Chapter 24: Name One Patient

"Then I'll see you there," Emerson said behind me.

Veronica turned her head.

"You're not on the agenda, darling."

"I'm the CEO," he said. "I am the agenda."

She smiled at him the way she'd smiled at me in the diner, over the cream paper.

Then she walked out into the heat, and her driver opened the car door before she reached it.

Twelve days later Trina relaunched the Reset.

A hotel ballroom on Chestnut Street, gold balloons, a stage shaped like a T.

Tickets were forty-nine dollars and sold out in an hour.

I bought three.

I sat in the third row at thirty-one weeks, in a loose black dress, with my hands folded over my stomach.

The runner sat on my left in her track jacket.

She had gained back eleven pounds and her color was perfect.

The young father sat on my right in a collared shirt his wife had ironed that morning.

He kept checking his breast pocket.

"Still there?" I asked.

"Still there."

Fergus was at the back wall with his arms folded, because he said he'd ruin it if he sat down.

At the front, a round table had a gold card on it.

KENLEY.

Veronica sat there alone in pearls.

She had seen us come in.

She hadn't stopped looking since.

The lights went down at eight.

Music thumped, and Trina walked out the long arm of the stage in a white suit and gold heels.

The ballroom screamed for her.

Cameras swung on their cranes.

The livestream counter on the big screen behind her said 410,000 watching.

"Hi, Reset family!" Trina said. "Are you ready to get your life back?"

They were ready.

She talked for twenty minutes.

Energy. Clarity. Ancestors. Lies the sugar industry told your grandmother.

Then the screen behind her changed to a chart with a green arrow going up.

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