He remembers, all too well, what that had been like himself. He’d had entire teams of strangers working on and looking at his hands, for weeks and months; even after all the surgeries were over, the uncomfortable intimacy of a physical therapist holding them, examining them, massaging them.

So Strange tries to keep it as clinical as possible. His face is neutral as he looks them over: a medical assessment, an examination. When he pushes up her sleeve on the other arm, he finds a dime-sized picking injury on the back of one wrist. Skin flayed and torn and picked-over, still. Compulsive tendencies, says a voice in the back of his head. Dermatillomania.

Because it’s normal skin. Not waxy gray, not patchy, not—

(turning into an illithid)

and it’s almost so apparent that he’s annoyed at himself for not having caught this sooner, for having been so self-absorbed that he didn’t notice. His mouth sets, and he lowers her hand back to the table.

“Ennaris, you’re fine. I don’t see anything like how you looked at the Pass. Your hands are fine.”

Except for the places where they are decidedly not fine. He weighs over how to phrase it, before settling for simply asking: “Ennaris, how are you doing?” And before she can wave it off with quick platitude, he presses, “Sincerely. Genuinely. How are you doing. You don’t seem well.”