Chapter 6 - The Race for a Match"We take the third option," I declared firmly. "We push to twenty-eight weeks. But Doctor... I want my blood and bone marrow tested for a donor match today."
Dr. Evans nodded. "We will test you immediately, Charles, along with Sarah's family and the national donor registry."
That afternoon, I officially transferred full operational control of my Chicago construction firm to my senior vice president. I leased a furnished apartment two blocks from Mercy Medical Center in Miami, moving my entire life to Florida within forty-eight hours.
I became Sarah's full-time caregiver, advocate, and protector.
Every single day, I sat beside her hospital bed or her apartment sofa, monitoring her medication schedules, cooking her iron-rich meals, helping her walk down the hallway, and holding her through waves of intense nausea and fatigue.
For four weeks, the low-dose bridge protocol worked miraculous stability. Sarah's cheeks regained a subtle, healthy color, and her belly began to show a gentle, beautiful roundness.
Every evening, I would kneel beside her, place my hand over her stomach, and feel the tiny, fluttering kicks of our unborn child.
"Is it a boy or a girl?" Sarah whispered one night as we lay together on her wide hospital bed, watching the moonlight reflect off the ocean outside her window.
"Dr. Vance put the ultrasound results in a sealed envelope," I smiled softly, kissing her forehead. "We agreed we wouldn't open it until the baby is safe in the nursery."
Sarah leaned her head against my chest, her hand resting over my heart. "Thank you, Charles. Thank you for not letting me run away this time."
"I'm never letting you run away again, Sarah," I swore into the quiet night.
But while the pregnancy progressed smoothly toward the twenty-four-week mark, a dark cloud gathered over our medical search.
On a rainy Tuesday afternoon, Dr. Evans called me into his office. His face was grim, holding a stack of national laboratory reports.
"Charles," Dr. Evans said quietly. "The donor registry results came back. You are not a match. Neither is Clara, nor any of Sarah's distant relatives. Out of eight million registered donors in the national database... we do not have a single ten-out-of-ten HLA match for Sarah."
May you like
My blood ran cold. "What does that mean, Doctor?"
"It means," Dr. Evans said, his voice heavy with grave urgency, "that when we deliver this baby at twenty-eight weeks... we will have no matching marrow to save Sarah's life."
Related Stories
