That earned a reluctant smile—a small one, but real. Maya immediately noticed: "There it is."
"What?"
"The smile."
"It wasn't a smile."
"It was."
Ethan shook his head. For reasons he didn't understand, talking to Maya felt easier than talking to most adults. Maybe because she never treated him like a billionaire, or a patient, or a headline. She simply treated him like Ethan: nothing more, nothing less.
Maya set down her bucket. Today she moved differently—more confidently, more purposefully, almost like she had arrived to begin something important.
Ethan noticed. "What are you doing today?"
Maya unfolded the old white towel. "My grandma called it waking up sleeping feet."
Ethan leaned back. "There it is again."
"What?"
"That phrase."
Maya smiled. "My grandma used it all the time."
She removed several small cloth packets from the bucket, then a jar filled with coarse salt, then a few dried herbs: rosemary, chamomile, mint. The scents immediately drifted into the warm afternoon air: fresh, comforting, familiar—oddly familiar. Ethan couldn't remember why.
Maya poured warm water into a shallow basin she had brought inside the bucket. Steam rose softly.
"Where did you learn all this?"
"My grandma."
"And she taught you when you were what, six? Five?" Ethan laughed. "You remember all of it?"
"I remember the important parts."
There was no arrogance in her answer, only honesty. That was becoming her trademark.
She gently placed the herbs into the water, then stirred them. The scent became stronger. Something about it reminded Ethan of childhood: church dinners, family gatherings, summer evenings long forgotten. For a brief second, he wasn't a billionaire, he wasn't a patient, he wasn't trapped inside a wheelchair. He was simply a boy remembering simpler days.
Maya looked up. "You remembered something."
Ethan stared. "How do you keep doing that?"
"Doing what?"
"Knowing."