Chapter 29
Dorian rushed through the hospital entrance, upset for the delay caused by traffic jams along the tangenziale of Milan, Italy. Traffic was still the same despite the intelligence of the self-driving cars. The security system recognized his biometric data and sent him the directions to the intensive care ward through his electronic contact lenses.
He ran through the corridors and eventually stopped in front of the ward’s door. His father was sitting next to the entrance, waiting for him, and staring into the room.
Dorian sat next to him, took a deep breath and eventually asked, softly.
“How bad is she?”
“Bad.” Louis repeated bleakly. Dorian noticed that his father was wearing his data helmet, so he activated his own and connected to it. The medical data files of Dora appeared in his thought, after a few tries he decided to stay with the default 3D view of the immune system activity.
Dorian skimmed through the data for several minutes, then he asked Louis.
“Why didn’t you try the new beta-hexalamine antigenes? They have been proven effective to fight many variants of the pandemic.”
“You still have some homework to do before you can earn your Ph.D. in Pharmacology, Dorian,” Louis replied softly and slightly annoyed, “They would interfere with the synthetic blood she is taking to stabilize the circulation. Hexalamine would start an antigenic reaction that would fry her in her own blood.”
“You mean that…she has to fight the fever alone?” Dorian commented in disbelief.
“Yes, just like the average person on the planet. She caught a very severe form. You and I have been very lucky to get a mild one. But Helena and Tarek also suffered badly.”
Dorian looked at his watch and said, to no one in particular,
“Let me go drop my stuff off at the hotel. I’ll be right back.” He started moving towards the exit.
“I hope you followed my advice and booked at the ‘Adler’ on the East side of Greater Milan, in the German sector.”
“Yes, I did. It’s amazing how Milan has changed in the last twenty years. It used to be a medium-sized European city and now it turned into a megalopolis of more than twenty million people.”
“Just like Marseille, Rome and Barcelona,” Louis commented to himself, “climate, war and environmental disasters pushed Africans and Northern Europeans alike to the shores of the Mediterranean, and..”
The intensive ward door opened and a doctor dressed like an astronaut stepped into the waiting room. Louis stopped talking and Dorian turned back. Louis did not wait for the doctor to remove his white coat and addressed him immediately.
“How is she doing, Lorenzo?”
“Not very well at all, but she is conscious and should be able to make it past the night. We keep her hydrated and target infections with specific antibiotics. She had a pneumonia outbreak in the right lung yesterday, but we have been able to block it.”
Lorenzo ended the sentence by looking at Dorian, whom he had never seen.
“You must be Dorian,” the doctor said, removing the right glove and extending his arm the shake his hand. “Your mother asked to see you. Tomorrow we will see if we can bring her temperature back under control. If we manage you might be able visit her. That would help her for sure.”
“What are the chances of survival, Doctor?” Dorian snapped back bluntly.
“Slightly above fifty percent,” Lorenzo replied immediately, “She just cannot afford another major infection. She must avoid it in the next couple of days. I have seen several cases like hers, among them my parents, whom I lost in the last two years to the various pandemic waves. The aging population of Europe has just been ravaged, you know.”
A small green icon blinked on the doctor’s smartwatch, Lorenzo looked at it and moved toward the window, as he picked the call up excusing himself from Louis and Dorian.
“Hi Emanuele, is it urgent? I am with two people right now…very important ones..”
Louis and Dorian did not hear the rest of the conversation, that lasted a few seconds.
Lorenzo turned immediately back to Dorian and Louis,
“I beg your pardon, it was my younger brother Emanuele,” he said apologetically, “He is in Cairo, Egypt. He works there for BayerHoechst Chemicals.”
“He is there to help contain the mice swarm crisis, isn’t he?” Dorian was quick to connect the dots, “I also travel there frequently to supervise the construction of the Red Sea solar cities, it would be a pity to leave them to be overtaken by the pests. I hope he is not in danger. When the swarms move they are nearly unstoppable.”
“He just called me to see if I knew that the US has a new President,” Lorenzo answered.
Dorian tuned his lenses to the newsfeed. Just five months into his third mandate, Ken LaHood had died, seemingly from a stroke. The Vice President, Skip Ross, had already been sworn into office and he would be addressing Congress shortly.
“Shit,” Dorian muttered as he switched the channel off. “they will continue building the third, useless orbital elevator instead of diverting effort for the space refinery, and we are running out of time..”
Dorian looked at Louis, and he realized that his father was staring at the ward room door, unaffected by the news.
“So in the next few days you will tell us if Dora can make it, right, doctor? I think I will spend the night here in the guest room, if that’s ok with you, Lorenzo.”
“Of course, Mr. Picard,” the doctor confirmed, and then sent an enquiring look at Dorian, who promptly said,
“Thanks, I was about to go to my hotel. I have quite a lot of work to do and I do not want to bother your personnel or the other patients. I will be back tomorrow morning.”
It didn’t go as planned. Dorian was woken up at 3 AM by his father. He had to rush back to the hospital, new infections had developed and no one really knew how much time was left for Dora.
Dorian hung up and rushed down to the hotel lobby, asking for the quickest way to get back to the Niguarda Hospital. The concierge looked at him slightly puzzled. The fastest way required crossing the Northeastern side of Milan, where there were neighborhoods of Nigerians and Ukrainians. Was Dorian willing to pay for armed escort drivers?
Dorian handed over his platinum card from the United Swiss and Russian Bank, and commented sarcastically,
“You can tell the escort agency I can pay in the new energy-linked Euroruble currency, if it gets things done faster.”
Half an hour later, he was entering the intensive care ward, for the second time in less than twelve hours. He looked at his father face, and realized that now there was no need for a medical data review. Louis was already wearing the sterile suit and pointed to the one laying on the waiting room’s table, for Dorian to wear.
When they reached Dora’s bed, Lorenzo, who was monitoring the vital parameters on the machines humming next to her, stood up, patted Louis on his shoulders and moved out of the way.
Dora immediately recognized Dorian, and tried to open her eyes, that had been just tiny slits for the last few days. She only partially managed to do it, but she did manage to smile at her son. Louis took off the sterile suit helmet and took her right hand into his. Dorian inched to her left side, waiting for Dora to grab his right arm with the little strength she had left.
“Come on Dora, you have to resist,” Louis implored her, “Lorenzo has just injected the drug. Your liver should be back under control in a few hours, then the fever should go down and..”
Dora looked at him with a faint smile, then looked at Dorian and back at Louis.
“You know it’s not true, Louis,” she whispered back, “and I know it’s not true.”
She paused, then continued.
“Do you remember what I told you a long time ago? No lies. It’s time for me to go, but I want you to know two things before I am gone.”
Dorian started to look at the instruments, desperately looking for a sign that her mother was wrong.
“The
first one is that I am grateful for the life you gave me, Louis. Don’t let regret overcome you when I am gone. And the second one…”
Louis drew closer, as Dora’s voice faded. Dorian couldn’t help but let tears fall. He stepped aside to let Louis spend the last minutes with her alone, and Louis gripped her left hand tight, to let her know he was there.
Dora body contracted one last time and then passed away. Louis quietly cried, with his face on her hands and stayed in that position for what seemed like ten minutes before standing up.
Three hours later, Louis and Dorian were busy returning calls and organizing the funeral. Being public celebrities, Louis and Dorian also had newsbriefs to set up, which just added to the confusion. Dorian was right in the middle of a call with his media agent when he muted the phone and asked his father,
“Dad, what was the second thing mom wanted you to know? Did you get it?”
Louis looked at Dorian, then his eyes slowly went down to the floor, and told him plainly,
“She told me she was actually curious to die.”
Dorian looked at him, stunned.
“Yes, that’s what she said,” Louis confirmed softly. “For some reason, it helps me bear the grief. But it’s time to move on, we have not yet decided where to bury her.”