Disclaimer: I don't own Third Watch, or the characters thereof. This is just for fun.
Enjoy and please review!
Chapter Nine
The days passed slowly, and as Maritza lay in bed, weak as a newborn foal, she had a lot of time to think. And she truly hated it, because after everything that she had been through, everything that she had seen, well no one wants to remember that.
Late in the first week post-transplant, Maritza developed low grade fevers from the transplantation procedure. And although the temperature wasn't terribly high, it was enough to trigger Maritza's hallucinations of her late sister, Lettie.
Manny and Bosco had organised a schedule between themselves to ensure that Maritza was never alone. They did their best not to hear Maritza's fevered cries begging her dead sister for forgiveness.
Thankfully Maritza's fever broke after nine long days, and it seemed as though she had turned a corner.
But in the third week post-transplant, Maritza's bloodwork still wasn't improving as the medical team had hoped, and one morning she awoke to find a red blistering rash on the palms of both her hands. When she got up to use the bathroom, Maritza also noticed to her alarm that the whites of her eyes had a distinct yellow hue to them.
Maritza wasn't the only one to notice the developing problems; her nurse that day, Emma, came in to give Maritza her morning tablets and to connect a new bag of liquid nutrition to Maritza's feeding tube, and after seeing Maritza's hands and eyes, she had rushed out of the isolation room to alert Dr Martinelli.
The condition was known as Graft Versus Host Disease, or GVHD, and the daily bloodwork confirmed that not only was Maritza suffering from this complication, it was also attacking her liver.
And although the treatment for this condition was quickly commenced, it was feared that Maritza's recovery would be significantly set back.
The first one hundred days after any bone marrow transplant are critical in determining whether a patient will ever leave the hospital, and for Maritza those one hundred days were quite honestly frightening.
After her brush with GVHD, there were still many weeks of blood and platelet transfusions in an effort to help Maritza's cancer ravaged body recover.
And after close to two hundred days, Maritza Cruz was gathering up the assorted possessions that she had accumulated in hospital as she prepared to go home.
But unlike Bosco's dramatic exit from the hospital, Maritza knew better than to expect more than a taxi as a means to return home.
Still, when the time came, and Maritza was just finishing up the discharge paperwork, Manny arrived to escort her home.
And the very next day, with a wig firmly in place, Maritza returned to the rebuilt precinct, ready to take on the world, or at least the streets of the 55th precinct.
The End.
I really hope that this has become a better story for having been rewritten :)
As always suggestions and constructive criticism are welcomed.
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