The Healer's Bargain

k, expensive, and

from Geneva and Tokyo and Baltimore, all on heavy cream letterhead, all circling the same sentence in diffe

he page down and pressed two fing

down the corridors of Larkspur. It meant we have run

ion markers well above where they should sit in a healthy sixteen-year-old. Someone had

in the corridor with her

glancing down the hall like someone might be listening. "He doesn't allow visitors. The last

d M

that-" Mrs. Pell stopped herself and sighed, the sigh of a woman who had been outmaneuvered by a twelve-year-old more oft

ff are afra

ouldn't

od and picked up her

knew it before Mrs. Pell knocked. The strip of floor beneath the door showed no light at all, and the air that leake

eo? Miss W

or on the other side. Glass, heavy

aw

ra set her hand on the knob, and Mrs. Pel

open

made out a shape by the far wall: a wheelchair, angled toward nothing, and the pale smudge of a face tu

lain figurine by the sound of it, and it hit the doorframe a

gs. She knew the difference between a boy who wanted to hit you and a boy

ssed,"

miss. I wa

behind her, sealing them both in the dark. "I'm Amara. I'm marrying your father in si

ullen: "Everyone

g. "Two years of specialists and nobody thought to track your nutrition alongside your medication. Your iron is low. Your B12 is worse.

esn't

o. I don't make promises about bodies. Bodies don't care about our deadlines. But I'd rather be wro

It wasn't hostile n

room dark?

ey come in and they look at the chair, and then they look at my face, and th

a deal. You keep the dark, and I'll keep my face neutral. I won't smile at you like you're a dog. But I need to draw blood and examine yo

heard the faint

u look at me like they do, I'

l miss

ned a sound that could

t, practical voice she'd used with frightened patients at Larkspur. The boy watched her hands, not her face. Whe

w in a

ch, not even a fli

no sensation below the

don

did you ju

oo flat. His eyes staye

and packed her satchel with the same careful calm she'd used

years of specialists had missed something so basic that it bordered on

door with her h

rning," she said. "Leav

prom

r en

ering, rigid as a coat rack. Her eyes went o

s

he vial. "Have someone bring him tea and toast in an ho

't s

ust

vial warm in her fist, and did not

boy in the dark, no one had thought to ask why he was sitting there.