Page 42 of Rhythm and Rapture

I stare at the check every morning, just to remind myself that the last week wasn’t an elaborate fantasy, a fever dream cobbled together from exhaustion, sleep deprivation, and need. More money than I'd ever dreamed possible from a single shoot, enough to cover Kael's experimental treatment with money left over for the inevitable complications. And more coming.

I'd sent the guys their portion immediately—their agreed twenty percent each, $85,600 per person. They'd sent it back within hours with an audio message from Roman I couldn't bring myself to listen to, but the typed text that followed was less ambiguous:This was never about the money for us.

I should be relieved. Grateful. Instead, I feel like the last toothpick in a Jenga tower that's already swaying, and every morning I wake up waiting for the whole structure to collapse noisily, irreparably, on top of me.

I'm sitting in Stanford Hospital's pediatric oncology wing, watching machines monitor my son's vitals after his latest round of immunotherapy went sideways, and all I can think about is how completely I've fucked everything up.

The treatment—an experimental immunotherapy protocol, only available through a compassionate-use loophole and a mountain of paperwork—was supposed to be our miracle. Our last shot after the relapse three months ago, when the cancer came back scattered through his bones like deadly stars on the MIBG scan. Instead, it nearly killed him.

I keep telling myself the logic was sound. The mouse studies were promising. The published case results, cautiously optimistic. But three doses in, Kael broke out in hives that spread like wildfire across his small body. His breathing became thin and ragged, his face turned blue around the lips, and the ambulance driver had to radio ahead for crash cart prep.

I watched the ER team cut his dinosaur T-shirt off—the one with the T-Rex he'd insisted on wearing for "brave power." Watched them jam a breathing tube between his teeth, tape his trembling arm to a board, slam an IV so hard I flinched. Three residents and a fellow shouted overlapping orders as they wheeled him away at a speed I'd never associated with my careful, deliberate boy.

He spent the next thirty hours in the pediatric ICU, floating somewhere just beneath consciousness, whimpering during the worst of the fevers before lapsing into blank, sweat-soaked sleep. The attending—whose entire personality seemed composed of weathered cheerful platitudes—kept reassuring me that "this is exactly the kind of challenge we expect on a protocol like his," and "he's a real fighter," and "no one could be a more dedicated mother than you, Sabina."

I wanted to punch him in his soft, earnest face.

The experimental protocol is on hold indefinitely while his body recovers—if it recovers. I'm back to calculating impossible equations with variables that keep changing, running out of options faster than I'm running out of hope.

Today, Kael is technically stable. His O2 hovers in the low 90s, his heartbeat irregular enough to set off alarms every fifteen minutes. His lips are pink again, but his skin is the color of skim milk. The only time he opens his eyes is when I force him to sip electrolyte water through a bent straw. He doesn't even have the energy to make his ninja sound effects.

I sit in the visitor chair I've claimed as my own, my body permanently molded to the vinyl, legs tucked under me so I won't fall asleep and miss something critical. Sometimes I flick on my phone, stare at the lock screen, pretend I'm still connected to the world outside these walls.

There are dozens of unread notifications. I don't open them.

I keep waiting for the three men I left behind—no, not left, just... placed at a distance, like rare books I can't afford to stain with my hands—to forget I exist. I imagine their lives resuming: Roman writing new lyrics, Ash finding new rhythms, Felix breaking it all down until it's perfect. Always in control, always knowing what they want and how to get it.

I try to ignore the part of me that wants to crawl back to that morning in prep room 11, back into the safety of their arms, backto the incredible reality of being touched, wanted, worshipped by three men who saw me as more than just my intellect or mystery.

My phone buzzes. Another text from Roman that I'll probably ignore like I've been ignoring all their messages for the past week and a half. But an hour later, I find myself in the hospital restroom, sitting on the closed toilet lid, holding my breath so I won't start crying.

I pull up the photos Lorna sent, torturing myself. In the second one, I look like someone discovering she could be loved. The cruelest irony is that I was. For those few perfect hours, I was exactly who they thought I was—free, brilliant, desired. Not a exhausted guardian making impossible choices in a pediatric ICU.

Roman: How are you doing? We haven't heard from you since the content went live.

Roman: We have good news!

Roman: The numbers are insane. You must be thrilled.

Roman: Sabina? Everything okay?

Roman: Starting to worry. Please just let us know you're alive.

I type and delete responses a dozen times. How do I explain that their perfect fantasy woman is actually an exhausted mother whose five-year-old is fighting for his life? How do I tell them that the confident scientist they fell for is actually someone who makes desperate choices and prays they work out?

Please don't hate me, my son you didn't know about is in the ICU, fighting for his life like he's been doing since he was three—too raw, too desperate, impossible to admit aloud, evento three people who have already seen every inch of me, inside and out.

The message I do send is pathetic and incomplete:

Me: Sorry. Busy with work. Everything's fine.

It's a lie. Nothing is fine. Kael relapsed three months ago—the cancer came back in his bones this time. The experimental treatment was our last shot, and it nearly killed him instead. Now we're out of standard protocols, staring down clinical trials and increasingly desperate options.

And I've been sitting in this hospital chair for six days straight, too scared to leave in case something happens.

Twenty minutes later, my phone lights up with a call from Roman. I don't answer.

He leaves a voicemail I refuse to open, then sends a photo of a stack of medical reference books with a Post-it stuck to the cover: "If you need to run numbers, we can help."

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