A Woman Worth Billions Dated the Wrong Brother novel Chapter 413

Blood and family

Jason POV

The moment Emory said botulinum toxin, the neonatal unit stopped existing for me. I looked at Alex, who had clearly heard the words but, judging by his expression, didn’t understand what they meant. I was grateful for that. He had already carried enough fear for one day.

“Take him back to the family,” I told the nurse. “I need to go with Emory.”

“I can go with you,” Alex said immediately.

“No.” I reached for his hand. “You did something important already. You met your brothers, and now I need you to go tell your sisters they’re okay.”

His eyes moved toward Emory. “Is Mom worse?”

I hated how quickly he noticed everything, but I wasn’t going to frighten him with information even I didn’t fully understand yet. “No. Emory found out what made her sick. That’s good because now the doctors know what they’re fighting.”

Alex studied me for another second before nodding. “I’ll tell Alice the babies are okay.”

“And tell her they’re ugly.”

Alex looked genuinely horrified. “They’re not ugly.”

“They’re newborns. They’re a little ugly.”

“They’re not.”

There it was. Annoyance. Normal, six-year-old annoyance instead of the frightened silence he’d carried since arriving at the hospital. I squeezed his hand and told him to go, watching until the nurse took him back toward the waiting area before another member of staff pushed my wheelchair after Emory.

By the time we reached critical care, Emory was already speaking with Amber’s doctors. There were more people around than before, including a toxicologist, members of the intensive-care team and one of the physicians who had treated Amber during the emergency delivery.

“Botulinum toxin,” Emory repeated. “The sample is positive. I ran it twice, then had the hospital laboratory repeat the assay independently.”

The critical-care physician looked toward the toxicologist beside him. “That explains the respiratory weakness.”

“And possibly why the fetal distress was more severe than the sedative alone could explain,” Emory added. “The sedative complicated the presentation. Everyone was looking at central nervous system depression first.”

I hated listening to them discuss Amber as a collection of symptoms, concentrations and neurological effects, but I forced myself to stay quiet long enough to understand. For once, I needed every medical word they were saying because somewhere beyond the glass my wife was unconscious and a machine was breathing for her.

“What do we do?” I asked.

Several heads turned toward me, but Emory was the one who came closer. “We have a plan.”

“Then tell me.”

“The toxin interferes with the nerves that activate voluntary muscles. That’s why Amber isn’t breathing

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adequately on her own. The ventilator is doing the work her respiratory muscles currently can’t.”

Nooked through the glass toward the room where Amber had been transferred. From where I sat, I could see part of her bed, the edge of the ventilator and far too many tubes and machines surrounding her.

“Can you reverse it?”

The toxicologist answered carefully. “We can administer antitoxin to neutralize toxin that hasn’t yet bound to nerve endings. What the antitoxin can’t do is instantly reverse paralysis that’s already developed. Those nerves have to recover, and that takes time.”

“How much time?”

“It varies.”

I looked at Emory because he knew exactly how much I hated answers like that.

“Jason, this isn’t going to be like giving her something and watching her wake up five minutes later,” he said. ” But now we know what we’re dealing with. That changes everything.”

“But she can recover?”

“Yes.”

“Fully?”

“That is absolutely possible. Right now, the most important thing is preventing further progression and supporting her body while her nerve function recovers.”

I looked through the glass again. “So the ventilator stays.”

“For as long as she needs it,” the critical-care doctor answered. “We won’t attempt to remove ventilatory support until we’re confident she can protect her airway and maintain adequate breathing on her own.”