She showed them the worst of it, deliberately, and then said here I am — and in doing so she took the very image Obadiah had counted on to destroy her and turned it into the most powerful argument in the room.

Because what the board saw was not a dying woman.

What they saw was a woman who should have been in a bed, who by every medical measure had every excuse to surrender, choosing instead to lead from an isolation ward with poison dripping into her arm.

They saw someone the illness could not switch off.

Obadiah had wanted to show them weakness; she showed them the exact opposite of weakness, which is not health but will — the refusal to go dark that Emeka had recognized in her from the first fevered night.

The empty chair had been meant to end her.