# Dialogue Doctor — Chapter 18 (`output/chapters/chapter_18.md`)

Manifest coverage: scenes 01–04 and 06 are marked not-required (0 dialogue lines; the June/Mara and June/Asha text exchanges in scenes 01, 03, and 04 fall below the threshold). Scene 05 (lines 60–87, Sunday outside Sonia's, June and Mara, 10 dialogue lines / 15 quoted utterances) is the sole doctor-required scene and is audited below.

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SCENE 05 / Sunday morning, sidewalk outside Sonia's (lines 60–87, June ↔ Mara):

1. VOICE CONVERGENCE: CLEAN — read with attributions covered, every line sorts to its speaker: June's turns are compressed reports and refusals ("And dried flat." / "I'm painting." / "I don't know about Tuesday."); Mara's turns are hosting runs built from object instructions ("The blue dish is mine," "Not the foil. The dish under it. Bring it Tuesday. Sit by me."). Strongest counter-candidate: both speakers produce clipped near-two-word lines — June's "And dried flat." against Mara's "Okay," — why it survives: Mara's clipped beats sit inside imperative-hosting runs June never produces, and June never issues an instruction; no line is swappable.

2. MONOTONE Q/A RHYTHM: CLEAN — checked the turn ledger for question/answer volleys of similar weight. Strongest counter-candidate: two adjacent Q→A pairs open the scene — "Wool soap?" → "And dried flat." and "Are you eating?" → "I'm painting." — why it survives: the answers do different work (the first completes Mara's guess; the second is a visible deflection of a welfare question), and the pattern breaks immediately — Mara's next turn is action plus instruction ("Okay," … "Luis made too much. There's pie under the turkey. Don't tilt it."), after which June's turns become refusals and two unfinished sentences. No volley develops.

3. MISSING INTERIORITY: CLEAN — checked whether June's mind goes dark during the exchange. It stays lit through focalized perception: she clocks Mara's check-in ("Then she looked at June for a second longer than the scarf required"), the hazards blinking at the corner, the swinging tote, and the crooked flyer in Sonia's window. Strongest counter-candidate: Mara's loaded "I need another painter at the table" and June's cut-off "I don't think I—" pass with no named cost in the moment — why it survives: the cost is registered in action within four sentences ("She walked home the long block, not past the gallery, the foil level the whole time like she'd been told") — route-avoidance and obedience carry the registration, which is the reading guide §2 interiority discipline (action/object first) and June's card ("perception first… gets quieter… then exits"). This is restraint, not darkness; the cut-list's unmarked-silence bullet is answered by the closing paragraph.

4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS: CLEAN — both questions in the scene are genuine asks, not positions wearing question marks. Strongest counter-candidate: "Are you eating?" — why it survives: it is a literal welfare question, and Mara accepts the deflecting answer ("I'm painting." / "Okay," Mara said) rather than using the question to land a point; no manufactured portent.

5. FAKE-McCARTHY MINIMALISM: CLEAN — checked whether the clipped register and sparse tags perform unearned starkness. Strongest counter-candidate: the unattributed "And dried flat." and the interrupted "Mara —" — why they survive: two-speaker scene where content fixes the speaker (June did the washing and drying), attribution tags appear at every turn that needs one ("Mara said" ×3, "June said," "June held the foil brick level"), and the starkness is earned — the chapter has already established the rupture ("Okay. No chair."; "There were no more next Tuesdays") before the scene opens.

6. JARGON-TRADING WITHOUT TRANSLATION: CLEAN — checked every world-term the speakers exchange: "wool soap" is set up in the Wednesday scene; "the blue dish… Bring it Tuesday" is explained in the same breath; strongest counter-candidate: "Ruth is bringing a ruler" — why it survives: the chapter translates it in advance via the group-chat beat (Sam: "crooked is dynamic"; Ruth: "it's crooked"), so a cold reader of this chapter can weigh the joke without outside knowledge.

7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY: FAIL — "'And dried flat.' / She smoothed the fold once against her forearm and settled it into the tote between two dishes. Then she looked at June for a second longer than the scarf required. 'Are you eating?'" (June then Mara, opening exchange, ~lines 65–67) — the paragraph-initial "She" directly follows June's spoken line, and in June-focalized close third the default antecedent is June; the reader assigns the smoothing, the tote, and the incoming question "Are you eating?" to the wrong woman until "looked at June" forces a reread. The reader momentarily loses track of who is acting and who is about to speak — failure mode 7. (Related: the scene's other untagged lines are fine; this is the one pronoun that garden-paths.)

FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN — ran every exchange against the cut-list. Strongest counter-candidate: "'October,' Mara said. 'It's almost December. I'm glad you came.'" — the echo-correction shape sits nearest the cut-list's portentous-answer pattern — why it survives: it is fully speakable, it *is* the scene's plain text rather than an aphorism (Mara refusing to let a thank-you become a goodbye), and it dissolves immediately into logistics and exit ("Luis is circling the block; I should go"). Second candidate: "Ruth is bringing a ruler and I need another painter at the table" — a comic beat in a grief-forward scene — survives because it is a single hosting line built from an established chapter fact, June does not volley back, and no banter loop forms; the calibration's no-banter requirement holds. No zingers arrive where June should be quiet — both of her cut-offs ("Mara —", "I don't think I—") stay cut.

INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — ran the followability test cold: June returns the washed scarf and Mara accepts it into the tote; Mara offers food, a Tuesday seat, and a dish that must come back, and asks nothing about why June might not come; June deflects the eating question, declines to commit to Tuesday, starts a thank-you-as-goodbye and is not allowed to finish it; June accepts the food and the obligation. Every refusal and offer is statable without decoding. Plain-speech floor (reading guide §2): June's "Thank you for October" and "I don't know about Tuesday"; Mara's "I'm glad you came" and "Are you eating?" — both principals land direct, unguarded sentences.

Chapter-specific calibration, verified for scene 05: zero dialogue-diagnosis/delivery-rating instances — closest call is "a second longer than the scarf required," which rates a look, not a line, and stays inside June's optical perception; Mara is neither oracle nor detective — she answers "I'm painting" with "Okay" and food, never probes the missed dinner or the missing Theo, and her not-asking is staged physically (the glance toward the Corolla's hazards); no "Luis says/means" translation tic — "Luis made too much" and "Luis is circling the block" are plain facts, consistent with her post-Ch13 arc state.

REVISION ORDERS:

1. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY — "'And dried flat.' / She smoothed the fold once against her forearm and settled it into the tote between two dishes." (June speaking, then Mara acting; opening exchange outside Sonia's). Replace the paragraph-initial pronoun with the name: "Mara smoothed the fold once against her forearm…" — nothing else. Do not add attribution tags to the surrounding clipped lines, do not add narration explaining the look or the pause; the fix is the actor's name at the head of the action paragraph so that "Are you eating?" arrives already assigned to Mara. The scene's quiet is correct and must be preserved; this is a one-word repair, and per both voice cards (June compressed, Mara hosting-through-objects) no rebalancing of the dialogue itself is licensed.

OVERALL: BLOCKING (1 finding)
