His breathing frightened her. His colour frightened her. Every change in his condition made her heart race.
She wanted someone to promise that he would recover completely.
She wanted someone to tell her that the nightmare would end and that they would return to the comfortable life they had known.
But nobody could give her that certainty.
The illness continued to dominate their lives for months.
By the time Luke was around six months old, the frightening episodes had largely stopped. He began reaching his developmental milestones, and at first, his progress gave his parents hope.
He sat up, pulled himself toward furniture, and showed signs of physical development that reassured them.
Jan allowed herself to breathe a little more easily.
Perhaps, she thought, they had survived the worst.
But the consequences of those early months would become apparent in ways nobody could have predicted.
Chapter Three: A Child Nobody Could Calm
As Luke grew into a toddler, Jan began noticing behaviours that she struggled to understand.
