And yet, even with the game played out, she could not forget her trade, her specialty, for it was bred into her as deeply as the tendency to leukemia, the hemophilia, the diabetes, the congenital digestive deformity he had inherited from a hundred ancestors kept alive by a superb medical science to breed her. She laid her cheek against his, the smooth velvet human-seeming cheek, with no hint as yet of the lumps of wild tissue waiting to proliferate within.
"Please don't worry, George," she said softly. "It's not your fault, really." She smiled up at him. "I've lived a rough life, most of us do, in my time. Remember, I've earned what I received, I came here knowing what I was doing. It's just caught up with me. It had to, some day."
He caught her in his arms and pulled her tightly to him. "Oh, God, honey," he said. "I didn't know, I didn't even think.... I'd give anything...." he turned his face up blindly. "Please, Lord, let the bubble break," he prayed. "Let us not be, both together, now...."
But the bubble did not break.