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Sheldon's hand began to shake as it hovered over the section of diseased brain, his magnified vision blocking out all but the bundles of nerve fibers before him. He could practically hear the six-year-old voice of Missy taunting him after once again a Sunday get together had suddenly changed from chatting companionably in a room full of cousins to finding himself dangling by the ankles from a second story window.
"A real genius knows when to keep his mouth shut."
From his left side, he heard another disembodied voice. "Oh..." Amy's voice sounded low and teasing and he could almost feel her lips curl into a mocking smile as she leaned in closer to him. "Are we nervous, Dr. Cooper?"
"No…" he answered. But now his blood had begun to pound and for some inexplicable reason his vision nearly left him entirely. "What you see… is a man… trembling with confidence." He blinked away the phantom image of Amy's smirk and desperately scanned the pons for the hair-thin nerve he wanted. One more second and he knew he would be forced to give up and decidedly humiliate himself. His eyes finally latched onto a fine swirl of ridges roughly delineating the pattern he wanted and Sheldon swung the scalpel at it like a miniature machete. He pulled back and frowned as blood began welling up around the incision. "Does the locus ceruleus normally bleed that much?"
"No, but your thumb does."
The next thing Sheldon knew, he was lying on the cheap laminated floor unable to see anything but a slowly widening hole of light within a tessellating field of gray. Amy had prudently manipulated him into Trendelenburg position to coax the blood back up to his head. Now she was… holding his hand?
He blinked rapidly as his vision cleared. She was kneeling beside him, wrapping iodine dipped cotton and medical tape around his tiny yet profusely bleeding wound. He pulled his legs down off the overturned trash can and pushed himself up onto his other elbow. Amy let go of his hand as she tore off the strip of tape.
"I think you'll be pleased. This will leave no residue on your skin, unlike an ordinary Band-Aid," she said. When Sheldon didn't come back with the usual snarky comment, she turned and frowned at him. "The boo-boos and ouchies clause was your idea."
Sheldon blinked. "Oh, yes. Of course. Well done." He shifted again to push himself up when Amy braced her now free hand on the counter above them and looked down at him. He stopped moving instantly.
"Sheldon?" Her hair swung down, covering the right side of her face and casting a shadow over both of them in the middle of the bright lab. Sheldon found himself holding his breath. Why?
"Yes, Amy?"
"Get out."