Sandra POV
I stood in the lobby of St. Ellison Children's Hospital and told myself very firmly that I was not going to be sick.
The fundraiser gala was filling the room around me—women in floor-length gowns moving in pairs and trios, men with the carefully relaxed posture of people who'd been in rooms exactly like this one since they were twenty-two and had long ago stopped noticing the chandeliers. Serving staff threaded between them with trays of champagne that caught the light and threw small gold shapes across the ceiling. The foundation had arranged two donated artworks near the entrance—pieces I recognised from the grant archive—and a string quartet near the far wall was working through something precise and unobtrusive. Everything was exactly as Herald had briefed me. None of it w
