She didn’t even step back.
“I’m washing your daughter,” she said, her voice steady, almost quiet against the rush of water.
Ethan reached them in seconds and yanked the hose from her hands, water spraying wildly before he shut it off. His hands were shaking now—not just from anger, but from something deeper. Fear. Shock. A kind of helpless fury that had been living inside him for years.
“Have you lost your mind?” he snapped. “She hasn’t walked in four years! She’s paralyzed. I’ve taken her everywhere—Switzerland, Japan, Germany. The best neurologists, the most advanced treatments, experimental therapies. I’ve spent millions trying to help her. And you think this—this—is going to fix anything?”
Emma met his anger with silence for a moment.
Then she said, “They treated her body. But no one ever treated her mind.”
Ethan stared at her, stunned.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” he said sharply. “Her spinal injury is permanent. That’s what every doctor told me.”
Emma didn’t argue.
Instead, she turned to Lily and crouched beside her, her movements gentle but purposeful.
“When was the last time anyone actually examined her?” she asked quietly, without looking at him.
Ethan hesitated.