“Is it true that the light here is better for the spirit than the science? That’s what my sister says, anyway. She says New York is a city of glass, but this place… this place has a soul.”

The voice was young—too young for the heavy, clinical weight of the Westchester Neurological Recovery Center. Lucian Aldridge paused in the manicured courtyard, his hand resting on the back of a wrought-iron bench. He had come here to sign a donation for a new pediatric wing, a hollow gesture of a man trying to buy back a conscience he’d lost in a boardroom.

He turned his head. Standing by a trellis of...