Why, what other day would it be but today? The exact day it always is. You wake up to babbling water at exactly 4:45 AM as you do every morning. You don your dressing gown and house shoes, the sluggishness of early morning meaning that you only walk out into the hall at 5:15. Though, of course, this is all according to routine.

Breakfast is as routine as ever, the quiet murmuring of news shared over toast a commonality. There is one odd link in the chain though. An appointment you’d forgotten.

DR.TOLSTOY: Ваш физический осмотр сегодня.
PASH: Хорошо

Your physicals never quite came in a pattern. You personally think medical examinations ought to be on some kind of schedule, but Dr. Tolstoy had never been as fond of pattern and routine as you. Though you could at least count on your physicals being the same. The measurements, the reflex tests, the eye examination. He’d probably let you pick out the calipers if you asked nicely.

You like to pick out the calipers. It makes it feel less like a march to a vivisection table, if you acquaint yourself with all the equipment and procedures. It’s just a physical. There is no reason it should make your hands clammy with cold sweat, or your heart beat just a bit more violently. It *should* be fine.

You often like chimerical things, stories and imaginings to smooth out the rougher edges of your day. For all your love of routine, you knew when to play the pragmatist and when it would just make you upset. Walking down into the cool basement to Dr. Tolstoy’s medical offices felt like a walk to the gallows, but you had always tried to imagine it as a stroll through a labyrinth. The cold reinforced steel walls could so easily be imagined at a lustrous shine, the silvery canals of some arcane space carved by magic.

It’s better than reality, cold metal that reminds you of being small and scared, the click of your adoptive father’s shoes reminding you of the walking of adults that had seemed so large at the time. You take deep breaths. At the end of this hall wouldn’t be a cold bright exam room, but the inside of the pearly shell that held Venus. Chilled by ocean breeze and not the cold earth that packed it in. You’d be alright, you just had to look from another perspective.