Georgia was standing very close and holding his hand very hard and that both of them were dressed the same.

Under Georgia's skirt, his cock stirred.

He felt it happen. The slow thickening against his thigh, the head lifting off the fabric, and then the old scar pulling tight across the shaft — that thin pale band of skin that had been cut when he was eleven days old and had never once let him forget it. It pulled now. Ached, almost. Georgia kept his face still and his eyes on Samantha's and did not move his hips, did not shift, did not do anything but stand there with his hand wrapped around another man's hand while his own body did what it wanted.

"Second cut coming," Whitfield said. "This one you'll feel."

"Georgia—"

"I'm here."

"I don't— I don't know if I can—"

"You can." Georgia squeezed his hand. "You already did the hard part. This is just the rest of it."

Samantha's throat worked. He was sweating now, a fine sheen across his upper lip, and the paper under his back had crumpled into a wet gray crease where his shoulders pressed. Georgia looked at that crease instead of at the tray. The tray had blood on it now — a thin dark line along the scissors' edge, a spot on the cloth, nothing dramatic, but blood all the same.

"Ten more seconds," Whitfield said. "Then I stitch. Stitching's the easy part. You'll barely notice."

"You keep saying that," Samantha whispered.

"Because it's true."

"Everything's easy when it's not your cock."

Whitfield's mouth twitched. Almost a smile. "Fair."

Georgia heard the clamp shift, metal on metal, and Samantha's grip changed — not crushing anymore, just holding, his fingers threaded through Georgia's now, thumb pressed into the back of Georgia's hand like he was checking for a pulse. Georgia let him. Under the skirt, his cock had gone from a stir to a full dull ache, the scar band tight and hot, and he could feel the wet spot starting where the head pressed the fabric. He kept his thighs together and his face empty and his eyes on Samantha's, and he did not think about the diner, or Ruby's coffee cup sitting on the table like a promise, or the two hours she'd given him.

"Almost," Whitfield said. "Steady."

Samantha's eyes closed.

"No," Georgia said. "Open. Look at me."

They opened. Red-rimmed. Hazel going almost green in the lamplight.

"What color's my dress," Georgia said again.

"Blue."

"And yours?"

"Blue."

"And what are we doing?"

Samantha's mouth opened. Nothing came out. Then, quiet: "Getting me fixed."

"That's right." Georgia's thumb moved once across Samantha's knuckles, small and slow, and he didn't know why he did it and didn't stop. "So be fixed."

The scissors closed a second time. Samantha made a sound Georgia had never heard a person make — not quite a cry, not quite a breath, something in between that came out through his teeth and hung in the room after. Georgia held his hand through it. The lamp hummed. The tray clicked once more as Whitfield set the scissors down and reached for the needle.

"There," Whitfield said. "The worst is done."

Samantha's eyes stayed on Georgia's. His grip didn't loosen. And Georgia, standing there with his skirt damp at the front and his scar aching and his hand held by a man he'd met a week ago, understood that the appointment had another forty minutes in it and that he was going to stand exactly where he was for every one of them.

"You did good," Georgia said.

"Did I?"

"You counted to eight."

Samantha's mouth pulled sideways. Almost a smile. "You're still funny."

"I'll be funnier when you're stitched."

Whitfield threaded the needle. The lamp buzzed. And Georgia stood at the head of the table with another man's hand in his, and waited for the rest of it.

The needle went in on the third try. Georgia watched it happen over Samantha's shoulder — the small silver curve dipping, the thread following, Whitfield's fingers sure and unhurried like he was darning a sock. Samantha's hand tightened around Georgia's at the first pull and then, slowly, loosened again, as if his body had decided the pain was a thing it could carry after all.

"How many stitches," Samantha said. His voice had gone flat and far away.

"Six," Whitfield said. "Maybe seven. Depends how the skin takes."

"Six or seven."

"Somewhere in there."

"That's not a number."

"It's the number you're getting." Whitfield tied off the first stitch and reached for the needle again. "You want me to count them out loud, I can count them out loud."

"No." Samantha's jaw moved. "No, don't."

Georgia shifted his weight. His stilettos had started to bite at the heel — he'd been standing in one place too long, the same spot on the same tile, and his left foot had gone half numb somewhere between the first cut and now. He didn't move it. He kept his hand where it was, palm damp against Samantha's palm, and let his eyes drift to the window instead: a square of gray afternoon, a fire escape, somebody's laundry strung across the alley and hanging dead still because there was no wind.

"Mrs. Reyes said you work the counter," Whitfield said, not looking up.

"Tomorrow."

"Without the apron, she said."

Georgia's mouth went dry. "She told you that?"

"She tells me a lot of things." The needle dipped again. Samantha made a low sound through his nose and Georgia felt it travel up his own arm. "She's been coming here since she was nineteen. Gallbladder, then a broken wrist, then her mother. I know her whole family's insides."

"That's a lot to know about a person."

"It's a living."

Samantha's thumb pressed into the back of Georgia's hand again — that same pulse-checking pressure, small and rhythmic. Georgia looked down at him. Sweat had dried on his upper lip in a pale ring and his hair was stuck flat to his forehead on one side, but his eyes had steadied. The green had come back into them. That was something.

"Does it look bad," Samantha said.

"I'm not looking."

"You can look. I want to know if it looks bad."

Georgia looked. He couldn't help it — the way you can't help looking at a wound once it's been named. The clamp held the foreskin back and the cut line was clean, a thin dark seam with three stitches already in it and Whitfield's needle working the fourth. There was blood, but less than Georgia had braced for. It looked like something that could be survived.

"It looks fine," Georgia said. "It looks like it's supposed to."

"You're lying."

"I'm not lying. I've had one my whole life. I know what they're supposed to look like."

Samantha's eyes flicked down, quick, to the hem of Georgia's skirt — to the place where the fabric fell over his thighs and the damp spot showed dark against the blue, and then flicked back up. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to. Georgia felt the look land somewhere under his ribs and stay there.

"Fourth one," Whitfield said. "You're past halfway."

"You said six or seven."

"I said maybe."

"You're a terrible doctor."

"I'm a fine doctor. I'm a terrible liar." Whitfield pulled the fourth stitch tight and reached for the scissors again — not the cutting scissors, the small ones for thread, and Georgia's stomach turned over anyway at the sound of them opening. "Two more. Then a dressing. Then you can put your dress down and go home and not think about this for a week."

"A week," Samantha said.

"A week. Then it's healed enough to forget it happened."

Georgia almost laughed. Almost. Because he'd been eleven days old when his own was done and he'd never once forgotten it — not the scar itself, which was just a band of paler skin, but the fact of it, the knowing, the way his body had been decided before he could have an opinion. He looked at Samantha's face and wondered if that was the thing he was seeing there. Not the pain. The decision. The understanding that something had been done to him and would now be part of him forever.

"Hey," Georgia said.

"What."

"When you put the dress back on. You're going to walk out of here and nobody's going to know."

Samantha blinked at him.

"I mean it," Georgia said. "Nobody knows about mine either. I've been walking around with it for twenty-two years and not one person has ever looked at me and known. You'll be the same. You'll walk out that door and you'll just be a girl in a blue dress and that's all anybody will see."

Samantha's throat worked. "That's not—"

"That's exactly what it is."

"You don't know that."

"I know it better than anybody in this room." Georgia leaned down, close enough that his breath moved the hair at Samantha's temple. "Look at me. What color's my dress?"

"Blue."

"And what am I?"

Samantha's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again, quieter. "A waitress."

"That's right." Georgia straightened up. "Now hold still. He's almost done."

Whitfield's needle went in one last time. Samantha didn't flinch. He just lay there breathing through his nose, slow and even, and Georgia stood at the head of the table and watched the last stitch close and the thread get cut and the small silver scissors set down on the tray with a click that Georgia felt all the way to his back teeth.

"Done," Whitfield said. He reached for a roll of gauze. "Dressing on, and you're finished. Sit up slow when I tell you."

Georgia let go of Samantha's hand. His own fingers had gone stiff and cramped from holding on so long, and he flexed them once against his thigh, feeling the blood come back into them. The damp spot on his skirt had spread. He could feel it against the head of his cock, warm and tacky, and he turned his hips a fraction toward the wall so the lamplight wouldn't catch it. The scar ached. It had been aching the whole time, that thin tight band pulling every time his cock moved, and it was still pulling now, and he didn't know what to do with that except stand there and wait for it to stop.

"Mr. Miller," Whitfield said.

"Yeah."

"You can use the sink if you want. Wash your hands."

Georgia looked down. There was blood on his palm — Samantha's blood, transferred from their gripped hands, dried in the creases of his fingers and under one nail. He hadn't noticed it happen. He looked at it for a long second and then walked to the sink in the corner and turned the tap on cold and put both hands under it and watched the water run pink and then clear.

Behind him, the paper on the table rustled as Samantha sat up. Whitfield's voice, low and steady, telling him to take it slow, to breathe, to hold the gauze in place. Georgia kept his eyes on the water. He scrubbed the blood out from under his nail with his thumbnail and dried his hands on the boiled-white towel and looked at himself in the small mirror above the sink — the blue dress, the neat brown hair, the soft face, the same face he always saw — and he thought about Ruby's coffee cup and the two hours and the letter in her waistband, and he thought about the way Samantha had said a waitress like it was a fact and not a costume.

His cock was still hard under the skirt. He pressed his thighs together and turned away from the mirror and went back to the table.