Gone 'til November by Wallace Stroby

Author:Wallace Stroby
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Murder, Mystery & Detective, Murder - Investigation, Hard-Boiled, General, Fiction, Investigation, Mystery fiction, Women Sleuths, Crime, Policewomen
ISBN: 9780312560249
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2010-01-18T05:00:00+00:00

When she got home, Danny was at the kitchen table, the Tyrannosaurus half assembled. She’d left it for him with a note, hadn’t told him where it came from.

“Hey, little guy.” She touched his hair. “How you making out?”

“Almost finished.”

“You feed the rabbits?”

“Yup.”

She got a bottle of water from the refrigerator, twisted off the top. She could hear the rumble of the dryer in the basement, JoBeth doing laundry.

There was a note on the refrigerator, held there by a parrot magnet. JoBeth’s handwriting. Dr. Winters called. 4:45.

Shit. She looked at her watch. Five thirty. Still a chance to catch him if he was working late.

“When did you have pizza?” Danny said.

She realized then she’d left the box in the refrigerator.

“Last night. I got hungry after you went to bed. We’ll have the rest for dinner, okay?”

“It’s cold.”

“That’s what microwaves are for, kiddo.”

She got her cell out, went to her bedroom, speed-dialed the doctor’s office. On the fourth ring, he picked up.

“Sara Cross,” she said. “Returning your call. Sorry, I just got the message.” She closed the door behind her.

“Hi, Sara. It’s okay, I’m in the office trying to get my desk cleared anyway. Danny’s lab results from last week came in, and I wanted you to know about them.”

She swallowed, felt tightness in her stomach, tasted sourness. “Go on.”

“As you know, one more treatment and we’ll be reaching the end of the induction therapy. The new lab work shows we’re on the right track as far as his T-cell count is concerned. I don’t think I’m going too far to say we could be looking at a near-total remission by the end of the therapy.”

She sat on the bed, closed her eyes. “But?” she said.

“We’re not out of the woods yet. You know some of this already, but a patient like Danny diagnosed with ALL may have a hundred billion leukemia cells. When it’s successful—and in his case it looks like it is—induction therapy destroys at least ninety-nine percent of them. At that point we say the patient is in remission. However, that could still leave as many as a hundred million leukemia cells in the body. So we have to go after those aggressively. If not, they can grow and multiply later on and lead to a relapse.”

“What are you saying?”

“That I think we should go ahead with what we talked about last time.”

“More chemo.”

“We call it consolidation therapy. It reduces and hopefully kills off the remaining cells. As I said, it takes about four to six months.”

Six more months.

“Sara, you there?”

“I’m here.”

“Consolidation therapy can be intense, especially at Danny’s age, but I think it’s the only way to go. We’ll decide on the drugs and doses later. It won’t be easy, but I think we have a good shot at whipping this.”

“When do we start?”

“I have Danny’s last induction session scheduled for two weeks from today. We’ll see how that goes, what our test readings are, then come up with a plan for the consolidation stage.”

“Okay.”

“This is progress, Sara.

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