“No.”
I moved lower and pressed along the inside of his ankle.
His jaw tightened.
“Something?” I asked.
“Heat.
Maybe pressure.”
Crane spoke quickly.
“Phantom sensation.”
“Phantom sensation doesn’t make the opposite foot withdraw.”
Sebastian looked down.
His left foot had shifted less than an inch on the platform.
Crane reached for the syringe.
Gabriel seized his wrist and forced his arm behind his back.
The doctor’s composure broke.
“You cannot abruptly interrupt his medication.
It could kill him.”
“That part may be true,” I said.
Sebastian turned toward me.
“May be?”
“I don’t know what he has been giving you, how much is in your system, or whether you have an implanted pump delivering more.
Stopping certain drugs suddenly could be dangerous.
But letting him inject you before we test that syringe would be worse.”
I knelt beside the wheelchair and examined the area near Sebastian’s waist.
Beneath his shirt, I found the outline of a small implanted reservoir.
“When was this pump last checked by someone other than Crane?”
Sebastian’s silence answered me.
Crane began struggling against Gabriel.
“I kept him alive.
I managed infections, pain, muscle spasms, blood pressure crises.
He would have died years ago without me.”
Sebastian closed the folder.
“And would I have walked?”
Crane stopped fighting.
For the first time that night, fear fully entered his face.
“No reputable physician would promise that.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Crane said nothing.
Sebastian’s voice dropped.
“Would I have walked?”
I stepped between them before anger decided what happened next.
“Nobody in this room can answer that yet.
Not honestly.”
Sebastian looked at me with a fury sharpened by hope.
“You made my foot move.”
“I triggered a response.
That is not the same as restoring twenty years of lost strength.
Your nerves may have surviving pathways.
Your muscles may still respond.
But you could also have permanent damage that no therapy can reverse.”
“So you don’t know.”
“No.
And anyone who tells you otherwise before new imaging and blood tests is selling you something.”
That was the moment he decided to trust me.
Not because I offered him a miracle.
Because I refused to.
Sebastian ordered Gabriel to place Crane in a secured guest room and station guards outside.
