Chapter 6 - MEDICAL EMERGENCY
The triumph of the press conference was shattered less than forty-eight hours later.
It was Saturday night. I was sitting in my library at the estate, reviewing the foundation's initial organizational charts, when my phone rang. The caller ID showed Elena’s number.
I answered immediately. "Elena?"
There was no sound on the line except the shrill, frantic wail of an ambulance siren and hyperventilating gasps.
"Gerald..." Elena sobbed, her voice unrecognizable, choked with pure terror. "It's Sophia. She collapsed... she collapsed at the dinner table."
My heart stopped. "What happened? Is it a fever?"
"Her heart rate spiked to two hundred, then dropped to thirty!" Elena screamed over the roar of the siren. "Her oxygen saturation is crashing! The paramedics think... oh God, Gerald, they think it's acute cellular rejection!"
"Which hospital are you going to?" I shouted, already sprinting toward the front doors of my house, calling for Thomas.
"Metropolitan General! The pediatric ICU!"
"I am ten minutes away. Hang on, Elena. Hang on!"
By the time my car tore up to the emergency bay of Metropolitan General, rain was pouring in sheets. I ran through the automatic doors, ignoring the security guards who tried to stop me, and burst into the pediatric resuscitation wing.
The hallway was a nightmare of red flashing lights and running medical staff. Elena was standing outside Trauma Bay 2, pressed against the glass wall, her hands covered in her daughter’s spilled apple juice, her face pale as marble. Isabella was sitting on a plastic chair nearby, clutching her yellow blanket, crying silently.
Inside the room, four doctors and three nurses were frantically surrounding seven-year-old Sophia. Monitors were screaming in continuous, high-pitched alarms.
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!
"She's in V-Tach!" a doctor yelled inside. "Charge to fifty joules! Clear!"
THUMP.
Sophia’s small body bounced off the bed.
"No rhythm! Charge to seventy! Clear!"
THUMP.
Elena slumped against the glass, her knees giving out entirely. I caught her before she hit the floor, pulling her against my chest. She grabbed the lapels of my coat with a desperate, terrifying strength.
"Gerald! Make it stop! Make it stop!" she shrieked, her body convulsing with sobs. "That's his heart! That's Matthew’s heart inside her! She can't die! He can't die again!"
I looked through the glass, tears scalding my own eyes as I saw the flat line on the monitor screen. My hands shook as I held Elena tightly, wrapping my arms around her trembling shoulders.
"Listen to me, Sophia!" I bellowed against the glass, my voice echoing through the sterile corridor, louder than the medical alarms. "You fight! Do you hear me? You carry his heart, little girl! Don't you dare give up!"
Inside the bay, the doctor pressed the paddles to her small chest for the third time.
"Clear!"
THUMP.
The monitor went dead silent for one agonizing, endless second. Two seconds. Three seconds.
Then...
Beep.
Beep.
Beep... Beep... Beep.
"Sinus rhythm restored!" a nurse shouted inside. "BP coming back up! Get the high-dose IV steroids immediately!"
May you like
Elena gasped, her hands slipping from my coat as she fell to her knees, weeping uncontrollably against my legs. I fell to my knees beside her, pulling her and little Isabella into a tight, desperate embrace in the middle of the flooded hospital corridor.
Matthew’s heart was still beating.
