"Dr. Takayanagi is currently in a meeting with the other doctors, discussing your treatment plan."
"I see…"
Youko glanced at the clock hanging on the wall.
It was already close to eleven, and he still hadn't gone home. Well, that worked out just fine.
"Please hurry and call him over. I feel like something is off with my body—very off."
Youko emphasized her words, making the nurse panic.
She had originally come in with medicine, but she no longer had time to administer it. She placed the medicine on the table beside the bed and rushed out of the room.
"Mom, are you... not feeling well?"
Kazusa had also heard what her mother had just said. She misunderstood and was now a bit frightened.
"It's fine, Kazusa. It seems like the medicine Dr. Takayanagi prescribed is working—I feel a lot better now."
"Then why did you have the nurse call him..."
"Of course, I also want to tell him about this in person. Maybe it will be helpful for my future treatment."
Kazusa let out a small sigh of relief.
Youko gently patted her daughter's head and then shifted her gaze to Chisato, who was standing nearby, smiling. Her eyes narrowed slightly.
…
"…This! This is impossible!"
Norimasa held the latest medical report on Youko's condition in his hand.
At this moment, he seriously questioned his own eyesight—or perhaps the hospital's diagnostic equipment had malfunctioned.
Otherwise, there was simply no way to explain the results he was looking at.
Inside the hospital room, Kazusa, overcome with tension, tightly grasped Chisato's hand.
Meanwhile, Youko, who had returned to lying back against the head of the bed, was the one to break the silence.
"Explain yourself, Norimasa-kun. What do you mean by 'impossible'?"
"..."
Norimasa shook his head again, pressing his lips together tightly without answering.
He walked to the other side of the room, flipping through multiple test reports, muttering to himself as he did so:
"White blood cell count—normal... Hemoglobin index—normal... Platelet count—normal... But how is this possible? How could this be!?"
The situation unfolding before his eyes completely overturned everything he had come to understand as a doctor.
It felt as though the worldview he had spent the first half of his life constructing was now crumbling before him.
Just a few hours ago, Youko's body had been overrun by leukemia cells, proliferating at an alarming rate, suppressing normal blood production, and relentlessly attacking her organs.
That was why she had been experiencing spontaneous bleeding from her mouth and nose, as well as severe, uncontrollable pain throughout her body.
But now, those mutated white blood cells—they had all disappeared!
The test results were entirely normal, as if those cancerous cells had never existed in Youko's body at all.
And that wasn't all.
The damage they had caused—the swelling of her liver and spleen, the functional impairments of her lungs and kidneys—had also completely vanished.
Not only that, but those organs had somehow miraculously healed themselves!
They were now functioning normally, working just as they should.
But...
Just as he had blurted out earlier—how was this possible!?
For someone to recover to this extent in just a matter of hours—it was absurd. Humans weren't earthworms; they didn't possess such an exaggerated ability to regenerate.
The more he understood about this field of medicine, the more baffling this phenomenon became.
"Hey! Norimasa-kun, stop muttering to yourself like that! Just tell me—what do the test results say? How is my body?"
Youko's voice snapped Norimasa back to reality.
She even sounded energetic now...
He stepped closer to her, signaling for her to open her mouth so he could check her oral condition.
Then, he pressed down on her shoulders and knees to conduct an examination.
"Do you feel any pain where I just pressed?"
"Not at all."
"..."
Norimasa withdrew his hands, staring at Youko in complete silence once again.
After another prompt from her, he called a nurse to take a blood sample and requested that it be sent to another hospital for testing as soon as possible.
After that, he asked Chisato and Kazusa to leave the room, leaving him alone with Youko.
"I've never seen you so shaken before."
Youko pressed a cotton ball against her arm where the blood had been drawn.
"Alright, now that no one else is here, can you finally tell me what's going on?"
Norimasa sat down on the edge of the bed and pressed his fingers against his forehead, massaging it lightly.
"I don't even know how to explain this. This is something that shouldn't be possible in reality, and yet it happened."
"If you keep stalling, I'll kick you!"
Seeing his earlier reactions, Youko was growing impatient.
She knew her own body best, and a possibility had already formed in her mind. Now, she just needed Norimasa to confirm it.
"If the test results are accurate... your current condition could only be described as a miracle."
Youko's lips trembled slightly.
"Speak clearly."
"The cancerous white blood cells in your body have disappeared. Your organs have also returned to a completely healthy state."
"In other words..."
"You are now perfectly healthy."
"..."
Thump, thump, thump-thump...
As those words left his mouth, Youko's heartbeat accelerated.
She was healthy...
Yes, she felt incredible right now. There wasn't a single trace of discomfort in her body, and the test results confirmed it. That meant...
"The bone marrow transplant surgery we talked about before..."
"You don't need it anymore, Youko. Your body has fully recovered. There's no need for any surgery."
"Then... Why did this happen so suddenly? Was it the medication you prescribed for me?"
Norimasa let out a bitter laugh.
"The medication I gave you could only suppress your condition; it could never completely cure you. The fact that you've fully recovered—I have no way of explaining it."
"You're my attending physician! If you can't explain it, then who am I supposed to ask?"
"Who knows? Maybe... it really is divine intervention."
Divine intervention...
Youko silently repeated those words in her mind.
Of course, she was overjoyed about her recovery, but she was never one to leave questions unanswered.
If there was something she didn't understand, she would pursue it to the very end.
And now that she had finally calmed down a little, she suddenly remembered something she had overlooked earlier.
When she had first opened her eyes, Chisato had been very close to her—his fingers resting against her lips.
At that moment, just what had he been doing?
_______
50 advanced chapters on p@t re on (.) com/SenatusTheta
_______
If any of you noticed an error, please point it out in comments!