Chapter 2 - The Curse of Blood
The medical term hung between us, heavy and toxic. I had taken biology in college; I knew the brutal, uncompromising reality of the diagnosis. Huntington’s disease was an autosomal dominant genetic disorder. It was a slow, incurable death sentence that unraveled the mind, shattered motor control, and stole every shred of human dignity before extinguishing life entirely.
And if a parent carried the defective gene, every single child they bore had an absolute, unchangeable fifty percent chance of inheriting the same fate.
“Your mother had it?” My voice was barely a breath. The anger that had sustained me drained away, replaced by an icy, suffocating dread.
“She started showing symptoms when she was thirty-two,” Dorian said, staring down at his polished leather shoes. “Erratic mood swings. Sudden bouts of rage. Clumsiness that turned into constant tremors. My father was terrified of what a public scandal would do to our family firm. Back then, mental and genetic illnesses were treated like moral failings. So he fabricated an accident, placed her in a high-security clinic in Switzerland under an alias, and told eight-year-old Dorian that Mommy was an angel in heaven.”
He swallowed hard, his throat moving convulsively. “I only found out six months ago when Arthur’s private physicians contacted me. Uncle Arthur had no children of his own, and his medical trust required the next of kin to sign his guardianship papers. The neurologist who handled his case handed me a file that unraveled my entire existence. My mother was Arthur’s twin. Their father had it. Their aunt had it. It runs through our bloodline like a slow, patient poison.”
My knees went weak. I reached blindly behind me, catching the edge of the examination table and sinking back down onto the thin paper covering.
“That was the week you stopped coming home,” I realized out loud, piecing together the timeline that had shattered my world. “The week you came back from Boston, you locked yourself in your study for three days. You canceled our anniversary trip to Italy.”
“Because I sat in that study and realized what I had done,” Dorian said, his chest heaving as months of suppressed agony broke through his fortress. “I loved you more than my own life, Maya. From the moment I saw you in that tiny art gallery in Lincoln Park five years ago, my entire world made sense. You were bright, compassionate, full of dreams about buying an old brownstone and filling it with messy children and golden retrievers. And without knowing it, I had walked into your life carrying a biological bomb.”
“So you had yourself tested,” I whispered, dread wrapping tight around my lungs.
Dorian looked up, his dark eyes bloodshot and raw. “Elaine Mercer was my mother’s attending intern decades ago. She is the only doctor in Chicago who knew the truth and kept the secret for my father. Six months ago, I walked into this very wing and gave her my blood.”
I couldn’t breathe. “And... the results?”
“The standard testing takes weeks,” Dorian replied, stepping closer, his composure crumbling until he was kneeling on the cold linoleum right in front of me, looking up into my face. “For six weeks, I waited in absolute hell. And during those six weeks, I watched you sleep beside me. I watched you plan our future. And I realized that if the result came back positive, I would become a shell of a man within ten to fifteen years. I would turn into someone who couldn't dress himself, someone who didn't recognize his own wife, someone who would trap you into being a full-time nurse while you watched the man you married rot alive.”
Tears spilled over my eyelashes, burning down my cheeks. “You didn't ask me what I wanted! You made that decision alone!”
“Because I knew you!” he cried out, finally reaching forward and gripping my trembling hands, his skin scalding against mine. “You are selfless, Maya! You would have stayed! You would have pledged your youth, your sanity, and your future to keep vigil over my bed while I wasted away! You would have let this disease destroy you along with me, and I couldn't bear that! I would rather have you hate me as a cold, cheating, distant bastard than have you chained to a dying monster!”
“And the divorce?” I sobbed, clutching his fingers with all my strength. “The papers you handed me?”
“The results were delayed,” he choked out, burying his face against my knees as his shoulders shook with dry, violent sobs. “The lab had an inconclusive marker. They had to run a secondary genetic sequence. While I was waiting for the final confirmation, I realized I couldn't drag you through the agony with me. If I pushed you away, if I made you hate me enough to sign those papers and take half of everything I owned, you could leave Chicago. You could start over with someone who had a real future.”
May you like
He raised his head, staring at my stomach with an expression of pure, unadulterated terror.
“I thought I had protected you,” Dorian whispered, his voice shattering completely. “Until that night in January when I broke down. I came home intending to pack my things, and you looked at me with so much love despite everything I had put you through... and I gave in. I was weak. And now... now there is a baby. A child who has a fifty-fifty chance of inheriting this living hell from me.”
