Chapter 189: Twenty four hours!

LAYLA

The room felt like it had been holding its breath the same way I had, every one of us frozen in place as the nurses finished stabilizing Ellie, the monitors finally settling into their steady, even rhythm.

Sebastian hadn't moved from where he'd tried and failed to stand, his hands gripping the arms of his wheelchair so tightly his knuckles had gone white, his chest heaving with the effort of even that small attempt.

"I'm strong enough," he said again, quieter this time, though the tremor in his voice betrayed him completely.

"You're not," Mabel said, not unkindly, crouching slightly to meet his eyes.

"Sebastian, you were shot two weeks ago. You underwent major surgery of your own. Your body is still healing from trauma most people would still be hospitalized for. I understand why you want to be the one to save her, but wanting it doesn't make your body capable of it right now."

"Then what do we do?" I asked, my voice cracking, exhaustion and terror colliding somewhere deep in my chest.

"You said yourself we can't wait. You said she needs this immediately."

"She does," Mabel said, straightening, turning to address all of us now.

"I've already reached out to Dr. Reyes at Boston Children's. He's the best pediatric transplant surgeon on the East Coast, and he's agreed to fly down. He can be here within twenty-four hours."

"Twenty-four hours," I repeated numbly.

"After everything that just happened, after that seizure, you want us to wait another twenty-four hours?"

"I don't want that," Mabel said gently. "I mean that. But we have her sedated and stable, monitored around the clock, so her body has the best possible chance once Dr. Reyes arrives. Rushing this without proper oversight could kill her faster than the leukemia itself."

I pressed a shaking hand over my mouth, Diana's arm tightening around my shoulders as the weight of it all threatened to buckle my knees entirely.

"And Sebastian," Mabel continued, turning back to him, "the moment your own clearance is finalized, bloodwork, imaging, cardiac clearance, everything, we'll have you prepped and ready, the second Dr. Reyes needs the marrow extraction. You being the donor doesn't require you to perform the surgery yourself. It requires your body to survive the harvesting procedure, which is considerably less demanding than what you're currently imagining."

Something in Sebastian's shoulders eased slightly at that, though his jaw remained tight, his eyes fixed on Ellie's small, still form. "How long does that clearance take?"

"We'll expedite it," Mabel said. "Given the urgency, I can have your full panel back within twelve hours."

"Then do it," he said immediately. "Whatever needs to happen, start now."

Mabel nodded and turned to the nurse beside her. "Get me his full workup ordered, stat priority. I want cardiac, pulmonary, and infectious disease screening moving simultaneously, not sequentially." The nurse hurried out, already pulling up something on her tablet as she went.

I stood there, watching the room organize itself around a plan I still couldn't fully process, my mind snagging uselessly on the revelation from moments earlier, cousin, aunt, a lie decades old that had shaped my mother's entire life and, apparently, mine, refusing to sit quietly while my daughter's survival hung in the balance instead.

"Layla," Mabel said, turning to me now, her voice softening.

"I know everything I told you a few minutes ago is a lot to carry on top of everything else. I don't expect you to process it right now, or even to believe me fully. But I need you to trust that when it comes to Eleanor's care, family history aside, I have only ever wanted what's best for her."

I stared at her, still not entirely certain what to do with the tangled mess of anger and disbelief and something almost like grief sitting in my chest, grief for a mother I'd thought I'd known completely, who'd apparently carried a wound this deep in silence for her entire life.

"We'll talk about the rest of it," I said finally, my voice hoarse, "once she's safe. Not before."

"That's fair," Mabel said quietly.

Leon stepped closer then, his hand settling on my shoulder, grounding me slightly. "I'll have my team run a full background verification on Dr. Reyes before he sets foot in this building," he said.

"No offense to your judgment, Dr. Mabel, but after everything Peter's already tried, I'm not taking chances with anyone new walking through that door."

"None taken," Mabel said. "I'd expect nothing less."

"And I want additional security on this wing starting immediately," Leon continued, already pulling his phone back out. "Round the clock, nobody in or out without clearance."

I watched him move into motion, watched Diana step quietly toward Sebastian's wheelchair to check on him despite the tension still simmering between them from weeks earlier, watched the entire room reorganize itself around the singular goal of keeping my daughter alive for one more day, and one more day after that.

I crossed to Ellie's bedside, taking her small, sedated hand in mine, brushing my thumb gently across her knuckles.

"Twenty-four hours," I whispered to her, my voice breaking.

"Just hold on for twenty-four more hours, baby. That's all I'm asking. Your daddy's fighting for you, and so am I, and so is everyone in this room. You just have to hold on."

Sebastian wheeled himself slowly to the other side of the bed, reaching for her other hand, and for a long moment, neither of us said anything at all, just sat there together, connected only by the small, fragile weight of our daughter's hands between us.

"She's going to make it," he said quietly, though I couldn't tell if he was trying to convince me or himself.

"She has to," I said.

Behind us, Mabel's voice carried softly as she coordinated with the nursing staff.

Leon's voice layered over hers as he barked instructions into his phone, and Diana stood silently near the window, her arms wrapped around herself, watching all of it unfold with the same helpless, aching hope the rest of us were clinging to.

Twenty-four hours. I didn't know how I was going to survive them.

But I knew, watching my daughter's small chest rise and fall steadily beneath the tangle of wires, that I didn't have any other choice but to try.