“Because some celestial Big Bad hurt Lucy?” asked D.D.

“I’m tired,” Lightfoot said, as if it were important for her to understand that. “I’ve been expending vast amounts of energy on the interplanes each night. Then I’ve had healing exercises to tend to during the day. And now I’m trying to cleanse the taint that has corrupted this ward. I’m drained. Not at my best today. I’m sorry I can’t do more to protect you.”

“What?” D.D. said, looking around.

“You’re angry,” Lightfoot continued. “You’re hurt. Under better circumstances, I would help you center more, bolster your own defenses. But not this afternoon.”

“Okay.” D.D hesitated, trying to get the healer back on track. “Tell me about Danielle Burton. You said her pain calls to you.”

“There’s an old saying that doctors make the worst patients. Same with psych nurses. I have known Danielle since starting to work at the unit. I would like to help her. Unfortunately, her skepticism mirrors your own.”

“She won’t work with you?”

He shrugged. “It’s why I am willing to speak with you. She’s not a client and, in her own mind, not even a friend. But I worry about her.”

“Why?”

“She’s an old soul,” Lightfoot said immediately, his expression more distant now, seeing something only he could see. “For centuries she has returned to this plane, always seeking, never finding. She has honed her hatred, when only love can set her free.”

“Sounds like a song I once heard,” D.D. said. She couldn’t help herself. “Are you talking reincarnation?”

“I’m talking experiential lessons. Her soul is drawn to this plane to learn what it needs to learn. But she hasn’t mastered the lesson. Until she does, she’s doomed to repeat. Unfortunately, there are other souls also involved. Their experiences are intertwined with her own, her inability to move forward sentencing them all to a spin cycle of ever-repeating violence. I’ve tried to explain this to her, but…”

“Her father?” D.D. filled in.

“That would make sense,” Lightfoot said.

D.D. narrowed her eyes. Interesting answer, she thought, and she was beginning to realize that for all his woo-woo, Lightfoot was very careful with his replies.

She got it, suddenly: “You mean Gym Coach Greg. You’re worried about his and Danielle’s relationship.”

“He asks. She refuses. He needs. She rejects. He still searches for love. She still chooses hate. And they spin and they spin and they spin.”

“Greg seems like a nice guy,” D.D. countered mildly.

“They spin and they spin and they spin,” Lightfoot repeated, sounding both tired and sorrowful.

D.D. regarded him for a bit. The healer made no attempt to break the silence, and after several minutes, she declared defeat.

“You ever miss it?” she asked finally.

“What?”

“The money, the fast car, the trappings of your former life?”

“Never.”

“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?”

“Do you have kids, Sergeant?”

“No.”

“Well, someday, if you do, you’ll understand.”

Dismissive and curt. D.D. warmed to the challenge. “Your place or mine?” D.D. asked, gesturing to either the Admin area or down the hall, where D.D.’s team had set up shop. Karen arched a brow, no doubt tempted to remind D.D. that, technically, it was all Karen’s. But finally, the administrator sighed, and pointed to her own office area. She located the key on the lanyard around her neck and opened the door. D.D. followed.

“How long have you known Lightfoot?” D.D. asked as they entered the cramped warren of rooms. Karen led her back to a tiny staff room, where they could both have a seat at a table.

“Two years.”

Consistent. “How’d you meet him?”

“Parents of a child who came to stay. Their son liked to capture bullfrogs, stick firecrackers in their mouths, and light the fuses. He also enjoyed covering the walls of their home with pictures of his mother being killed in various manners. It was amazing the level of detail he could capture using only red crayons.”

Also consistent. “How old was the child?” D.D. asked, curious.

“Ten.”

“Scary.”

Karen shrugged. “I’ve seen worse. The boy, however, was not responding to medication and the parents were frantic. So they brought in Andrew. I was initially skeptical, but Andrew was calm and courteous, respectful of our staff and the other kids. And I have to say, within three weeks we noticed a marked improvement in the boy’s behavior. Incidents that previously would’ve thrown him into a rage were greeted with more tolerance. We’d see the child tense up, but then he’d mumble, ‘Find the light, seven hugs from seven angels.’ He’d relax, a remarkable feat for a child with his level of psychosis. Naturally, I started to ask Andrew about his work. As did many of our doctors.”

“What do they think?” D.D. asked.

“Most of them have no issues with it. Medicine is already starting to note the role of love and laughter in the recovery process. It’s not so much of a stretch to acknowledge that faith and spirituality can also make a difference.”