When It All Falls Apart (Book One) by Lucinda Berry Page A

we’ll be drawing blood from both of you today as well as Rori. We’re going to do a full genetic panel on both of you and her. If we know the tests that you’ve already had then it will narrow the net we have to throw.” Dr. Wilcox explained.
    David and I nodded. They could look at anything they needed to in order to help Rori. Dr. Hettinger handed us a release to sign for Dr. Keene and we scribbled our names on the designated lines. After our family tree, they’d shifted to gathering the most extensive and painstakingly long history of Rori’s development beginning with pregnancy. Nearly three hours had passed by the time we were finished with the evaluation. David and I breathed a sigh of relief when they finally left.
    “Oh my God, that was exhausting!” he said, slouching down in his chair to lean his head on the back of it.
    “Right? Totally crazy. I think we spent half an hour just describing the color and texture of her poop.”
    David burst out laughing and it opened up the entire room, lifting the tension. I could breathe without feeling as if I’d choke on the air. He reached over and grabbed my hand, pulling me close to him, and looking into my eyes.
    “I love you, Celeste.”
    My heart swelled. I never tired of hearing him say it and never would.
    “I love you, too, David.”

Chapter Eight
    T he next few days were excruciating. Time stood still. It felt like it did in the early days when David and I would sit by Rori’s bassinet watching her sleep. She wasn’t responding to dialysis and grew more and more unresponsive each day, slipping further and further away from us. She went through three rounds of dialysis every day and she no longer even opened her eyes when they hooked her up to the machine. She’d gone into a ketoacidotic coma. She still cried without any tears and she’d given up talking. She just moaned. She wasn’t eating and her skin had turned from yellow to a murky green.
    It was the most time David and I had spent together alone since Rori had been born. We didn’t have any distractions besides the constant text messages and emails coming in from our family and friends. Our phones buzzed constantly with people asking for updates until we finally turned them off because there was nothing new to report and we got tired of tapping out the same response over and over again.
    We were still waiting for the blood tests to come back because they’d been sent out to different specialized labs all over the country. Dr. Koven and Dr. Wilcox warned us she might have an autoimmune disorder that was responsible for her organ failure so Rori wasn’t allowed to have any visitors. Until they had ruled it out, they didn’t want to take the chance of exposing her already fragile system to any possible viruses other people might carry if they came to see her. Dr. Koven had given us strict instructions to monitor our own health and if we started to feel sick then we were supposed leave the hospital immediately until we felt better. She’d assured us that as hard as it would be to leave Rori, it was better for her health if we didn’t expose her. We’d both had a flu shot yesterday to be safe, but also to feel like we were doing something productive.
    Despite how sick she was, I still didn’t feel anything. It was if the plug connecting me to my emotions had come undone. I tried to bring myself to feel guilty about my lack of feelings but I couldn’t feel the guilt in my heart in any kind of a real way. Instead of spending time trying to get myself to feel something I couldn’t, I focused on my feelings toward David and doing what I could do to make him feel better. Unlike me, he was an emotional wreck. He wasn’t sleeping for more than an hour at a time and it had nothing to do with our uncomfortable hospital conditions. He didn’t eat and I was pretty sure he’d lost as much weight as Rori. He was starting to resemble a tweaker with his sunken in face and constant teeth grinding. He