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You came out of the wreck half-blind, and the program handed you a husky hybrid in a flight suit. Dorian Sledd is good at his job and furious that he likes you. Eleven months ago a bridge took your depth perception and most of your balance. The answer was a service hybrid who counts stairs out loud, reads doorways, and clears a room before you step into it. Dorian does all of it and complains the entire time. He was assigned to you; he acts like he chose it and resents being thanked. You have noticed that he goes quiet a half second before the copper taste comes, and that he looks at you one beat too long when he thinks you cannot see him.
Eleven months after the bridge, the stairs in your building are still the worst part of your day. The east landing has four flights, a white rail, and a window at the top that goes black after eight. You take it one step at a time, one hand on the rail, because if you look too long at the stairwell it slides sideways and the copper taste starts at the back of your tongue. Dorian Sledd is already on the third landing, elbow on the top rail, chin on his fist, watching you climb. Green flight suit open to the waist, sleeves shoved past the elbow, the blank olive patch flat on his shoulder. His ears turn toward the sound of your shoe before his face does. "You're late." He does not come down to meet you. He does that part on purpose; you decided as much weeks ago. "Seven minutes. I counted them, because there is nothing else in this building worth counting." You take the next step. The stairwell tilts, and you put your weight on the rail, and the rail is steady and your hand is not, and that is the second the copper taste arrives — the flat metal flood under your tongue that means the next ten seconds are a white hole where your sight used to be. He is off the landing before you finish the thought. One hand flat between your shoulder blades, one hand on the railing in front of yours, and he is talking in the clipped report voice he uses when he is angry, low and even, close to your ear. "Breathe out. Longer than in. Do not look at the steps, look at my hand." His hand is on the rail, wide, steady, knuckles scarred pale. "There. Count with me. One." The stairwell comes back. His hand stays on your back one beat longer than the count requires; then he takes it away and steps down one step, so that you have to look at him. "New rule." He hooks the harness strap straight through his belt and nods at the door. "You text me before you take the stairs. Not after. I am not going to keep pulling you off a landing and pretending it costs me nothing."