It had been a year since he’d been to a Morton College swim meet, and I hadn’t seen him so excited in a long time.

“I’m excited for you,” Dr. Bryant said. She sat up straighter in her seat. “So, I’ve got good news and bad.”

One of the things I appreciated most about her was her ability to quickly cut to the chase.

“Which one do you want first?” she asked.

“The bad,” Keith and I said at the same time, and we turned to look at each other.

Dr. Bryant leaned forward, folding her hands on the desk in front of her. “Your range of motion hasn’t improved since last time,” she said. “And unfortunately, that’s bad news. None of the treatments we’ve tried so far are helping.”

“But it’s not getting worse,” Keith said. “That’s got to be a good thing?”

“Sure, good in that it could be worse,” she said. “But you’re not improving as much as we’d hoped.”

“What’s the good news?” Keith asked quietly.

Dr. Bryant looked at me first, and from the expression on her face, I knew what she was going to say.

“That treatment I told you about—”

She stopped as Keith let out a long, loud sigh.

“That’s the good news?” he asked.

Dr. Bryant stood up and walked around her desk. “I wouldn’t keep bringing it up if I didn’t think it could help you,” she said.

“But we still can’t afford it,” Keith said. “Like we couldn’t the last time we came in and like we won’t be able to the next.”

“But you’re an excellent candidate for it,” she said. “This treatment could radically change your quality of life. I don’t recommend it to everyone, because Dr. Reveno’s treatment requires a very specific patient, and you are really the perfect example of it. You’re the right age, the right height, and everything else lines up. I don’t want to oversell it, but I think it’s something you should consider.”

Keith sucked in a breath. “Thanks for the update, Doc,” he said. He looked down at me. “I’ll wait for you outside.”

As he left, I stood and faced Dr. Bryant.

“Do you think it will actually work?” I asked.

She nodded. “I do,” she said. “I wouldn’t keep mentioning it if I didn’t.”

The ride home was tense.

“I can ask David for some extra shifts,” I said after we’d been driving for nearly ten minutes in silence.

“When, at two o’clock in the morning?” Keith asked. He looked over at me for a moment and then back out the window. “I know you’re not sleeping, Paula. You’re never there when I wake up.”