Chapter 38 The Unspoken Debt

• The garden’s fragile truce did not survive the return to the mobile unit. The air was thick with the lingering aftermath of confession and the looming specter of legal proceedings. Alexander Sterling, propped up in his bed, was a high-value asset, a witness turning state’s evidence.
• I retreated behind the persona of Dr. Lin. It was my armor, my prescribed distance. I reviewed his charts, discussed his physical therapy regimen with Thorne, and monitored the slow, steady decline of the inflammatory markers in his bloodwork. My bloodwork. The “Lin Protocol” was a resounding success, a fact noted with clinical detachment. The personal cost—the deep fatigue, the resurgent ache in my joints—was a private line item, one I kept meticulously off the books.
• Vance was a constant presence, her tablet a digital scalpel dissecting Alexander’s past. Their sessions were grueling. She drilled into the minutiae of offshore accounts and covert meetings. Alexander, his mind still struggling through the neural fog, would answer with a mixture of razor-sharp recall and bewildering gaps.