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“Is it okay to touch you?”

The man’s scarred lip lifted slightly, as if he’d just given T.W another point in the good category. “Yup.”

T.W deliberately used both his hands on the patient’s wrists so the guy could have plenty of time to look at the scars of his doctor and relax even more.

When he was through, he stepped back.

“Well, I’m not sure how this is going to go, but let’s give it a shot—” T.W looked up and stopped. The man’s irises . . . were yellow now. Not black anymore.

“Don’t you worry ’bout my eyes, Doc.”

From out of nowhere, the idea that everything was fine with what he’d seen flooded into his brain. Right. No. Big. Deal. “Where was I . . . Oh, yes. Well, let’s give the laser a shot.” He turned to the wife. “Perhaps you’d like to pull up a chair and hold his hand? I think he’ll feel more comfortable that way. I’m going to start on one wrist and we’ll see how it goes.”

“Do I have to lie down?” the patient said darkly. “’Cause I don’t think . . . yeah, I might not be cool with that.”

“Not at all. You can stay sitting up, even when we do the neck, and for that part I’ll get you a mirror so you can watch me. At all times I’ll tell you exactly what I’m doing, what you’re likely to feel, and we can always stop. You just say the word and it’s over. This is your body. You are in control. Okay?”

There was a moment of silence as both of them stared at him. And then the wife said in a broken tone, “You, Dr. Franklin, are a total peach.”

The patient had an incredible pain tolerance, T.W thought an hour later as he tapped the floor toggle and the laser snapped out yet another thin red beam onto the inked skin of that thick wrist. An incredible pain tolerance. Each zap was like getting hit with a rubber band, which was not a big deal if it was done only once or twice. But after a couple of minutes of those strikes, most patients needed to rest. This guy? Never flinched, not even once. So T.W just kept going and going. . . .

Of course, with his nipples pierced as they were and his gauge and all his scars, he’d obviously been intimately familiar with agony, both by choice and without it.

Unfortunately his tattoos were utterly resistant to the laser.

T.W let out his breath on a curse and shook his right hand, which was getting tired.

“It’s okay, Doc,” the patient said softly. “You gave it your best shot.”

“I just don’t understand.” He whipped off his eye protection and glanced over at the machine. For a moment he wondered whether the thing was working properly. But he’d seen the laser. “There’s no change in coloration at all.”

“Doc, for real, it’s cool.” The patient took off his goggles and smiled a little. “I appreciate your taking this as seriously as you have.”

“Goddamn it.” T.W sat back on his stool and glared at the ink.

From out of nowhere words jumped out of his mouth, even though they were arguably unprofessional. “You didn’t volunteer for those, did you.”

The wife fidgeted as if she were worried about the answer. But the husband just shook his head. “No, Doc. I didn’t.”

“Goddamn it.” He crossed his arms and refiled through his encyclopedic knowledge of the human skin. “I just don’t understand why . . . and I’m trying to think of other options. I don’t think a chemical removal would be any more efficacious. I mean, you took everything that laser could give you.”

The husband ran his curiously elegant fingers over his wrist. “Could we cut them out?”

The wife shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“She’s right,” T.W murmured. He leaned forward and prodded at the dermis. “You have excellent elasticity, but then again, as you’re in your mid-twenties, that’s expected. I mean, it would have to be done in strips and the skin stitched closed. You’d get scarring. And I wouldn’t recommend it around the neck. Too many risks with the arteries.”

“What if scarring wasn’t a problem?”

He wasn’t going to touch that question. Scarring was obviously an issue, given the man’s back. “I couldn’t recommend it.”

There was a long silence while he continued to