Holly held her breath. "You're certain?" she asked.
She would never admit it to anyone—not even herself—but she had been losing hope. Until this moment, she had been preparing for the worst.
Alex nodded. "Positive," he said. "I won't let you down." He smiled. "I wouldn't dare. Grandma Spice would skin me alive."
She closed her eyes and let out a trembling breath. "I know you won't," she said. "They don't look very happy, though." She nodded at the doctors, who stood in the doorway.
Sophie scowled and stepped forward. "Keira's been examined by experts from all over the world," she said. "My father sent me here because he couldn't come himself. But we couldn't find anything—we couldn't do anything. And now you're telling us you can just wake her up? Well, I don't believe it."
"I know you don't," he said, smirking at her. "Try not to take it too hard when I succeed. Everybody's wrong sometimes."
She glared at him. "You haven't told us how you plan to pull off this medical miracle. Stimulants? Steroids? Positive thinking?" Her voice dripped with sarcasm. "Whatever poison she inhaled rendered her unconscious in three minutes, and we can't even identify it. Do you have a laboratory in your pocket for making universal antidotes?"
"No. I don't need anything," he said. "Except for a cup of warm water."
"Warm water," she said, her tone flat. "You're going to make her a cup of tea? I don't think that's going to help."
At Holly's signal, Jesse brought a cup of water over. "No," Alex said with a smile, taking the cup. "I just might get thirsty."
He set the cup down on a nightstand and took out a small bottle of his supplement pills. He had used something similar when preparing for his fight with Jacob to enhance his inner force and help him heal. This was a refined version that could strengthen the flow of a person's essence. It could technically cure just about anything, but its existence was kept secret by the Moon Palace.
Using the cup's saucer, he crushed one of the pills into a powder on the nightstand, and carefully swept it into the cup. Then, he carefully lifted Keira's head and tipped some of the water into her mouth, making sure she didn't choke on it. Just as gently, he lowered her head and stepped back.
"That's it?" Sophie asked incredulously.
No one answered her, and the room was thick with tension as everyone waited for a miracle. Aside from Alex, Holly, and Jesse, no one actually believed anything would happen. Holly closed her eyes and began to pray.
Four minutes later, one of the doctors gasped. Keira's breathing deepened, and then her eyes began to dance under her eyelids. She looked like she was dreaming. The oximeter that was monitoring the oxygen in her blood began to creep up slowly. Color started to bloom in her cheeks, and her lips shed their blue tinge.
She whimpered suddenly and started to cough, and then her eyes fluttered open. "Mom?" she said, and then she fell asleep.
Even from across the room, the doctors could see that all her vitals were returning to normal, and they were in shock.
Holly could barely maintain her composure. She visibly restrained herself from crushing Keira in a hug, in case she might hurt her. So, instead, she reached across the bed and took Alex's hand, squeezing it tightly.
"Thank you, Alex," she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Thank you so much. I'll never forget this. The whole family will never forget this."
"You're welcome, ma'am," he said, smiling. "She's going to need some rest for a while, but she'll be fine. Make sure she takes it easy when she's ready to get up and start walking. There are some herbs and supplements I can recommend that will help speed up her recovery."
Sophie snatched the bottle of pills off the nightstand and examined it closely. "This is not possible," she muttered. "It's not scientifically possible." Her entire body was stiff. The woman was practically in a vegetative state, she thought. There's no way she can be regaining function this fast. It would take months for her to recover, and I'm not sure how it's possible at all.
That a tiny pill could not only bring someone out of a coma but also reverse the effects of neurological damage was beyond Sophie's understanding of medicine.
The other doctors looked at Alex nervously. They had spent so much time on this case, and then Alex had shown up and had taken over. It was impossible to believe, and they were in awe.
"I told you," Alex said. "You were treating the symptoms rather than the cause."
Sophie couldn't let it go, unable to believe this was happening. "It's just a pill," she said. "One small pill. How does it work? Who made it? It can't have been tested or approved for treatment, or we would have heard about it before now. Is it something that will force the heart to beat so strongly that she'd be at risk of stroke or heart failure?" She was muttering to herself now, trying to make sense of what she had just witnessed. "Some kind of cocktail of digitalis and stimulants, maybe? That might wake someone up, but not from a coma. If that's what he used, she might be fine now, but the strain could kill her."
She looked at Holly in alarm. "Ma'am, using an untested treatment like this is dangerous. It could be like trying to douse a fire with kerosene."