Noah immediately hated himself for it.
He forced his voice lower. “Take them upstairs. Let them rest. Then call Dr. Kaplan. I want him here tonight.”
“Yes, sir.”
She moved toward the door with a careful calm he could not read.
At the threshold, Lily twisted around and said, “Daddy?”
Noah swallowed. “Yes, baby?”
“Mama wasn’t sad.”
It was an odd thing for a child to say.
Not Mama was there.
Not Mama talked to us.
Mama wasn’t sad.
Noah could not answer. He only nodded.
After they were gone, he stood alone in the family room and stared at the two empty wheelchairs.
They looked like abandoned evidence.
That evening Dr. Ethan Kaplan arrived from Manhattan in under ninety minutes, which was what happened when billionaires called specialists and used words like urgent. He ran tests, checked reflexes, reviewed past scans, watched the girls attempt supported standing, and grew progressively more baffled.
“This doesn’t erase the original injuries,” he said in Noah’s study just before ten. “But there’s more activation here than there was six weeks ago. A lot more.”
“You told me they would likely never walk,” Noah said.
Kaplan rubbed his jaw. “I said the prognosis was poor.”
“You said miracle.”
Kaplan’s eyes flicked away. “Sometimes doctors use words carelessly when families are desperate. I shouldn’t have.”
Noah let the silence judge him.
Kaplan continued, “Trauma can complicate recovery in ways that don’t show neatly on scans. Fear, dissociation, learned guarding, pain anticipation. If something emotional shifted today, it could have unlocked function that therapy alone wasn’t reaching.”
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