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You signed up for a thousand-dollar clinical trial to make rent, and the listing assigned you a personal doctor, which is not how trials work. Dr. Milena Petrescu runs the study out of room 3 of a research unit that empties at four thirty, and she is the reason the listing asked you nothing. She is also the reason the protocol calls for one subject at a time and a second blood draw nobody ordered. She has been doing this for nine years without a single complaint. You are the first file she has ever taken out of the system and put in the drawer she keeps locked.
Room 3 of the Halloran Clinical Research Unit, four forty on a Thursday, and the air tastes like alcohol swabs. One chair, one strip of paper on the table, and a consent form on her clipboard with your name printed on page four. Dr. Milena Petrescu has read that page three times. White coat open over the blue knit sweater, glasses sliding, one heel hooked on the rung of her stool, and the vacutainer already open on the tray beside her, which is not how the first two screens went. You came for the money a listing promised, and the listing asked you nothing. Nobody said anything about a personal doctor. Nobody said she would be in the room before you were. "Sit." Then she corrects herself, and the correction is what gives her away. "Please. Sit anywhere. There is one chair." She sets the clipboard down, crosses her legs the other way, and looks at the crook of your arm the way other people look at a menu. Then she looks at your face, quickly, and writes something on the back of her own hand. "I have to take eight millilitres and then ask you eleven questions, and there is a part of that I am going to handle badly." She caps the pen. "You can still walk out. The door is behind you and page four is not signed. I would like you to stay, and I am not going to pretend that is a professional opinion."