“Had to have been an adrenaline rush, picking up pretty women, making fistfuls of cash, screwing over your rivals. From all that, to this?”

“Wall Street is nothing but a playground. There are no meaningful rewards, there are no significant consequences. Whereas in there …” Lightfoot pointed toward Lucy’s open doorway. “In there is where I fight to win.”

As if to prove his point, the healer marched back down the hall.

He paused outside Lucy’s room. D.D. saw the man shiver before he headed in.

With Lightfoot back to the business of spiritual cleansing, D.D. wandered the unit until she found the nurse manager, Karen Rober, sitting in the common area with a little boy who was resiliently mashing fruit in a bowl. The boy looked up when D.D. approached and she recognized him from the first day. One of the three amigos into Matchbox cars and running laps. D.D. searched her mental files for a name but came up blank; she’d never been great with kids.

“Do you want a fruit smoothie?” the boy asked her, feet swinging, shoulders rocking. He stated in one breathless rush: “I can do banana strawberry raspberry blueberry maybe grape but not oranges they’re too hard to mash.”

He went back to pounding fruit with his plastic spoon, rocking, rocking, rocking. D.D. started to cue in on a few things. First, while the boy remained seated at the table, he was agitated. Very agitated. A hand grenade, just waiting for someone to pull the pin.

Second, he wasn’t the only one. Two kids were rollerblading down the hallway, pushing and shoving at each other as they went, while another kid sat under a table, banging his head against the wall.

What was it they called the environment of the unit—the “milieu”? D.D. was no expert, but even to her, the milieu was wiggy today.

Karen had spotted the head-banger. “Jamal,” she said sharply. “Enough of that. Why don’t you join Benny and me? Come on, Jamal. Benny will make you a fruit smoothie. What flavor would you like?”

“Eat eat eat eat eat,” Benny singsonged, holding out his first concoction for Karen.

The head nurse took it from him, smiling her thanks.

“Eat eat eat eat eat.”

D.D. watched in fascination as Karen swallowed an honest-to-God spoonful, smile never slipping from the nurse manager’s face. Benny clapped his hands in glee. Jamal finally crawled out from beneath the other table to join the party.

In no time, Karen had him set up with his own fruit-smashing project. Then the nurse manager summoned another staff member to take over the table, freeing herself to join D.D. in the hallway.

“Whatever they’re paying you, it’s not enough,” D.D. told Karen.

The nurse smiled faintly. “Trust me, I’ve been fed worse.”

“But you ate it. Can’t you fake your way out of something like that?”