Chapter 85
Chapter 79: The Hospital Trail
Logan’s POV
Regardless of what I said to him, the receptionist was not budging on this matter.
“I understand, sir. But our policy applies regardless of relationship about the individual in question If you’d like to speak to patient services, they may be able to assist you in p>
“Is there someone else I could speak to? A supervisor p>
The supervisor told me the same thing in slightly more words, and more apologies, bowing his
head. I decided not to pursue this matter any further before they would deem me a nuisance and
decide to call the cops.
I thanked them and left.
I repeated this same things through different hospitals, trying to buy time while waiting for
Cameron’s feedback.
I went to the Swedish Medical Center. Also the Virginia Mason Hospital.
I moved through them methodically, one after another, the same conversation kept playing out in
minor variations across different lobbies.
Patient privacy. We can’t confirm or deny. You’re welcome to speak to patient services. If she’s a patient here, she would need to request contact with you directly.
I understood the regulations. I’d have been grateful for them if the situation were reversed, if I were the person being searched for and not wanting to be found. The regulations existed for this kind of situation the people missing didn’t want to be found.
By the end of the first day, I’d visited six hospitals. I’d spoken to twelve different clerks, four supervisors, and one patient services coordinator who had listened to me me genuinely and then told me, gently, that there was nothing she could do.
I went back to the hotel.
It was a cheap one-not the kind I normally stayed in, but I hadn’t been thinking about luxury when I had booked it at two in the morning. It seemed to fit the mood of the situation. A somber place with no more luxurious essentials that would make someone like me fit right in.
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The Hospital Trail
I called Nick, who was doing better, who had eaten a full dinner and then asked me straight forward if I had found her yet, I told him I was still looking. He told me to keep looking.
Claim
He had, apparently, written a card-the kind he made at school with colored paper and markers- which he wanted to send to Mom when I found her.
He described it in some detail, telling me what he had drawn on them as I sat down on the edge of the bed, listening to his description and managed to keep my voice steady.
After I hung up, I sat in the silence for a while and waited in the dark.
Cameron still hadn’t called.
Day two began earlier, before the hospitals were fully operational for the day, I wasn’t able to sleep past 4am, because I was restless still and I decided to head back to the hospital because it seemed better than staying here all alone with my thoughts.
I was aware, on some level, that what I was doing was soon getting irritating.
I knew where Sedona was. I had the name of the hospital and confirmation she was there.
What I was doing in these other lobbies was just waiting because I couldn’t go and meet her without permission from Cameron and he seemed to be taking his sweet time before granting me
this permission.
Reeve had advised patience. Cameron had said don’t show up unannounced. Every reasonable instinct I had told me to wait and be called upon instead of forcing yourself on them and expecting
them to deal with it.
I had never been good at waiting when something important was in motion. I’d built a company by refusing to wait, by treating delay as a problem to be solved rather than a condition to be
accepted. It was useful in business and it was, I was understanding more clearly with every hour that passed, exactly the wrong instinct to bring to this.
Still. The alternative was the hotel room.
I kept going.
Sedona’s POV
The third round of treatment began on a Wednesday.
I knew the protocol by then in the way you learned anything that you had been doing more than once to understand the mechanism behind it. I knew the exact moment the burning would begin and approximately how long it would take to peak and approximately how long after that before it
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would start to become manageable again. was never a steady number. My body kept finding different ways to keep me on my toes by varying it. My mother sat beside me for the infusion, which she’d done for every session, her hand around mine, talking, to ease the silence and pain of being stuck alone doing this. Claim My father came in the afternoon, after the worst of it had passed, and read to me. We were working through a novel I’d loved at seventeen and abandoned and never returned to, and he’d found a copy somewhere-I hadn’t asked where-and had simply appeared one day and started rereading if from chapter one and it became something of a routine, that I enjoyed looking forward My doctors had checked up on me recently with my chart in his hands as he spoke. “The tumor markers are continuing to decline, The response to the trial protocol is holding. I want to see one more cycle before I’m willing to use the word *remission* in any official capacity, but Sedona-” He’d paused, in the way he paused when he was about to say something he’d been holding back for the right moment. “I will be frank with you, this was not the result that I expected to be looking at this timeline p> “What does that mean?” I’d asked. “It means your body is responding more favourably to the treatment than what we estimated by trial average. It means the experimental component is doing what we hoped it would do, more effectively than I allowed myself to hope p> 3 Comments SAT LUCK DRAW > Vote 165 Admins2