Chapter 599
Chapter 599:
Isolde was sitting beside the bed when she heard Effie whimper. She pressed her hand to the child’s forehead. It was radiating heat like a furnace. She grabbed the thermometer. The digital readout flashed a terrifying red: 103.6°F.
Effie tossed and turned against the sheets, her small face flushed and slick with sweat. “Cold,” she mumbled in her delirium, her eyes rolling beneath closed lids. “Daddy… please do not go p>
The words twisted in Isolde’s gut like a blade.
She did not hesitate. She bundled Effie in a heavy down comforter, forced her bleeding feet into a pair of soft slippers—ignoring the sharp, tearing pain—and ran out the door.
𝖲𝘵𝗼rі𝗲ѕ you 𝘸𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝗉𝘂𝘵 𝘥оw𝘯 о𝗇 𝗴alոо𝘷еl𝘴.со𝗺
At Mount Sinai Hospital, the emergency room doctors moved quickly. The diagnosis was swift and brutal: acute viral pneumonia, exacerbated by severe exposure to the cold. They admitted Effie immediately, hooking her small arm to an IV drip of antibiotics and fluids.
Isolde sat in the hard plastic chair beside the hospital bed and held Effie’s burning hand in hers. She did not sleep. She did not look away. She simply watched the steady rise and fall of her daughter’s chest, her own heart a block of solid ice.
The sun rose the following morning over a city that was tearing Grayson Lancaster apart.
He sat behind his desk at SkyLine, unshaven and sleepless, staring at his computer monitor. The Twitter photograph of Isolde barefoot in the subway was everywhere. The headline of the New York Post read: BILLIONAIRE ABANDONS GENIUS EX-WIFE AND SICK CHILD IN HURRICANE. The comments were a bloodbath. He was being crucified in the court of public opinion.
But the PR disaster meant nothing to him.
All he could see was Isolde’s hand, pointing down at Effie in the rain. It had not been an accusation. It had been a plea. She had been begging him to save their daughter—and he had driven away because his mother had staged a fainting spell.
A sharp, physical ache radiated from the center of his chest, making it difficult to draw breath. He slammed his fists onto the desk, sending his coffee cup crashing to the floor, and bolted from his office without a word to Silas. He drove through morning traffic like a man possessed, breaking every speed limit until he reached Mount Sinai.
He found the pediatric ward.
He turned the corner and froze.
Isolde was standing outside Room 312, leaning against the wall. Her face was deathly pale, her hair disheveled, her clothes still wrinkled from the night before. She looked utterly and completely spent.
Grayson rushed forward, his heart hammering in his throat. “Isolde,” he gasped, reaching toward her. “How is Effie? Is she all right p>
Isolde turned her head slowly and looked at him. There was no anger in her eyes. There was no hatred. There was absolutely nothing—the blank, indifferent look one gives a stranger on the street.
“Pneumonia,” she said. Her voice was a dry, hollow rasp. “Her fever will not break p>