Chapter 191 More hours!

Chapter 191 More hours!
LAYLA

The sun was just beginning to rise when I heard footsteps approaching Ellie's room, brisk and unfamiliar, accompanied by Leon's voice, low and businesslike, walking someone through the hospital's layout.

I stood immediately, smoothing down my wrinkled blouse, my heart pounding as the door opened and Leon stepped in first, followed by a tall man in a crisp button-down, a leather bag slung over his shoulder, silver threading through his dark hair in a way that somehow made him look both distinguished and exhausted at once.

"Layla," Leon said, "this is Dr. Reyes."

"Ms. Bishop," Dr. Reyes said, extending a hand, his grip firm, his eyes kind but sharp, assessing everything about the room in the same practiced sweep I'd noticed in Mabel the night before. "I've reviewed Eleanor's full file on the flight down. I want you to know I don't take cases like this lightly, and I intend to give her everything I have."

"Thank you for coming so quickly," I said, my voice tight with a gratitude too large to fully articulate.

"Where's the donor?" he asked, already moving toward Ellie's bedside, checking the monitors with quick, efficient hands.

"Sebastian's in the room down the hall," Mabel said, appearing behind Leon in the doorway, her white coat fresh, though the exhaustion in her eyes hadn't faded overnight. "His clearance came back an hour ago. Full panel, cardiac and pulmonary both cleared. He's ready whenever you are."

Dr. Reyes nodded, straightening from his examination of Ellie. "Good. I'd like to see him first, then review the harvesting protocol with the surgical team. Given his recent trauma, we'll need to be conservative with the extraction volume, which means we may need a second round in a few weeks depending on how her counts respond."

"A second round?" I asked, my stomach tightening.

"It's a precaution, not a certainty," he said. "But I'd rather prepare you for that possibility now than surprise you with it later."

I nodded, filing the information away alongside everything else I'd learned to carry over these last agonizing weeks.

"I'd like to examine Eleanor myself before we finalize the surgical schedule," Dr. Reyes said, already pulling gloves from his bag. "Dr. Mabel, would you walk me through her latest labs?"

Mabel nodded, and the two of them fell into a rapid, technical conversation over Ellie's chart, terms I only half understood floating between them, absolute neutrophil counts, engraftment windows, conditioning regimens.

I stood back, my hand finding Diana's the moment she appeared quietly beside me, having clearly slipped in sometime during the examination.

"You look terrible," Diana whispered, though her voice was gentle, not unkind.

"Thanks," I said, a small, exhausted laugh escaping me despite everything.

"When did you last eat?" she asked.

I tried to think, and came up empty. "I don't remember."

"That's what I thought," she said, squeezing my hand. "The second they're done with this examination, you're eating something, even if I have to stand over you like a warden."

"Deal," I murmured, grateful beyond words for her steadiness, for the fact that she hadn't left my side through any of this, despite whatever unresolved tangle still sat between her and Leon.

Dr. Reyes finished his examination and straightened, pulling off his gloves with a snap. "Her vitals are holding steady, which is good news given the seizure activity yesterday. I'd like to move forward with the transplant within the next forty-eight hours, assuming the harvesting from Sebastian goes smoothly."

"Forty-eight hours," I repeated, something between relief and terror twisting through me at the nearness of it now, after so many days of waiting.

"I know it feels both impossibly soon and impossibly far away at the same time," Dr. Reyes said, something almost gentle in his clinical tone. "That's normal. Every parent I've worked with describes it exactly that way."

"Will she be okay?" I asked the question I'd been holding back for hours finally breaking loose. "I need you to be honest with me. Not reassuring. Honest."

Dr. Reyes considered the question seriously, not rushing to answer, which somehow made me trust him more than if he'd simply offered easy comfort.

"Eleanor has a strong donor match, which is one of the most significant factors in predicting a successful outcome. Her body has responded well to the chemotherapy so far, which is another good sign. There are always risks with any transplant, infection, rejection, complications during recovery, but based on everything I'm seeing in her chart and in this room right now, I have genuine reason for optimism. I wouldn't tell you that if I didn't mean it."

Something in his steady, measured honesty settled a fraction of the fear coiled tight in my chest, and I nodded, blinking back tears I refused to let fall in front of a room full of people relying on me to hold steady.

"I'd like to speak with Sebastian now," Dr. Reyes said, glancing at Leon. "Walk me through the harvesting timeline, make sure he understands what to expect."

"I'll take you," Leon said, and the two of them left together, Mabel trailing behind with Ellie's chart still tucked under her arm.

Diana turned to me the moment the door closed. "Come on. Cafeteria. Now."

"Diana…"

"No arguing," she said firmly, already tugging me gently toward the door. "You're no good to Ellie if you collapse from exhaustion in the next forty-eight hours. She needs you standing, Layla."

I let her lead me down the hallway, past Leon's security detail stationed at intervals, past the nurses' station where a shift change was quietly underway, and into the small, mostly empty cafeteria, its fluorescent lights harsh against my tired eyes.

Diana ordered for both of us, and I sat numbly at a corner table, my mind still tangled somewhere between hope and fear, between the countdown to Ellie's surgery and everything else still unresolved.

Mabel's revelation about our mothers, Peter's continued silence, Cece's manufactured tears in that hallway, the entire tangled web Leon and Sebastian had been quietly working to unravel this whole time.

"Eat," Diana said, sliding a tray in front of me.

I picked at the food mechanically, barely tasting it, my eyes drifting toward the window, toward the pale morning light spilling across the parking lot outside.

"She's going to make it," Diana said quietly, echoing Mabel's words from the night before, and I wondered if everyone around me had simply agreed to keep repeating that phrase until it became true through sheer force of repetition.

"I need her to," I said, my voice cracking despite my best effort to hold it together. "Diana, I don't know what I'll do if…"

"Don't," Diana said firmly, reaching across the table to grip my hand. "Don't finish that sentence. Not now. Not when we finally have a real plan, a real donor, a real surgeon who believes in her chances."

I nodded, forcing the unfinished thought back down where it couldn't do any more damage, and focused instead on the food in front of me, on Diana's steady presence, on the forty-eight hours now standing between my daughter and whatever came next.