Page 46 of Bonds of Shame, Bonds of Lust

She started climbing, giggling with each handhold, sneakers finding purchase. Derek stood directly beneath her, hands up and ready, eyes tracking every movement. "That's it, Jess. One more. You've got it."

She made it halfway up, then paused. Her breathing had changed, the rhythm slightly faster, her cheeks flushing pink. She grinned down at us, delighted with herself. "See? I did it!"

I was watching the portable monitor clipped to my coat pocket. Sats at ninety-two, trending down.

"That's amazing, Jess. You're so strong. Come on down, easy now."

Derek looked at the monitor, then at me. "She's—"

"She's breathing harder." I kept my voice calm, just information. "This is exactly the signal we watch for. Coming down now is the right call. It's listening to her body, not giving up."

His jaw was tight, a muscle working. I held his gaze and for once didn't look away.

Then he looked up at Jessica. "Okay, kiddo. Come on down. Dr. Bonds says that's enough for today."

She pouted for exactly two seconds, then obeyed, sliding down into his waiting arms. He caught her and swung her once, her delighted shriek bouncing off the bright walls, then pressed a kiss to the top of her head and held her an extra moment.

"You did so well," he said against her hair. "I'm so proud of you."

"I almost got all the way to the top," she said, still slightly breathless.

"You did. And next time you'll go higher." He set her down, smoothed her ponytail. "We'll practice."

I exhaled slowly.

The imaging suite was the crown jewel of the wing. The mock MRI tube sat in the middle of it, painted to look like a spaceship, with a control panel of buttons that lit up and made satisfying sounds. Not the real one. The real cardiac scanner, the eight-figure machine Derek had spent the gala calling marginal gains, was still a fundraising target and a gap in the floor plan. This was its friendly cousin, the practice tube, built so that by the time a kid needed the real thing, the tube already felt like an old friend.

"This is where we get the detailed pictures of hearts," I said. "No needles, no procedures. Just pictures."

Jessica pressed her nose to the porthole window. Her breath fogged the glass. "It's a spaceship."

"It really is. We use it to help kids practice so the real one doesn't feel scary."

"Scary? It looks like fun! Can I go in?"

"Just for pretend." I helped her climb onto the padded table and slide partly in, explaining as I went. This is where the sounds come from, these are the lights you'll see, you can always come out whenever you want. She reached up and pressed one of the lit buttons. The tube made a gentle whooshing sound. She made a matching sound back at it, perfectly serious.

Derek had moved to stand beside me, watching her through the porthole. His arms were crossed but his posture had changed, the rigidity gone.

"She's fearless," he said, almost to himself.

"Well, her dad was Special Forces, so there's that," I quipped, then felt a moment of shock at myself. I'd never mentioned that.

Derek just shook his head. "No, she takes after Pamela. She was much stronger than me."

He said it offhand, the way you speak truth when your guard is down.

"She was quite a woman," I said carefully.

I'd only known Pamela Harrington a short time. From the prenatal diagnosis to her death, eighteen months of appointments and difficult conversations and watching a woman face two impossible things at once. Her daughter's heart condition. Her own mortality. She had held my hand once, after a particularly brutal echo result.

"She was." His eyes stayed on Jessica, who was narrating her own voyage now, making engine sounds. "She pushed me to build places like this. Said hospitals shouldn't feel like punishment. Said kids deserved magic, even when things were hard." A pause. "Especially when things were hard. So I try to give Jess that. Whatever else I can't give her."

He could be maddening. Arrogant, stubborn, completely certain he was right about things he was sometimes wrong about. But standing here watching his face as he watched his daughter pretend to fly in a spaceship built partly in his late wife's memory, there was none of that. There was just love. Raw and fierce and slightly helpless.

His phone rang.

He glanced at the screen, then at me. "I have to take this. Two minutes. You've got her?"