Red Leaves and the Living Token - Book 1 - Part 1

by Benjamin David Burrell

Moslin hurried down the cold, white plaster hallway. "Raj wait,” she called.

  He stopped at the other end of the hallway and turned to her.

  "You don't have to leave. As Emret's father, you have the right to restrict his visitors for any reason.”

  He laughed. "Thanks, but... Any pain saved now would be paid back in measure later. Besides they're good for Emret. He needs their enthusiasm."

  "She's wrong you know,” she said quietly.

  "She's wrong a lot, but I've never had the privilege of telling her." He smiled. "Now I'm jealous."

  "Oh, you heard that?" She looked away, embarrassed.

  "Thing is, though," he paused, unsure of how to explain. His mother-in-law had a knack for finding his weak points and drilling them. "What if...?"

  "Uh, Oh. Don't go down that road. Trust me.”

  "Am I doing everything I possibly can? I don't know. What if there's something else I haven't tried. Maybe I'm not pushing the doctors hard enough. Maybe this isn't the best hospital for what he needs. Maybe there's a doctor with more experience with his symptoms,” he said.

  “Then you push, and you try, and you ask, and you do everything you can. That's your job. You make sure they do their job to best of their abilities.”

  He looked at her for a moment then nodded his head.

  "I know you'd never give up on him. No matter what people said or how hard it got. You're a good father, don't ever doubt that."

  He stared at her. "Thank you. Sounds like you're speaking from experience."

  "I've been through this in one form or another. One of the worst parts of my job." She looked up at him. "Can I share something with you?"

  He nodded his head.

  "Come with me to the next service." She handed him a card with the date and time of a church meeting, a Botan church meeting. He frowned, not sure how to respond.

  "I know you're not of the same... you know... its just, it offers a lot of comfort. You've got a lot of difficult questions ahead of you. The kind that people don't have answers to."

  He looked at the card again. "Thanks but I don't..."

  "Think about it. Just an invitation, that's all."

  "Mr. Handers!"

  Two Zo doctors had come up the hallway behind them. One of the doctors motioned for Raj's attention.

  "Mr. Handers, I've been looking for you. Can we speak in my office for a moment?" He gestured for Raj to follow.

  "Sure, Dr. Eghart." He followed him around the corner to his office. The doctor let him in and shut the door behind.

  "Please, have a seat." He pointed to a chair.

  Raj sat down while Dr. Eghart put some charts up on a white board. Each chart had his son's name written on a label in the corner. He had no idea what they were for. One was some sort of graph. Another was a strange series of lines.

  "First of all, thank you for your patience this last month with so many tests. I know it's extremely difficult not knowing.” He paused. “We believe we've discovered the underlying cause of your son's condition."

  "Great. That's good news."

  "Well it is, and it isn't." He put his hands together. “Um… We believe your son's binding... Well, we believe he's becoming unbound."

  "What?"

  "I know its difficult to understand, you..."

  "That's not possible. He's never missed a single day of Manea."

  "Unfortunately, we don't understand what’s causing his bond to deteriorate. Because of that we haven't been able to stop its progression."

  "What do you mean?"

  "We don’t have a solution yet, but we’re hopeful, with time, that will change."

  “How much time do you need? How much time does Emret have?”

  “That, of course, is our greatest concern right now, and, unfortunately, we don’t have the answer.”

  Raj sat back in his chair. His head was spinning. This isn't what they told him when he first came. They said it was a minor issue, a chemical imbalance of some sort. A month of testing later and his condition deteriorates to this? Something, somewhere must've gotten mixed up. Could someone have switched the charts?

  “I don't understand what’s happened? You said..."

  “I know this is not what you were expecting to hear,” the doctor said calmly.

  Raj leaned forward rubbing his head.

  "I'm sorry Mr. Handers. This is an extremely rare condition. Because of that we’ve had little opportunity to understand it. There are only a few prescribed treatments, and none of them have been able to stabilize his bond."

  He took a deep breath, trying to clear his head. He tried to see the situation clearly through the fog of emotion. If the doctor was right, he had to figure out what to do next. He had to fix this. "What happens when his binding fails completely?" he asked.

  "His body will begin to revert. He'll lose his higher functions. You have to be aware; it’s not a condition he's likely to survive."

  "So what do we do now? What the next step?"

  "I'm sorry Mr. Handers. We’re already doing everything we can."

  “Why can’t we just feed him more Manea? Or cut out all his other food and give him only Manea!”

  “Unfortunately, like many diseases, once the damage has been done it cannot be undone through a change in diet. Additionally, we don’t believe Manea deprivation caused his condition. As you said early, he hasn’t gone a day without eating it.”

  Raj shook his head.

  "So that's it? You're saying he's going to die because you can't think of anything else to try right now? But maybe you’ll think of something later?" The anger swelled into his face, pushing out through heavy, labored, breaths. He struggled to rein it in, to keep himself from completely breaking down.

  "We can't simply throw random treatments at him and hope that something will work. The wrong treatment could kill him.”

  "But if you take your time debating about what might and might not work, he’ll die anyway. I think it’s time to take some risks here."

  "Mr. Handers..."

  "I refuse to accept that there isn’t a better way to do this." Raj stood.

  “Mr. Handers, please. You have to understand. Any loving parent would exhaust all effort looking for something to heal their child. I understand that. You'd go to the ends of the earth if needs be." The doctor got up.

  "What I want you to understand is that’s not necessarily what he needs right now. That's not what you need right now. A natural part of the grieving process is coming to terms with an outcome beyond your control. The unending quest for new and exotic methods is contrary to that grieving process.

  "It's a desperate attempt to control something that has proven itself to be uncontrollable. Believe it or not, the powers of modern medicine are, in fact, finite. We can't cure everything."

  “But…”

  "Endless searching will only prolong the pain and rob you of the time that you do have left to say good-bye. Let us worry about finding the solution. You worry about the time you spend with your son. If your son's last day comes soon, that will not be something you can control. What you can control is how you prepare yourself and your son for it.”

  Raj grabbed his coat and slammed the door as he left.