THE MIDNIGHT CONTRACT

Tessy POV. "Hold still for me, okay? Just one more minute." Marcus didn't hold still. He never did. Eight years old, one leg has gone below the knee, and is still swinging the other foot against the exam table like it was a drum. "Does it pinch?" I asked, adjusting the liner. "No." He grinned. "Feels weird though. Like a robot leg." "You are basically a robot now." "Cool." His mother laughed from the corner chair, and I let myself laugh too, because this part of my day still worked. This part still made sense. A kid, a leg, a problem I knew how to fix. After nine years, it hadn't grown old yet — the fitting, the small adjustments, the moment when a kid stopped thinking about the leg and just started thinking about walking on it. The device lit up with an incoming call, against the counter. I glanced at it without picking it up. Mom. She never texted. If she wanted something, she called, and if she called twice in a row it meant whatever she wanted, she couldn't wait for me to finish a sentence. I told myself it was nothing. I told myself that every time, and most of the time, it was true. Marcus flexed his ankle, testing the joint, and I crouched down to check the alignment again, running my thumb along the seam. An incoming call interrupted a second time before I'd even finished the sentence in my head. My mother didn't call twice unless something was wrong. "I need two minutes," I told Marcus's mother, and stepped into the hallway, already bracing for nothing in particular and everything at once. "Mom?" "Tessy." Her voice was flat. Too flat. My mother panics loudly, she cries, she talks fast. This wasn't that. This was worse, because I didn't have a name for it yet. "What happened?" "Nathan's numbers came back. The doctor called this morning." "What numbers?" "His kidneys, Tessy." A pause. "They want to see us tomorrow. As soon as possible, she said." I leaned against the wall. The hallway tilted a half-inch and then righted itself, or maybe that was just me holding on to the phone a little too hard. "As soon as possible, meaning what?" "Meaning tomorrow. That's all he said." "Did he say how bad—" "I don't know. He wants us both there." Her voice cracked on the last word, like ice giving under weight. "I have to go, your aunt's on the other line. I'll see you tonight." She hung up before I could answer. I stood there a second longer, phone still in my ear, listening to a dial tone that had already stopped meaning anything, and then I put it in my pocket like that would put the conversation away too. It didn't. I walked back into the exam room and smiled at an eight-year-old boy like my whole life hadn't just tilted sideways. "Okay," I said. "Let's get you walking." He took three steps on the new liner and grinned back at me as the floor belonged to him, and for a few seconds, I let that be the only true thing in the room. Nathan was on the couch when I got home, blanket up to his chest, controller in his hands, losing badly at some racing game. "You're terrible at this," I said, dropping my bag by the door. "I'm letting the AI win. Building its confidence." "Sure you are." He paused the game and looked at me properly, and that's when I saw it, the grey under his eyes, the way his hands shook slightly, setting the controller down. He caught me looking and straightened up, as that would erase it. "I'm fine," he said, before I asked. "I didn't say anything." "You were about to do the face." "What face?" "The one where you're already planning my funeral." "Nathan." "I'm kidding." He wasn't. Not really. "Mom told you about tomorrow?" "She told me." I sat down on the arm of the couch, closer than I usually would, like proximity could do something the words couldn't. "Probably nothing." "Sure." "Tessy." He said my name the way he used to when we were kids, and he wanted me to stop worrying about him falling off his bike. "I'm okay. Look at me. Beating an AI in Mario Kart" "You said you were letting it win." "I contain multitudes." I laughed, and it cost me something, because underneath the joke his hands were still trembling on the blanket and we both knew it. I wanted to reach over and steal them on my own, the way I used to when he was small enough for me to fix things just by holding on. I didn't. He wouldn't have let me, not tonight, not with that look on his face that dared me to make it a bigger deal than he'd decided it was allowed to be. By midnight the house was quiet. Nathan's door was shut, with no light under it. My mother's television murmured low behind her bedroom wall. I sat at the kitchen table with the lights off and let myself do the thing I don't let myself do in the daylight. I watched the microwave clock instead of my phone. The green numbers felt less personal somehow, easier to look at than a screen with my mother's name still sitting in the call log. 12:00. I put my head down on my arms and let it come, the fear, the grief, a brother running out of time before he'd really had one. I thought about the exam room that afternoon, Marcus taking his first steps on a new leg like the ground owed him nothing, and I wondered when I'd started needing other people's small victories just to get through my own days. 12:03. I lifted my head. 12:05. I stood, pushed the chair in, and told myself the same thing I told myself every night. Tomorrow you fix it. Tomorrow you find a way. I was three steps toward my bedroom when the phone rang. Not my mother's ringtone. An unknown number. Midnight. "Hello?" "Is this Tessy Moretti?" A man's voice, calm in the practiced way doctors are calm right before they say something that isn't calm at all. "Yes." "This is Dr Reyes, from St. Loyola. I'm sorry to call so late." My chest Went tight before he said another word. "Tessy, I need you to come in tonight.”