“Any sensation?”
“No.”
I tapped the tendon lightly with the reflex hammer.
Nothing.
I repeated it at a slightly different angle.
His toes twitched.
Not much.
So little that if I had blinked, I might have missed it.
But I didn’t blink.
Sebastian did.
His head lowered slowly.
“Do that again,” he said.
I did.
Nothing happened.
The room seemed to lean closer.
“Again.”
“Mr. Lombardi—”
“Again.”
I tapped once more.
Still nothing.
His face closed so quickly it hurt to see. For one second, the cold, feared man vanished, and I saw the boy he must have been at twenty-two, waking up in a hospital bed to discover his future had been stolen.
Then the mask returned.
“Reflexes happen in corpses, don’t they?” he said bitterly.
“Not like that.”
His eyes found mine.
I regretted saying it the second hope appeared there.
Hope was dangerous. Hope made people reach for doors that might not open. Hope made them pay money they didn’t have, believe lies dressed in white coats, drag themselves through pain for the chance of a life that might still refuse to come back.
I knew hope.
I had bargained with it over Oliver’s bed at three in the morning.
I had hated it and needed it at the same time.
“I need to examine your back,” I said.
Sebastian said nothing.
“Can you transfer to the table?”
“With assistance.”
“Do you want Gabriel?”
“No.”
His answer came too fast.
Pride, I thought.
Or privacy.
Maybe both.
He locked the chair, placed both hands on the armrests, and lifted himself with practiced strength. His shoulders trembled for only a second, but I saw the cost of it. I moved the transfer board into place without touching him until he nodded. Together, with more silence than grace, we got him onto the treatment table.
The room felt different with him lying face down. Less like an office of power, more like a room where pain had been waiting for years to be named.
His back was a map.
Surgical scars ran pale and uneven along his spine. Older scars from the explosion scattered across his ribs and lower back in small silver fragments. There was muscle there, more than expected, but it had hardened around trauma like earth around buried metal.
I warmed my hands before touching him.
“Tell me what you feel.”
“Hands.”
I paused. “You feel my hands?”
“On my upper back.”
“Only upper?”
“Yes.”
I moved lower, slowly, pressing along the thoracic spine.
“Here?”
“Pressure.”
“Here?”
“Less.”
“Here?”
“No.”
But as my fingers reached the area just above his pelvis, the muscles beneath my hand reacted.
Not dramatically.
Not enough for anyone untrained to notice.
But they tightened.
Protective guarding.
“You said you don’t feel that.”
“I don’t.”
“Your body does.”
His voice turned quiet. “Bodies lie.”
“No. Bodies compensate. People lie.”
For a long moment, he said nothing.
I worked carefully, mapping tension, temperature, scar mobility, and tissue density. I found places where his skin was cold, others where it was too warm. I found scars that moved and scars that seemed anchored to bone. Near the lower left side of his spine, my fingers stopped.
There.
A band of tissue sat deep beneath the surface, hard and rope-like, pulling across the pelvis at an angle that made no sense unless something had been held in distortion for years.
“Did you ever have abdominal surgery after the injury?” I asked.
“No.”
“Pelvic fracture?”
“Several.”
“Metal hardware?”
“Yes.”
“Did anyone remove shrapnel from this area?”
“Some. Not all.”
I pressed lightly along the band.
Sebastian inhaled sharply.
I froze. “Pain?”
He didn’t answer.
“Mr. Lombardi.”
“Not pain.”
“What, then?”
His hands gripped the edge of the table. “Heat.”
My heart began beating harder.
“Where?”
“My left hip.”
“Only hip?”
A long pause.
Then, almost unwillingly, he said, “Down the thigh.”
I looked toward his legs.
His left foot rested motionless at the end of the table.
“How far?”
Another pause.
“Knee.”
I kept my voice steady because his wasn’t. “Still there?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Breathe.”
“I am breathing.”
“No, you’re holding your breath and arguing with me.”
A strange sound escaped him. It might have been a laugh if it hadn’t been so strained.
I adjusted my hand position and softened the pressure. The technique was not mystical, not dramatic. It was the kind of patient, specific release work that never looked impressive to anyone watching. Skin, fascia, scar tissue, nerve pathways, joint position. Years of protection layered over injury.
The body remembered everything.
Sometimes it remembered too well.
Sebastian’s back slowly changed beneath my hands. The right side softened first. Then the left. The hard band near his pelvis shifted, not releasing fully, but giving way like a knot loosening in old rope.
His entire body went still.
“What?” I whispered.
“I felt…” He stopped.
“What did you feel?”
“Don’t ask me that.”
“I need to know.”
“No.” His voice roughened. “Because if I say it and it disappears, I will hate you.”
The honesty landed between us.
Not anger.
Fear.
I kept one hand steady on his back. “Then don’t say it yet.”
Rain struck the glass. The fire hissed. Somewhere beyond the door, Gabriel was probably standing like a statue with a gun under his jacket, unaware that the real battle inside the room was happening in a space smaller than the palm of my hand.
I moved to the right side, checking the corresponding tissue. Different. Less fixed. More responsive. His nervous system was not quiet. It was buried.
“Your doctors said complete injury?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Every one?”
“Eventually.”
“Eventually?”
“At first there were debates. Swelling. Shock. Unclear imaging. Then the senior surgeon told my family the cord damage was irreversible.”
“Who was the surgeon?”