I took a deep breath. She’d said to trust her and I did. I just had to keep these people alive until she came back.
The next ventilator failed. Bartell jumped in and started CPR on the patient. But as I counted the beat in my head and pumped my patient’s chest, I was looking at the dwindling group of people. Two civilians, Lina, Adele, Taylor, Bartell and me. When Lloyd got back, that made eight. There were nine patients. One of them was going to die unless I could find one more volunteer. Maggie? Beckett had said she needed her. Shit! Who else could I get?
Another ventilator failed. Taylor started CPR. It was freezing in the ER, but I could feel the sweat running down my forehead. How the hell are we going to choose who dies? The oldest? The weakest? Shit! Shit, shit shit!
The room suddenly lit up as headlights stabbed in through the glass doors. Now at least we could see, a little. I looked around for anyone I’d missed….
“Adele!” I yelled. “Take over!”
She took over CPR on my patient. I ran over to the man I’d seen hunched in the corner, his arms behind his back. I grabbed his shirt and hauled him to his feet. Seth blinked as the headlights lit up his face.
“You went to medical school, right?” I asked.
He eyed me doubtfully and then sullenly nodded and dropped his eyes. The poor kid was being eaten up by guilt over what had happened.
I knew what that was like.
I saw Lloyd running past, handing out flashlights. “Hey! I need you to take the cuffs off this guy,” I told him.
Lloyd saw who I was pointing at and blanched. “No! Are you kidding?”
“I need him!”
“He’s in custody! He could run! He could get a weapon!”
I heard the continuous tone as another ventilator failed. Lina started CPR, counting in German under her breath. “Do it!” I snapped.
Lloyd uncuffed Seth, cursing under his breath.
“Now you can run,” I told Seth. “You can go back to your dad. Or you can stay here and help us save lives.” I heard another ventilator failing. “But you make a choice, right now, about what you want your life to be.” I didn’t wait to see what happened, just grabbed Lloyd by the shoulder and ran with him back to the critical patients. I took my patient back from Adele and she took the one whose ventilator had just failed. But I could hear another one failing. And when I checked, it was Rebecca’s….
Seth marched up out of the darkness and silently started CPR on Rebecca. As he pumped her chest, he locked eyes with Taylor. They held the gaze for a long moment before they looked away. He wasn’t forgiven. Not even close.
But it was a start.
More and more of the ventilators failed. I only barely had time to talk Lloyd through what to do before he had to jump in, too. And then we were all occupied. The nine of us were all that were keeping nine hearts pumping. We couldn’t do it forever. Rebecca’s fragile body couldn’t take the rough treatment of CPR for long.
Beckett, where are you?
50
Amy
I WAS PANTING, my lungs sucking down big, shuddering gasps of freezing air as I pounded down the stairs to the basement. What if this doesn’t work? Rebecca and Krista and all the others were relying on me.
It was inky black in the stairwell. All I could see was the few steps in front of me, lit up by the bouncing, twitching cone of my cell phone’s flashlight. Then I crashed through the door into the basement, coughing as the stink of burnt diesel hit me.
I sprinted through the parking garage to my car, jumped in and mashed the start button. What if it doesn’t start? What if I forgot to—
The car came silently to life, headlights blindingly bright after all the darkness. I pushed the pedal to the floor and screeched up the ramp and into the open air. It had started snowing again and with no streetlights all I could see was darkness and whirling flakes. I didn’t dare slow down: momentum was the only thing keeping the little car plowing through the bumper-deep snow. I had to guess where the street was and pray no pedestrians loomed out of the blizzard.
Come on, come on! In my mind, I could see Corrigan desperately trying to keep everyone alive. I couldn’t see a thing. I had to drive by pure memory as I headed for the front of the hospital. Right at the corner. About that far and right again and then right a final time about here—
I misjudged it. I wound up driving at a patch of wall about six feet to the right of the hospital’s main doors. I wrenched the wheel and felt the steering go light. The wheels slid on hard-packed snow and the car pirouetted like an ice skater, heading straight for the concrete wall at forty miles an hour. I wrenched the wheel the other way. Please, please—