“All good to continue,” he said. “His vitals are excellent. He’s a strong boy, and we think he would be an excellent candidate for immuno-engineering.”
“Thank you,” I said, and it was almost like he was telling me that Jack’s cancer was gone.
“Good. We just need you to sign some paperwork,” Sladkovsky said, as he led me down a corridor and into a busy office. “Our secretary will bring you the consent forms and all the payment information. I’ll be doing my rounds now, but if you would like to chat about anything, any concerns you might have, please talk to Lenka and I can find the time later.”
“Thank you,” I said, and we shook hands.
I read through the papers, embossed with the clinic’s logo. It was mostly paragraphs of legal jargon that highlighted various sections of the European Medical Code. If Anna were here, she would have been reading the small print, cross-checking paragraphs of the law.
It was too late now. This was the only chance Jack had. I signed the papers and filled in the payment information. It was expensive, but I had the credit cards and was in the process of emptying a savings account. There would be ways offinding the rest. We could remortgage the house or raid Anna’s pension plan. We would find a way.
* * *
“Look at all the lasers, Jack,” I said, after the nurse had come to take his blood. In the private room, where Jack would have his first infusion, there were white instruments, machines that looked like space cannons, but Jack wasn’t looking at them. He was staring down into his lap.
“Daddy?”
“Yes.”
“Am I having the medicine?”
“Well,” I said, hesitating, “it’s a different medicine. But it’s going to help make you better.”
Jack was silent, didn’t look convinced.
I started showing Jack something on the iPad, when Dr. Sladkovsky came into the room. He walked over to a cart, shook out a pill from a bottle and put it in a small medicine cup.
“Now,” he said, “we would like to give Jack a light sedative, if that’s okay. But I do need your permission for that. It just makes the process more relaxing for the patient. Is that okay? It’s extremely fast-acting.”
“Of course,” I said.
“Good. Jack, will you take this little pill?” the doctor said, holding out the cup and a glass of water.
“Okay,” he said, expertly putting the pill on his tongue and swallowing with a quick sip.
“Wow, what a skillful boy,” the doctor said, and Jack smiled proudly. “Now, we’re going to start. You can be my helper if you want, Jack. Or you can be the doctor and I can be your helper. Would you like that?”
Jack shrugged and looked at me as if I had an answer. A nurse came in and they put a cannula into his arm. Jack stared at a calendar on the wall with beach scenes from Thailand. A woman wearing a long white dress looking out to sea.
I looked at my phone to see if Anna had called or texted, but there was nothing. Perhaps I should tell her now. Instead of her discovering the note on the hall table.
“Okay, Jack, that was the worst part. You won’t even feel it going in now,” Dr. Sladkovsky said, taking off his gloves.
“So,” he said, turning to me. “First of all, we’re going to do a little injection of the blood.”
“This is the blood that has been engineered with the vaccine?” I said.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“From the blood that the nurse just took?”
“Yes, exactly. We don’t want to keep pricking him, so we just use the blood we took when we did the readiness tests.”
“It...it just...it all just seems so quick,” I said, and I was sure that I had once read something about that on Hope’s Place, about how quickly the clinic accepted patients.
Dr. Sladkovsky shrugged. “We treat over one hundred people a day. It’s very normal for us.”
A nurse wheeled in a drip stand with three large bags of a urine-colored liquid.
“And this is the second part,” Dr. Sladkovsky said, wheeling the cart closer to him. “These are the various compounds and minerals that allow the blood to settle and disperse properly.”
“It’s a lot of liquid,” I said, unable to imagine it all going through Jack’s body.
“Yes, it is. Don’t be alarmed, though. We have found that patients tolerate it better when it’s more diluted. As Jack is being infused, you will find that he needs to go to the bathroom a lot...
“Jack,” the doctor said, picking up two syringes full of blood from a cooling container.
“Is that mine? Is that my blood?”
“Yes, it is, and this is what’s going to help you get better. Now, it might feel a little cold but it won’t hurt. I promise.”
“Ooo, it’s cold. The blood is cold,” Jack said excitedly, as Dr. Sladkovsky injected the first syringe into the cannula.
“And does it hurt?”
“No,” Jack said. “Doesn’t hurt.”
“You see, I told you,” the doctor said. “It’s not like that nasty chemotherapy.”
Soon Jack had fallen asleep, and I listened to the sound of the pump, imagining his T-cells rallying, steeling themselves for one final battle.
I looked at my phone again, but there was still nothing from Anna. I wasn’t sure what she would do when she found out. I hoped she would come to Prague, that she wouldn’t call the police or get the embassy involved. That wasn’t her style, though, to make a fuss, to make a public show of things.
What else could I do? After all those endless conversations, I knew she wouldn’t change her mind. But if she were here, forced by my hand, she could meet Dr. Sladkovsky, she could see how the clinic worked. In London, it was an option too abstract to be considered.
I wouldn’t tell her yet. I would wait just a little longer. I needed more time, to get Jack properly started on the treatment. I looked at my phone again.
