his weak points and drilling them. "What if...?"
"Uh, Oh. Don't go down that road. Trust me." She warned.
"Am I doing everything I possibly can? I don't know. What if there's something else I haven't tried. Maybe I'm not pushing the doctors hard enough. Maybe this isn't the best hospital for what he needs. Maybe there's a doctor with more experience with his symptoms."
"Then you push, and you try, and you ask, and you do everything you know how to do. That's your job. You make sure they do their job to best of their abilities."
He looked at her for a moment then nodded his head.
"I know you'd never give up on him. No matter what people said or how hard it got. You're a good father, don't ever doubt that."
He stared at her. "Thank you. Sounds like you're speaking from experience."
"I've been through this in one form or another. One of the worst parts of my job." She looked up at him. "Can I share something with you?"
He nodded his head.
"Come with me to the next service." She handed him a card with the date and time of a church meeting, a Botann church meeting. He frowned, not sure how to respond.
"I know you're not of the same... you know... its just, it offers a lot of comfort. You've got a lot of difficult questions ahead of you. The kind that people don't have answers to."
He looked at the card again. "Thanks but I don't..."
"Think about it. Just an invitation, that's all."
"Mr. Handers!"
Two Zo doctors had come up the hallway behind them. One of the doctors motioned for Raj's attention.
"Mr. Handers, I've been looking for you. Can we speak in my office for a moment?" He gestured for Raj to follow.
"Sure, Dr. Eghart." He followed him around the corner to his office. The doctor let him in and shut the door behind.
"Please, have a seat." He pointed to a chair.
Handers sat down while Dr. Eghart put some charts up on a white board. Each chart had his son's name written on a label in the corner. He had no idea what they were for. One was some sort of graph. Another was a strange series of lines.
"First of all, thank you for your patience this last month with this long series of test. I know it's extremely difficult not knowing. We believe we've discovered the underlying cause of your son's condition."
"Great. That's good news."
"Well it is, and it isn't." He put his hands together and paused. "Um, We believe your son's binding... Well, we believe he's becoming unbound."
"What?"
"I know its difficult to understand, you..."
"That's not possible. He's never missed a single day of Manea."
"Unfortunately, we don't understand what is causing his bond to deteriorate. Because of that we haven't been able to stop its progression."
"What do you mean?"
"We don’t have a solution yet, but we’re hopeful, with time, that will change."
“How much time do you need? How much time does Emret have?”
“That, of course, is our greatest concern right now, and, unfortunately, we don’t have the answer.”
Raj sat back in his chair. His head was spinning. This isn't what they told him when he came. They said it was a minor issue, a chemical imbalance of some sort. A month of test later and his condition deteriorates to this? How was that possible? Something, somewhere must've gotten mixed up. Someone switched the charts.
"I don't understand what's happened? You said..."
“I know this is not what you were expecting to hear.” The doctor said calmly.
Raj leaned forward rubbing his head. This was not real. This was not possible.
"I'm sorry Mr. Handers. This is an extremely rare condition. Because of that we’ve had little chance to understand it. There are only a few prescribed treatments, and none of them have been able to stabilize his bond."
He took a deep breath, trying to clear his head. He tried to see the situation clearly through the fog of emotion. If the Doctor was right, he had to figure out what to do next. He had to fix this. "What happens when his binding fails completely?" He asked.
"His body will begin to revert. He'll lose his higher functions. You have to be aware; It's not a condition he's likely to survive."
"So what do we do now? What the next step?"
"I'm sorry Mr. Handers. We’re already doing everything we can."
"So that's it? You're saying he's going to die because you can't think of anything else to try right now? But maybe you’ll think of something later?" The