The indescribable fog curls away from the edges of recent memory. There was a program, a problem which he could not solve and there was something about Gloria in which she became distant or he became distant, one of the two, a moment suspended between the strains of a violin and honey blonde hair coming away in patches, darkened to the brown of a synthetic wig and the times he grasped her hand and the times he didn't because he never did because he was never present because he had a problem to solve to the detriment of all else, the problem of a prosthetic arm or of chevrons or of something he cannot recall.

Rush pinches the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger to ward off his impending headache.

"When," he says slowly, speaking having become a great difficulty between the spikes of pain to his temples, "when did this happen?"