My head was full of disconnected moments, so no. I did not remember.
Hilda took my right hand again and this time examined the pads of the palm and fingers, the knuckles, parted the hair at the tips of the fingers to see the base of the nails; she touched the bones that could be felt beneath the skin to check the joints and squeezed my forearm and arm, following the line of the muscles, without stopping nodding affirmatively and whispering things I did not understand. My hand-paw was three times bigger than her surgeon’s hands with long and delicate fingers. Her attentive green eyes observed every detail with fascination, and in the end she ran her hand against the grain over my arm.
“Not bad,” she ended up saying. “What is your record?”
She meant the longest time I had ever spent conve
