Charlie vomited up another spray of blood, which dribbled down his chest and constricted his airways, choking him. Blood got all over the white sheet, and on Oberi’s feathers. She didn’t react, merely let out a wary coo. A doctor moved in, checking the heart monitor.
His heart rate was faint.
“He needs a blood transfusion! He’s already lost a quart or more!” I barked.
“We can’t run the transfusion without first attempting dialysis,” the doctor responded. “There’s a chance the dialysis machine can clean his blood and get rid of the poison. If we give him new blood now, his body could become overstressed with the introduction of the transfusion and the poison, and reject the donation, not to mention the new blood will become tainted with the poison once it’s introduced.”
“Well get it on, then!” I shouted. Why were we sitting around talking about it when we needed to take action? I placed my hands on Charlie’s arm, and my Spirit magic observed how his body responded as the doctors did their best to start dialysis. Ez and Mama leaned against the wall, waiting for me if I needed them.
I didn’t like how worried they looked.
The Elvish healers tried everything. They used every antidote they had on hand, from theserpens speluncaantivenom to all kinds of spells and potions. Other Anichi healers arrived to help, but like Ez and Mama, their magic was useless against the combination poison in Charlie’s blood.
Not even dialysis was working. The machine filtered out the toxins in his blood, but the poison kept reproducing itself, so it did nothing to get rid of it.
Charlie was having trouble breathing. His rasping gasps for air made me feel like I was choking. They’d given him a medication that managed to stop the vomiting, at least, so he wouldn’t drown in his own blood if we put him on a ventilator.
Do you want to leave the room?Oberi asked warily as they started prepping the breathing tube for insertion.
“Fuck no.” I wasn’t leaving him alone even if the world started ending. I held his hand and watched, refusing to shut my eyes or look away as they inserted the breathing tube and fitted a mask over his face, because I’d be damned before I allowed him to go through this alone. There was a lump in my throat thatreminded me of how painful the bruise from my own breathing tube had been when I’d survived the Infernal Underground, but I pushed that memory aside, because it was useless to me now. No trauma, memory, or pain was worth anything if it didn’t help me save Charlie now.
Once he was stabilized, the doctors switched to experimental antidotes that had never been tried before, and could be dangerous. It was a sign of how desperate they were.
It didn’t help. Nothing did a damn thing to stop the poison from advancing. The Warden had created this new formula just for us, and there wasn’t a cure for it. The doctors had given Charlie so many medications and treatments I was worried it was making him worse.
Surgery was discussed, but it was discarded as an option almost immediately. They couldn’t perform surgery to remove the growths— in the time we’d been working, the poison had wrapped itself so tightly around his organs that if they tried to cut the tumors out, the surgeons would kill him in the process.
Oberi was doing her best, and my Spirit magic could tell that her abilities were slowing the growth of the tumors. But although she could slow the poison’s hold, she couldn’t prevent it completely. We’d have lost Charlie already if she wasn’t doing her best to hold it off.
Charlie was clearly fading. His skin had turned ashen, and his lips had gone gray. His body sagged into the mattress with all the appearance of a corpse long since dead.
The doctors and nurses stood in a circle, unmoving. They weren’t sure of what else to try. Mama held Ez, who was trying to wipe his face and not let me see.
I took a deep breath, held it, then exhaled.
“Leave me,” I demanded coldly. “All of you. There’s nothing more you can do.”
Saying nothing, the crowd dispersed, leaving me alone with my Familiar and my husband. My shoulders shuddered as I barely contained my rage.
Useless. They were all useless. If Charlie was going to make it through this, it had to be up to me. Everybody else needed to leave me alone so I could figure out a solution.
I surveyed his condition again. My expression dropped the moment I laid my hand on his chest and used my Anichi magic to assess the situation. At this rate, Charlie would be dead within the hour. And there was jack shit I could do to prevent it.
But that was shitty thinking. I didn’t give up, because I was stubborn, and Charlie was, too. We’d pull through this, like we always did. I just had to come up with a way?—
The door banged open. My teeth gritted together as I heard Cameron’s voice cry out, “Let me in!”
Cameron entered, and his approaching footsteps made it clear he wasn’t going to take no for an answer unless I shoved it down his throat.
I wrenched my wheelchair so I could turn myself around. “Get out of here, Cameron. I don’t want you here, and neither does Charlie.”
Cameron’s face turned red with rage, but his anger was pathetic compared to my own. I’d like to see him try to get his way.
“Howdareyou attempt to keep me from seeing him. I have the right to say goodbye to my son!” Cameron bellowed.
What a coward he was. Charlie wasn’t gone yet, and I’d be cold in my own grave before I allowed him to slip away. Where was Cameron’s spine? Charlie needed his dad tofightfor him, like I was. He needed his dad to not give in.
It was clear the only person in this room who would go to war for the incredible man lying in this bed was me, and I couldn’t bedistracted by some simpering Elf who pretended to have some kind of claim on the son he’d created and forgotten.
