Unmatched Wife: Not His To Claim Anymore novel Chapter 221

Chapter 221

JAMES

Petra called at eleven forty.

I was in the middle of something else by then, a case file I had been neglecting, and I set it aside and picked up the phone and listened.

She read me the results in her efficient way, the values in the correct order, the reference ranges beside each one. I listened all the way through without stopping her.

Then I asked her to read me the key markers again.

She did.

I sat with the results for a moment.

“Petra,” I said. “The sample. You’re certain of the processing.”

“I ran it twice,” she said, which told me she had seen what I was seeing and had done exactly what I would have done. “Same result both times.”

“And the sample integrity. No contamination.”

“Clean tube, clean collection, proper temperature maintenance throughout.” A pause. “It’s a good sample, Dr. Wright. The results are the results.”

I thanked her and ended the call.

I looked at the wall of my office for a moment.

Then I picked up the phone again and called Rivera.

He answered on the second ring. The background was quiet, which meant he was somewhere private, which meant he had been waiting for this call.

“Wright,” he said.

“The results are back,” I said.

A short pause. “Tell me.”

I looked at my notes. “Across every standard marker, Louis is a healthy child. Red cell count, white cell count, inflammatory markers, metabolic panel all within normal range. Several of them are quite good, actually. Better than the average for a child his age with his history.”

Silence on the other end.

“Rivera,” I said.

“That

able,” he said. His voice was controlled but I could hear the effort of that. “James, he’s sick. I can see it. He’s

he’s exhausted in a way that’s beyond his baseline, he told the doctor this morning that he feels like from the inside. That is not the description of a healthy child.”

“Because whatever is making Louis unwell is not in his blood in a way I can measure,” I said. “His physical markers are clean. What that tells me is that the illness is not physical. Not in the standard sense.” I paused, choosing the next part carefully Whatever is happening to Lonk is happening in a register that a standard blood panel doesn’t reach.”

Rivera was quiet.

“Magical,” he said.

“That’s the word I was going to use,” I said. “Yes.” I set my pen down. Louis has a documented history of magical system compromise. The previous curse and its effects on his charmmels, the ongoing management Bianca has been doing – this is her domain, not mine. What I can tell you is that his body is not fighting a physical illness. His body thinks it’s fine. Whatever is draining him is accessing something that the body doesn’t register as an external threat.”

Another silence. This one longer.

“Like something that was introduced,” Rivera said slowly, “Something that was given to him. That his system accepted rather than fought.”

wargiv

I had not said that. I was careful, when I spoke again, about what I confirmed and what I left as his inference. “I’m saying that an organic illness would leave traces I can detect. This left none.” I paused again. “Has he taken anything recently from an unfamiliar source? Someone at school, a new supplement, anything introduced to his routine in the past few weeks?”

Rivera’s silence had a different quality now. It had gone from processing to something tighter.

“I’ll talk to him,” he said.

“Rivera.”

“Yes.”

“If it’s magical in origin,” I said, “and if the source is something being administered to him regularly rather than a one-time exposure, then finding and removing the source needs to happen as soon as possible. The longer a slow magical drain continues without intervention, the more it affects the channels themselves, and channel damage in a child his age-”

“Is harder to reverse,” Rivera said. “I know.”

“I know you know,” I said. “I’m saying it anyway.”

“I understand.” A pause. “The files. Can you bring the full results to the house later? When-” He stopped. “I’ll tell you when”

“When Bianca is out,” I said.

I said it plainly. Not as an accusation, not with weight on it. Just the fact of what he had been about to say offered back to him so he didn’t have to navigate around it.

He was quiet for a moment. “Yes.”

“I can be there by late afternoon,” I said. “Text me when it’s clear.”

“I will.”

Neither of us said anything for a moment.

There were things I could have said and didn’t. About this morning. About the greeting she hadn’t given me. About the flash in her eyes. About the necklace that she hadn’t worn in eight months of daily contact but was wearing today. I had no confirmed facts about any of it. I had a feeling, which was not the same thing, and I was a physician and I had trained myself over a long career to know the difference.

But I knew Bianca.

And the results in front of me said that Louis was a healthy child.

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And a healthy child was not pale and exhausted and feeling like something was pulling from the inside.

Something was doing it to him.

Something he had accepted without resistance because it came from a direction his system trusted.

I looked at my notes and I thought about Bianca’s hands around the warm mug this morning, the angle slightly different from how she usually held things, and I thought about the eight months I had known her and the one specific morning greeting she had not missed once until today.

I did not say any of this to Rivera. He was already there. I could hear it in the quality of his silence, the way it had changed over the course of the call from waiting to knowing. He had already arrived at the same place I was standing. He had probably been standing there for longer than this morning.

What he needed from me was not the words for what we both suspected.

What he needed was the file. The clean blood panel of a healthy child who was getting sicker every day. The evidence that would sit on the table between him and the next decision he had to make.

“Late afternoon,” I said. “I’ll bring everything.”

“Thank you,” Rivera said.

T

He ended the call.

I set the phone down and looked at my notes for a long moment.

Then I looked at the courtyard through my window, the ordinary mid-morning movement of the hospital going about its ordinary work, patients and staff and the business of keeping people alive and well, which was the only business I had ever wanted to be in.

I picked up my pen and I wrote at the bottom of my notes, in my own shorthand that nobody else could read:

*Results inconsistent with observed presentation. External magical source most likely. Discuss with R. Bianca – confirm.*

I underlined the last two words.

Then I closed the file and went back to work.

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