When she’s gone, I sit with the sketchbook and the hand I drew without permission. I open to the page with the boy’s cup and Cassian’s hand. The boy’s hollow eyes aren’t there, not directly; I didn’t draw them. But the shape of his mouth is, and it’s enough. Next to it, the hand looks like it belongs to a man I understand a little better than I did yesterday and hate that I do.
I touch the paper where the tendon sits under the drawn skin. It’s smooth and dry and gives nothing back. I don’t know whether I’m cataloguing or confessing. Maybe both.
Out in the hall, footsteps pass. Lila sings one line of a pop song off-key and then stops to take a picture of the window because the light is behaving. My phone buzzes once with a message from her:We’re not doing the jawline talk yet. Later.A second message follows:Proud of you for not running.I don’t answer because answering would start a conversation I’m not ready to have.
I lean my elbows on the desk and look out the window even though the view is only sky and gulls and a slice of harbor. The glass holds a faint reflection of my face and the room behind me. My mouth is a line I don’t like. My eyes look older than twenty-seven for one second and younger than twelve for another. I pull the brush back into my hand and twirl it like a coin. I’ve used brushes to start fights and end them. I’ve used them to name myself when nobody else would.
Chapter 26 – Cassian
The headline I have refused to visualize for a decade crawls across the news ticker like a slow bruise.
SENATOR CALDWELL DEMANDS TRANSPARENCY ON “UNREGULATED TRAUMA CENTERS.” FEDERAL SUBPOENA ISSUED.
I stand at the window until my reflection stops looking like a man who wants to break glass just to hear it answer him. The Residency House sits quiet under a sky that’s thinking about violence. On the far wall, a live feed shows Senator Alan Caldwell at a podium, jaw gleaming, sound cut. He has the public polish of a man who never learned how to sayI don’t knowwithout checking a poll first. The chyron cycles his words for him:taxpayer money, accountability, and safety.He’s giving the country three nouns to hold and none of the verbs that make them cost something.
Reid drops a folder on the table. “Subpoena landed at 12:14 to the main office,” he says. “One to us, one to the Harbor Shelter, one to the foundation’s public programs. They want donor rolls, restricted accounts, invoices, travel reports, and any documents referencing ‘alternate-care sites’ for the last five years.”
“Alternate-care sites,” I repeat. Men who hire staff to write their cruelty in neutral need to hear how it sounds in a room that will make it bleed.
“Yes,” Reid says. “They’re pretending they don’t know what they’re asking for.” He taps the folder. “We have fourteen days to respond. Caldwell’s committee staff has already called two reporters off the record. They’ll run a preview piece:Are unregulated clinics misusing federal funds?They want to bait us into a public fight that forces us to show them our hand.”
Dr. Navarro is already seated, elbows on the table, hands flat like she’s bracing against a wave. “If they sayunregulatedon camera enough times,” she says, “every woman who ever stayed with us will hearunsafein her head when she tries to sleep. If they force us to name sites, faces will follow.”
I look from the screen to the map on the opposite wall. Red markers indicate Sanctuaries. They are not labeled. Even here we don’t write the names. We hold a mental atlas, and we train ourselves to forget it until it is needed. Exposure is not an abstract. It’s a door forced at 2 a.m. with a child on the other side.
“What’s Caldwell’s endgame?” I ask Reid, though I could recite it myself.
“Headlines now, higher office later,” he spits. “He lost a hospital donor last cycle when his brother’s non-profit stepped in on a scandal. He wants to look like he punishes the right kind of rule breaking. If he can dragWardinto a sentence withhiddenoften enough, he gets points from both sides of a room that mostly disagrees on fonts.”
“Who else is in his ear?” I ask.
Reid slides a second paper forward. “A staffer from his office has been contacting ex-residents,” he says. “Offers of cash for ‘testimony’ about ‘underground clinics.’ They’re not careful. Two of our women called Simone to report it. One of them saved the voicemail. I have the number.”
Navarro’s eyes sharpen. “If they pull one person out for a story, they will pull more. And if they get names wrong, journalists will guess until they hit a right one. You know how that goes. Someone will print a detail that shows a location to a man who has been looking for it.”
“They won’t get a list from us,” I say.
“Then they’ll try to get it from someone who needs rent,” Navarro says. “We cannot shame people for selling the only resource they think they have.”
“Agreed,” I sigh.
I flip the folder open. The subpoena is the kind of document that reads like civics homework until you understand how sharp the edges are.Produce any and all records relating to…The list grows like mold. Caldwell’s chief counsel has signed it with a signature that looks like a wave breaking.
“We’ll answer,” I say, “with exactly what the law requires. Nothing more.” I point at the lines. “Public programs, audited accounts, restricted grants with names that already live on our tax filings. No pilots, internal directives, or site-level memos. We are not providing a single document that could be used to triangulate a door.”
“That buys us time,” Reid breathes. “It doesn’t win the case.”
“We’re not trying to win in his room,” I say. “We’re trying to keep our rooms ours.”
Navarro exhales slowly. “While you two game the paper, I’ll run the clinic like it’s any other day. Which it is for the people who actually live in the country outside your war.”
I nod. The only language honest enough for this day.
“Three fronts,” I say. “Legal, public, and internal.”
Reid nods. “Legal, we put Hamilton & Reyes on the subpoena. They file a motion to narrow the scope, argue that donor anonymity is protected, and that we’re a private organization with public grants, not a public entity. We cooperate on what’s already public. We fight everything else. They’ll call Caldwell’s bluff on a contempt vote. He doesn’t have the votes to enforce it if we’ve already given him paper to wave at cameras.”
“Public?” I ask.
