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baroque paperwork systems.
    Why hadn’t he spent that time with Aliyah? Why hadn’t he quit his job to cuddle her in his arms, appreciate the miracle of the rise and fall of her tiny chest?
    Why had he burned her?
    My ’mancy saved her , he reminded himself. Aliyah had been lucky, the doctors had told him and Imani over and over, to have survived the smoke for as long as she had. She would have suffocated if Paul hadn’t gotten there when he did. Paul remembered the exhilaration of files hurtling over his shoulders in an administrative hailstorm, of commanding burning wood to step aside so he could rescue his daughter…
    – Aliyah’s skin crisping beneath his fingertips, the flames taking revenge –
    “I saved you,” he muttered. “I saved you.”
    Paul tried to memorize what was left of Aliyah’s beautiful face. Aliyah’s remaining skin pulled tight into new formations as the burns puckered; the doctors shoved splints into her mouth to ensure her shrinking cheeks didn’t tug her lips shut. Her old smile disappeared, lost in scars.
    Maybe he’d saved her from death, but… he’d done that. It had been an accident, but apologies didn’t heal her blisters.
    And still, she might die.
    Paul paced the burn ward. It was a hallway-sized terrarium, a jungled warmth designed to keep heat trapped inside skinless patients. They kept the lights dimmed to shield the children’s eyes, cloaking Aliyah’s bed in a funereal dusk.
    You couldn’t look your own child’s death in the eye, he discovered. Exhausted, he fluttered between desperate hope that Aliyah would make it and bracing himself in case she didn’t…
    Aliyah groaned, shifting beneath disposable cotton pads.
    They’re late with her painkillers again, he thought. You know why, don’t you? The nurse’s charts are too complex, their schedules strained. You could optimize their night shifts, cull their unnecessary paperwork–
    His hand paused as it reached for the nurse’s button. Paul couldn’t heal his daughter. He could imagine no document that would regraft her skin.
    But what use was all this new power if he couldn’t use it to help someone?
    Paul felt the hospital vibrating around him, a strained web of bureaucracy aching for solutions. He reached out, sick with guilt over what he’d done, desperate for escape.
    The bureaucracy reached back.
    The schedules of every nurse poured into his brain, their hourly wages and the department’s budget – comforting, beautiful numbers, a puzzle of people.
    The schedules melted at his touch, eager to be reshaped by compassionate hands. He sank into this unearthly joy, layering vacation requests over union rules. Aliyah twitched, her sedatives wearing off. Paul smiled: under his loving watch, every child would be soothed on schedule.
    This would be a place of healing, a magic to counteract the damage he’d done.
    And when he’d settled upon the proper configuration, Paul searched Aliyah’s bedside for a form. Energy hummed in his fingertips; he had to sign something to enact this magic. His breakfast menu would do. As he reached out, fingers trembling from the painkillers for his own burns, the bold lists of “egg-white omelet” and “orange juice” shrank to tiny ribbons of overlapping schedules – a paradise of the best nurses, working according to their circadian rhythms–
    It felt so good , doing this, so natural, like kicking off too-tight shoes at the end of a long business day.
    Paul signed. The schedules contracted. The orderlies frowned, sensing next week’s plans had changed…
    …Flux squeezed his temples.
    A nurse headed for Aliyah, a fresh bag of Fentanyl in his hands. The ward’s efficiency was improving already. But the laws of physics jostled close, demanding restitution: Paul had fixed things, and now something had to go wrong.
    Cold reality flooded in. Had he been doing ’mancy in a children’s ward? Next to Aliyah ? He’d chased enough ’mancers to know what flux blowback did