Martha held her mother as the ushers gently guided them away from the stage, toward a side room marked “Miracles Testimonies.” Delia was crying, laughing, whispering, “He did it. He did it, Martha.”

In the side room, a young woman with a clipboard asked Delia to sign a release form for the broadcast. Martha looked at her mother’s legs. They were still shaking. The pain was still there, hidden beneath the adrenaline and the roaring crowd. She knew, with a cold certainty, that the wheelchair would be waiting for them at the bus. The healing wouldn’t survive the three-hour drive back to Arkansas.

Martha hesitated. The aisles were clogged with ushers in navy polos, with people waving handkerchiefs. But she pushed. They stopped about twenty rows from the stage, in a pocket of exhausted faith.

“You,” he said. “The woman in the chair. You’ve been sitting in that lie for eleven years. The Lord says tonight, the anointing breaks the yoke.”

“In the name of Jesus,” he said, not loudly, but the microphone caught every syllable, “I command that crooked spine to straighten. I command the pain to go to the feet of Jesus. Stand up.”