Chapter 5 - The Longest Night
By 2:00 AM, my mansion’s medical suite was lit like an operating theater.
Dr. Yates, wearing full sterile scrubs, worked alongside Clara to carefully thaw and prepare the golden precursor fluid. Outside the glass, I stood watching my children.
Jonah and Blythe were paler than they had been that morning. Jonah’s breathing was shallow, his small chest rising and falling in erratic, weak hitches. Blythe’s heart monitor emitted a slow, sickening beep that grew further apart with every passing hour.
"Lawson," Yates said, stepping out of the prep room with two pre-filled IV bags containing the synthesized serum. "The infusion takes four hours. Because their immune systems are completely depleted, the initial cellular reaction will cause a massive spike in fever. Their bodies are going to fight this foreign gene sequence before it accepts it."
"Is it dangerous?" I asked, my voice cracking.
"It’s a war inside their bones, Lawson," Clara said softly, putting on a pair of sterile gloves. "They have to survive the fever to survive the cancer."
I washed my hands, put on a gown and mask, and stepped into the room.
I sat between their beds, taking Jonah’s right hand and Blythe’s left hand. The IV lines were connected. The golden liquid began to slowly drip through the clear plastic tubes into their tiny veins.
Within forty-five minutes, the fever struck.
Jonah began to thrash weakly against his sheets, his skin burning to the touch. "Dad... it hurts... it feels like fire..."
"I know, buddy," I whispered, holding his shoulders down gently while a nurse applied ice packs to his armpits and neck. "Stay with me, Jonah. Fight it. Your mom made this for you. Fight it for her."
Beside him, Blythe began to seize softly, her small eyes rolling back.
"Dr. Yates!" I roared.
Yates rushed forward, administering an anti-convulsant directly into her secondary line. "Her temperature is 104.2! Lawson, we need to lower her core temp right now or her brain will suffer damage!"
For six agonizing hours, I remained in that room. I didn't drink. I didn't sit. I helped nurses pack my children’s bodies in ice, holding their small, burning hands while they screamed and cried in their fever-induced delirium.
Clara stood at the central monitor, her eyes fixed on the microscopic blood counts updating every fifteen minutes on the screen.
At 7:45 AM, as the first rays of morning sunlight broke through the heavy velvet curtains, the thashing stopped.
Jonah’s body went completely limp. Blythe’s heart rate plummeted to thirty beats per minute.
The alarm on the cardiac monitor let out a continuous, flatline tone.
"No!" I screamed, lunging across Blythe’s bed. "No! Blythe! Look at me!"
Yates reached for the crash cart paddles. "Charging to fifty! Clear!"
"Wait!" Clara yelled, running into the room and grabbing Yates’s arm. "Look at the cellular readout! Look at the marrow panel!"
Yates looked at the monitor.
The red line representing the mutated leukemic cells hadn't just dropped—it had plummeted to zero. Beneath it, a explosion of green markers indicated healthy, rapidly dividing white blood cells flooding the bloodstream.
Blythe’s chest let out a deep, gasp of air.
Her heart monitor skipped, stuttered, and then locked into a steady, strong, rhythmic seventy beats per minute. Beside her, Jonah’s fever broke instantly, his skin cooling to a normal, healthy pink.
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Yates lowered the paddles, his jaw dropping in absolute disbelief. "It worked... My God, it actually worked. The cancer is gone."
I collapsed onto my knees between their beds, burying my face in the blankets, weeping uncontrollably for the first time in my adult life.
