Opens the file.
And I watch the last traces of the smiling, strategic, small-town ally dissolve into the face of a physician who has results she doesn’t want to deliver.
“When you were brought in last night, we ran a full panel,” she begins, her voice recalibrated to the precise, unhurried cadence of someone who is choosing each word for accuracy because inaccuracy in this context is not a professional failure but a moral one. “Bloodwork. Cardiac enzymes. Hepatic function. Neurological markers. Hormonal profiling. And a comprehensive toxicology screen, both for the aerosolized compound from the blast and for your existing medication regime.”
She pauses.
“The results from the blast toxin are manageable. Your exposure was acute but limited—Commander Kade’s positioning during the detonation shielded you from the worst of the dispersal cloud. We’ve administered a chelation protocol. You’ll process the compound fully within seventy-two hours. No lasting damage from that front.”
Thefrom that frontlands like a conditional.
A preamble.
The kind of qualifying phrase that exists only because the next sentence contains something the qualifier is trying to cushion.
“The suppressants, however.”
She looks at me.
And the eyes that had been warm, strategic, amused—the eyes that had been building plans and sharing intelligence and smiling with the confident energy of an ally—are steady now. Level. Carrying the specific, unflinching directness of a woman who believes that patients deserve the truth in its complete, unedited form because anything less is a disservice to the body that has to live with the consequences.
“The combination of suppressants you’ve been taking has caused significant, cumulative damage to multiple organ systems. Your cardiac function is compromised—the left ventricle is showing early-stage cardiomyopathy consistent with long-term exposure to the primary compound. Your hepatic enzymes are elevated beyond any range I’d consider recoverable through medication adjustment alone. And the neurological markers…”
She closes the file.
Not because she’s finished reading. Because the next part doesn’t need paper.
“The nosebleeds and the syncope aren’t side effects, Hazel. They’re symptoms. Of a body that is systematically failing underthe weight of a chemical regime that should never have been prescribed at this dosage for this duration.”
The room is very quiet.
The monitoring equipment chirps. The lavender scent drifts. The October morning holds its light against the window as if nothing in the world has changed.
And Dr. Sylvie Winters, with the steady, unblinking composure of a woman who has delivered devastating news before and understands that the delivery is a form of care, says:
“You have six months to live.”
CHAPTER 17
The Countdown
~HAZEL~
Six months.
The words sit in the air between us—between me and Dr. Winters, between me and the monitoring equipment, between me and the October morning light that is still filtering through the window as if nothing has changed when everything has changed.
Six months.
To live.
I stare at her.
The expression on my face must be something remarkable, because Dr. Winters doesn’t move. Doesn’t rush to fill the silence with caveats or treatment plans or the kind of reassuring medical commentary that physicians deploy when the news is bad but manageable. She just holds the space, her dark eyes steady on mine, the file closed in her hands, the lavender-scented room doing nothing to soften the six words that have just restructured the remaining architecture of my existence.
Six months.
One hundred and eighty days. Give or take. The approximate span of time between this October morning and some future date in spring when my body will stop performing the functions it was designed to perform because I pumped it full of chemicals that were supposed to keep me free and instead built a countdown clock in my organs.
