Chapter 24 – Cassian #3
At my desk in the control wing, I open a drawer and take out the folder labeled Resident Proposals.
It holds the pieces we ask artists to pitch when we pretend this house exists only for art.
I slide a printout of one of Aurora’s canvases into the front pocket to justify bringing her into rooms donors never see.
Resident proposal review is a reason even Mara will accept for me to put her within reach of my work and call it process.
Reid leans in the door. “Construction truck at Navarro’s is exactly what it says,” he says.
“Guy named Felix, city badge, a kid on the crew who’s two hours from leaving for a job he won’t like as much but that pays better.
No cameras on their truck. I had our guy drop a van two blocks up with a dash cam just because I’m mean. ”
“Keep them bored,” I say. “Bored people don’t notice the door opening for a woman who needs it.”
He nods once. “You’re moving Hale up,” he says. Not a question.
“Yes.”
“Do you want Lila in the room?”
“No,” I answer. “Simone and me. Navarro if she has time.”
“Do you want it recorded?” he asks, more pointed.
“No,” I say. “Notes only. I’ll take responsibility for the decision.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” he mutters, but he doesn’t push. He knows which hills to die on. He knows this isn’t one. “Jonah’s out of the city,” he adds. “He posted a picture of a wall and a donut. Our quiet intervention looks like sugar and paint.”
I nod in response.
Reid considers me for a moment. “You’re not going to like it when she writes about you,” he says.
“I’m not going to like it if she writes a floor plan,” I say. “If she writes about me, I’ll survive.”
“You’ll make sure everyone else does too,” he says. “Or you’ll burn down part of your life trying.”
“Is there a point?” I ask.
“Two,” he says. “One, don’t skip lunch. Two, if you’re in the interview room with a survivor and you can’t keep your face off your resident, step out.”
“I know how to be furniture when the story isn’t mine,” I say.
“Then be the best chair in the room,” he says, and disappears.
I text Simone. Two interviews. Prep boundaries. No paper, verbal only. You moderate. I sit quiet unless asked to translate. She sends back a thumbs-up and a spoon emoji telling me she will feed someone if she has to.
I draft the message to Aurora twice. The first version reads like a command. The second like a confession. I delete both and write like a founder offers access to a resident without giving away the part where his pulse has opinions.
Good morning. Two survivor interviews will take place on-site at 1400 and 1630.
Simone will brief you at 1330. If you choose to attend, you’ll be introduced as an artist-in-residence.
You may take notes. No descriptions of rooms, doors, or hallways.
If you’d prefer to opt out, say so and the schedule will adjust.
I leave it in the draft field because sending it before I put my hands where they belong would be the kind of impatience that makes people I respect stop respecting me. The hands belong in Clinic One.
R is still on the cot. The blanket is over his knees now, not his shoulders. It’s progress. Imani looks up when I step in and tilts her head toward the boy’s side. I kneel again. He looks at me this time. Not long. Long enough.
“You look better,” I say.
“I look like trash,” he scoffs.
“You look like someone who did something hard,” I say. “Do you want juice?”
He gives me a tiny nod. I hand him a cup, and he drinks it like he won a prize he can’t admit he wanted. His left hand shakes once and stops. He sets the empty cup on the floor with the carefulness of someone who has been punished for dropping things that didn’t matter.
“Imani says your ribs hurt.”
He shrugs like that matters less than everything else. “We’re going to wrap them,” I say. “Not too tight. You’re going to breathe deeper than you want to. You’re going to hate me for a minute. Then you’re going to like that it hurts less.”
He eyes me like he’d like to argue on principle. I hold his gaze and let him see that I’ve had this conversation more times than he wants to know. He lets the argument die before it’s born.
“After that,” I continue, “you’ll eat a sandwich without mustard, I already made sure of it. Then you’ll sleep. When you wake up, you’ll have the choice to talk to someone about the parts you can’t make sit down in your head. If you don’t take the choice, the choice will still be there.”
He breathes in. The breath stutters. He breathes out. The air shivers when it leaves him. I keep my face quiet. He watches me to see if his weakness moves me. I don’t let it. He doesn’t need my reaction. He needs my constancy.
Imani comes back with a wrap. “Do you want me to do it?” she asks him.
“Yeah,” he says, so softly it’s almost nothing.
She does it with hands so good at their job it hurts to watch. He flinches once when she tucks the end. She pauses until he nods. Then it’s done.
“You did fine,” I compliment.
“I did nothing,” he huffs.
“You stayed,” I say. “Sometimes that’s the whole job.”
He looks at the floor until the words don’t sound like mockery. He nods once. That’s more than enough.
When I leave the clinic, I have to pass the door to Interview Three to get back to the control wing. I stop with my hand on the frame and look at the room like it belongs to someone else.
Back upstairs, Mara catches me with a printed sheet. “Hargreaves wants to fund a named artist track,” she says. “Says we should capitalize on the momentum and package the residency as a program. He wants to call it Ward Creative Healing Initiative.”
“No,” I grunt.
“I told him ‘no’ twice,” she says. “He thinks the third time will be your job.”
“Then I’ll tell him ‘no’ in language he understands,” I say. “His name can be on a check and a 990. It can’t be on a person.”
She slides a second piece of paper on top of the first. “Also,” she continues, “the magazine that wanted photos wants a quote from you about ‘mentorship.’”
“Give them the standard,” I say. “Artists in residence receive access to survivor narratives under strict confidentiality protocols and produce work entirely under their own creative control. If they press, tell them our founder does not do quotes about art.”
“You do quotes about doors,” she says.
“I do doors,” I correct. “Quotes are optional.”
She smirks, but it’s brief. “Have you texted her yet?” she asks, not looking at my face when she says it.
I take my phone out, open the draft, read it once to find the soft spots where I might accidentally promise something I can’t deliver, and press send.
The bubbles animate for a second and then the status flips to delivered.
I don’t wait for a reply because the version of me that wants to stand there and watch the three dots pulse is the version I don’t let out near rooms that matter.
The screen, black now, gives me my eyes back. They look like mine when I haven’t slept long enough and like my father’s when I’ve been told the truth in a tone I don’t enjoy.
Reid’s voice comes through my earpiece. “Truck is gone,” he reports. “Navarro moved R to bed two. The walk-in is probably grief, not threat. The whistle-blower wants a shower and coffee. She asked for a woman to cut her hair.”
“Simone will do it,” I say. “She’s a better barber than the person who did mine in college.”
“Everyone is a better barber than the person who did yours in college,” he jokes.
My phone buzzes. I don’t need to look, but I do.
Aurora: I’ll attend.
Two words. It shouldn’t hit as hard as it does.
“Simone will brief her at 1330,” I say into the line, because I need to put motion in front of feeling.
“Move the second interview to 1630. Pull someone whose story won’t turn into a court case next week.
Navarro’s A is out. Give me M if she’s willing.
If not, we take the woman from last month who wants to talk about how the word home changed shape. ”
“Copy,” Reid says.
I have forty minutes before I need to sit with a kid’s ribs and another hour before I need to be the furniture in a room where a woman decides which version of herself to tell.
It would be easy to walk upstairs and stand outside a door I stood outside last night.
It would be cheap. I do the other thing: I take off my jacket, roll my sleeves, and go find a mop because the back hallway outside Clinic Three has a scuff I’ve been staring at for a week and I’m tired of looking at it.
The staffer assigned to maintenance sees me with the bucket and tries to take it. I shake my head.
“Five minutes,” I say. “I need them to belong to the part of me that earns the rest.”
He lets me. He knows how leadership works here when it works.
When the floor is clean and my head is clear, I check my watch again.
12:58. Simone will already be assembling the briefing she can give without paper.
She is the only person I trust to deliver a list like this in a tone that doesn’t turn boundaries into performance.
She will tell Aurora that survivors are not subjects and rooms are not material and stories are not hers to bend.
She will say it in a way that doesn’t sound like accusation because she knows Aurora already knows this and needs the rule anyway.
As I start back toward the control wing, my phone buzzes again. Mara.
“Change at the senator’s office,” she says. “They moved their ‘informal inquiry’ to a formal one. Letter in your inbox with letterhead and a deadline. They want names of partners and any clinic that has billed under our umbrella.”
“They can want,” I say. “We give them what we always give—licensed sites, public partners, and nothing else.”
“They’ll push,” she says.
“I’ll push back,” I retort. “Reid can drop a memo to our counsel. They’ll earn their retainer this week.”
“You’re going to enjoy that,” she laughs.
“I enjoy when the rules are clear,” I say. “They aren’t. So we make them clear.”