"Wait," Hamilton said. "Wait a second."
Miles withdrew his hands immediately. He had felt a change beneath the fabric but did not know whether it meant the episode was ending or something else was happening. Hamilton sat very still, staring down at his own leg as though afraid any movement would bring the pain back. Richard's video timestamp later showed that approximately eighteen seconds had passed between the beginning of the brief interaction and Hamilton's startled cry.
"I can feel my foot," Hamilton whispered.
A hush settled over the patio. He moved his toes cautiously, then flexed his ankle. The movement was small, but the expression on his face made Victoria's eyes fill with tears. He repeated it, this time more confidently, and looked up at Miles as though the child had reached inside the world and rearranged its rules.
"Greg," Thomas said, "please don't stand yet."
Hamilton tried to shift his knee, and it moved without the sharp burst of pain that had stopped him earlier. He let out a strangled laugh, half disbelief and half relief. Brandon crouched beside the chair, asking whether the sensation was normal. Hamilton nodded, then shook his head because normal felt like too small a word for what he was experiencing.
"The pain," he said. "It's gone. At least that terrible part of it is gone."
Richard lowered the camera. In his professional life he had cross-examined experts for hours about things he could not personally observe, and he knew the danger of drawing an enormous conclusion from a short video. Yet he could not ignore what he had just witnessed. Hamilton's leg had been rigid, the boy had approached him, and seconds later movement had returned.
"Eighteen seconds," Brandon said, looking at the recording. "From the time he touched the chair to the time Greg moved his foot."
"It doesn't mean we know exactly why the spasm released," Victoria said, struggling to sound sensible through her tears. "But the change is real. We're all seeing it."
Hamilton looked at Miles. The child's face was pale, and he was shaking from the strain of the evening rather than from any desire to celebrate. Hamilton realized that everyone around him had been thinking about what might happen if the boy failed, while almost nobody had thought about what would happen to the child if he succeeded. He held out his hand, palm upward, and waited for Miles to decide whether to take it.
Miles touched his fingers.
The applause began somewhere behind the nearest table, uncertain at first and then louder. Diners stood, phones rose, and questions flew between strangers who had barely noticed one another twenty minutes earlier. Someone shouted that it was a miracle, while someone else shouted for everybody to make room for the ambulance. Miles stepped backward until he nearly collided with James, who caught him by the shoulders before he fell.
"Easy, kid," James said. "You're shaking. Have you eaten tonight?"