The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins (Mia and Kyle) novel Chapter 421

Kyle's POV

Dr. Norbu was still in the chair. His burgundy robes pooled around him like liquid. The fabric looked ancient. Hand-woven. The kind of thing looked like it had been passed down through generations of monks in some monastery high in the Himalayas where the air was so thin.

He didn't look out of place here though. In this sterile American hospital room with its beeping machines and antiseptic smell and fluorescent lights that hummed like trapped insects.

If anything, the room looked wrong around him.

"You went swimming tonight," he said.

Not a question. A statement.

"I fell in a pool."

"That was either very brave or very foolish."

"Probably both."

"Probably." He smiled. "But you are still here."

"Is it?"

He reached into his bag. Not the leather medical bag Western doctors carried. This was cloth. Woven. With patterns that hurt to look at too long because they seemed to shift when you weren't paying attention.

He pulled out a small vial. Dark glass. Filled with liquid that looked like amber. Or honey. Or both.

"Your blood work from this morning came back." He set the vial on the nightstand. "Your inflammatory markers are down."

I blinked. "Down?"

"Yes."

"How much?"

"Twenty percent from last week."

That didn't make sense. Inflammatory markers didn't just drop. Not in someone whose immune system was actively trying to murder them from the inside.

"That's not possible," I said.

"And yet. According to the imaging we did while you were sleeping yesterday, the hemorrhaging in your esophageal tissue has ceased. The vessels have begun to heal. There is new tissue formation. Scar tissue, yes, but healthy scar tissue. The kind that holds things together rather than tearing them apart."

I stared at him.

He stared back. Calm. Like he had all the time in the world.

"That's not how autoimmune diseases work," I said finally.

"Your body is remembering how to heal itself." He picked up one of the supplement bottles he'd brought. Turned it in his hands. "Your life force. Your energy. Now it flows again."

Something was working.

"Why?" I asked.

"When I was young," he said quietly, "I fell in love with a woman named Dolma."

I took it.

The photograph showed a young woman. Maybe twenty. Beautiful in that way that had nothing to do with symmetry or fashion. Just alive. Radiant. She was smiling at the camera. Or maybe at whoever was taking the picture. Her eyes bright with something that looked like mischief.

"That's her," Dr. Norbu said. "Dolma. That was taken the day before we said goodbye."

" For seventy years you've carried a photograph of a woman you spent three months with."

"Every person is dying, Kyle." Dr. Norbu's voice was gentle but firm. "From the moment we are born, we are moving toward death. Some of us move faster than others. But we are all moving in the same direction. "

"I don't have much time left to give," I said.

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. Your body is healing. Slowly. But it is healing. You could have years yet. Or you could have weeks. No one knows. Not me. Not machines and their protocols. Not you."

The door opened.

Morton stumbled in.

Actually stumbled. Like someone had shoved him from behind.

He caught himself on the doorframe. His tie was loose. Hanging at a jaunty angle. His jacket was gone. His shirt was untucked on one side. His hair—usually perfectly styled—stuck up in several directions.

"Kyle!" His face lit up when he saw me. That particular brightness that came from consuming one's body weight in expensive champagne. "My best friend! My brother!"

"Morton," I said. "You're drunk."