This reference to the code, oblique though it was, quelled my curiosity. I found I didn’t want to know if the child had lived. By contrast, I did want to know—desperately—what Zhou thought of my children’s chances.

“Tell me,” I said.

He didn’t have a stool, and the typical patient-room hard plasticized sofa had been removed to make space for the extra bed, so I stood, feeling awkward about sitting while he was standing.

“Nope,” he said. “No standing. You look like you’re about to keel over, and then I’d have to resuscitate you, and I’m not so good with adults. Better you sit.”

I returned to the stool. He was correct; standing for even a brief moment had made me woozy.

“Okay, now,” he said. “With most parents I try to gauge how likely they are to understand the technicalities of what we do and then how likely they are to want to hear the technicalities of what we do, and I temper that with how likely they are to lose their shit completely when and if they hear, and then I make a plan of how and what to tell them. But you? All that goes out the window. You understand what’s in the chart, even if I don’t tell you.”

“I haven’t seen their charts,” I said. “I only know what you and Gretchen told me earlier.”

“Okay, good. Good. We’ll go over everything now.”

Zhou spoke for the next ten minutes, running though the latest lab and imaging results, the children’s response to treatment thus far, and the remaining tools in the medical arsenal. In regard to possible treatments, the country had advanced from the beginning of the pandemic, most of the details of which I could recite in my sleep. Did recite in my sleep, in fact; more than once, I’d woken up muttering about protocols or numbers.

“The bottom line,” said Zhou, “with Rorie, we have concern that her inflammatory markers are rising, and her pulmonary function showed some decline throughout the day as her oxygen requirements increased. We’ll get another film in a couple hours and see where we are, okay? I am concerned about a secondary bacterial pneumonia. But I think you need to brace yourself for the possibility of a breathing tube.”

I jerked my chin in acknowledgment, my mouth too dry to speak.

“And Beau. Dear sweet boy, he is fighting so hard. We’re seeing some vent resistance despite the new settings. The serum, we think has not been a success thus far, but it’s early. This you know. So now what?” He rubbed his hands together. “We are going to try everything, Kira. No stone unturned for your boy. Conventional therapies first, okay, and we’ll try the off-label medications I discussed with you. Today, I think, will be critical. But I am here all day. I will not leave you.”