"She wrote letters describing the pain. I forwarded those letters to your office with my own hands.
And how did you respond? I keep every document, Nathaniel.
You know how I am. No clinical basis.
Seven letters, seven times the same stamp." She took one step toward him.
"And now a car mechanic with a $5 protractor has just shown me the exact spot where my daughter said it hurt for seven years. So I'll ask you one last time.
How long have you known?" "How long have you known?"
Nathaniel Crane's mask came off right there in the middle of an oil-stained machine shop under a light that flattered no one.
"What do you want to hear? That the design has deviations?
Every design has deviations. The girl could walk, could stand, looked wonderful in photographs.
Ninety percent of spinal patients in this country would dream of that. I gave her more than anyone else ever could.
And the pain, who can measure pain? If I recalled a design every time a patient complained, this entire industry would collapse.
People need to believe in what we build."
"People need to walk without pain," Boon said quietly. "That's the whole job, doctor.
It was never anything else."
Then a voice rang out from near the door. Piper's voice.
She had stood there listening to everything. "Mom, let me try again right now in front of everyone.
If it hurts, I'll take them off and hand them back myself. But if I can walk," Piper said, looking at her mother, and this time there were no walls left in her eyes, "then you have to watch.
You owe me one time of watching me run. Remember?"
Genevieve Larkin looked at her daughter. 11 years of guilt, 17 specialists, four surgeries, mountains of money.
All of it collapsed into the one question she had been running from all those years. She nodded.
She couldn't manage words. She only nodded.
Boon knelt down and helped Piper out of the old braces for the last time. He fitted the new ones, fastened every strap, checked the stabilizing lock at the hip, the part he had added during the darkest nights.
Built for exactly this moment. "There's a hip lock now," Boon said softly, just for her.