The silence in the room is thick enough to slice with a knife. Knives my grandmother is shooting through her eyes at the both of us.
"Doctor Mercer, I will take your recommendation into consideration," Agatha says with pinched lips. "Now I trust Demetrius can see you out, because I'm rather immobile at the moment."
Then Agatha turns her gaze to the window pointedly.
Astrid recovers cleanly. I have to give her that. She nods and assures my grandmother that she will come check on her in a few days, whether she chooses the recovery center or home. She is at the doorway with her hand on the frame when she turns back.
"I'll be in touch about the follow-up schedule, Mrs. Thornwood." She pauses, then turns to me with a smile that has nothing whatsoever to do with the follow-up schedule. "Demetrius. If there's anything you need, anything at all, you have my number."
She holds my gaze one beat past professional.
"Thank you, Doctor Mercer."
She leaves. My grandmother is watching me from her bed with the expression of a bull about to run down a bullfighter.
"I am not going to some old-folks center." Agatha lifts her chin defiantly. "No point in even talking about it."
I knew this battle was coming. I've been in countless boardrooms where tempers flared and billions were at stake, and never have I felt less equipped for a negotiation than I do now.
Because make no mistake, a negotiation is what this is. And Agatha Thornwood is as formidable an opponent as any CEO of any multi-national corporation I've ever sat across.
"Grandmother, you cannot just ignore your doctor's advice here. You need a nurse or you need to go to a recovery center. There's no way around it."
"I. Said. No."
I cross to the visitor's chair beside her bed and sit directly across from her. It squeaks under my weight and is slightly too small for my frame, which feels appropriate for a negotiation I am already losing.
"I am not a foolish woman. I knew I would need care after coming back home and I have decided who I want to hire to come live with me at Stronghold for my recovery."
There's something about the way she says it that makes me slightly nervous. Like she's about to say something that will pull the rug right from under my hooves.
"There is one person I will accept. Only one. I am not negotiating on this, boy. I would like you to make the arrangements."
A sense of doom slithers around my chest, but I nod anyway.
"Anyone you want, Grandmother. You know me, name who you want to care for you and I will make it happen."
Agatha's eyes reduce to slits as she holds my gaze. "Promise me."
I blink. "Excuse me? Promise you what exactly?"
"That you will hire whoever I name."
That sense of doom rises until I feel the underside of my horns prickle. Suddenly, she doesn't look so old or so frail anymore. She doesn't look like a minotaur at all. She looks like a lioness watching a gazelle, waiting for it to lie down for the killing blow.
And the gazelle is me.
"Fine." I breathe out. "I promise I will not argue and that I will hire whoever you name next, even if it's the Queen of England."
Agatha's smile is purely evil as she inclines her head in assent. She knows she has all the power here, anyway. It's not like I'm about to discharge her without proper care lined up, and no one in their right mind would try to force Agatha Thornwood anywhere she doesn't want to go.
I'm cornered. I really am a gazelle and she a lioness.
"I want Madison Berwick."
Something happens in the room. Or to me. The distinction feels important and I can't make it.
I sit very still and the name rings again inside my skull, and for approximately thirty seconds I am eighteen years old again.
