Richard cut him off and sent him to his room, asking Maria to wheel him to the elevator and then come back. When she returned, she found Richard pacing, running a hand through his graying hair.

He asked if she had children. When she said no, he told her she couldn’t know what it was like to watch your child slowly stop wanting to live.

Maria listened in silence, then interrupted him gently but firmly. She had grown up watching her grandmother, Grandma Rose, treat people city doctors had already given up on.

Her grandmother had never claimed to replace medicine, but believed that sometimes the heart knows what the mind can’t explain.

Maria described “points of life”—places on the body that, when touched softly, could wake up sleeping energy.