So there are no ill effects?” I asked.
“Well, as I said, you could die.”
I looked him in the eye, my one good eye flicking back and forth between the two of his.
“So, if you had to give me odds for living another forty years, say until I was seventy, what would the odds be?”
“I’m not very good at that sort of thing.”
“Ten to one? One hundred to one?”
“I’ve never really understood what that means,” he said.
“Just give me the odds.”
“Of you living till you’re seventy?” he said. “I’d say it’s thirty-five, seventy-five.”
I shook my head. Dr. Owen and his nineteenth-century frame, blunt disregard for my need to be reassured and fucked-up math was too much. This man was making my world small. I imagined he was a moon who had just eclipsed me.
- "Bicycle Kick

Auteur: Jonathan Messinger