Chapter 33 The Aftermath

• The silence in the isolation tent was no longer the ominous quiet before a storm, but the profound, fragile hush after one. Alexander Sterling slept. Not the sedated, twitching unconsciousness of before, but a true, deep, restorative sleep. The monitors sang a steady, rhythmic song of stable vitals. The fever had broken. The tremors were gone.
• The only evidence of the war that had just been fought was the oxygen cannula under his nose and the spiderweb of IV lines delivering supportive fluids and immunosuppressants to prevent his body from turning on the newly introduced antibodies.
• I stood over him, not as an avenging angel or a grieving victim, but as a physician assessing her most complex case. The dizziness from the plasma harvest was a thick fog in my head, and the old, familiar ache in my joints had returned with a vengeance, a deep, grinding pain that felt like a phantom echo of the prions we had just neutralized. My body had paid a price. Again.