Chapter 2 - Surgery by Flashlight
The sub-basement of the abandoned east wing was freezing, smelling of damp concrete and old dust. It had once been used as an overflow psychiatric ward in the 1970s, but now it was nothing more than a graveyard for broken medical equipment and rusty filing cabinets.
Claire and Leo pushed the gurney down a dark corridor, guided only by the dim, flickering amber emergency lights. They rolled Nicholas into an old examination room. It was stark and desolate, containing only a cracked vinyl table, a rusty surgical lamp that wouldn't turn on, and a single metal sink that dripped water into the drain with a hollow metallic echo.
"We can't operate here," Leo stammered, pulling out his smartphone to use the flashlight. "It's not sterile. The air is filthy. If the shock doesn't kill him, sepsis will within forty-eight hours."
"If we don't stop the internal bleeding in his abdomen right now, he won't survive the next forty-eight seconds," Claire snapped, already ripping open the sterile surgical tray. "Leo, look at me. You are the chief resident of vascular surgery. You performed an emergency exploratory laparotomy last week under supervision. Tonight, I am your supervisor. Squeeze your phone between your shoulder and ear. We are doing this now."
Nicholas let out a low, ragged groan. His chest heaved as his lungs began to fill with fluid. The monitor on the gurney let out a flat, continuous alarm—his blood pressure was eighty over thirty. He was actively dying.
"Anesthetic," Leo muttered, his medical instincts finally taking over his fear. He drew a syringe of propofol, injecting it directly into Nicholas's central line. "He's under. Claire, I need you to bag him manually. I’m going in."
For the next two hours, the cold, forgotten room became a sanctuary of desperate genius. While Claire squeezed the manual resuscitation bag with one hand and held Leo’s smartphone flashlight with the other, Leo worked with a frantic, brilliant intensity.
Using the limited instruments they had smuggled, Leo made a long, clean incision down Nicholas's midline. Blood welled up instantly, dark and thick.
"Suction," Leo whispered, sweat dripping from his forehead despite the freezing air of the basement.
"No suction," Claire replied calmly, using sterile gauze to manually scoop the pooled blood out of the cavity. "Keep going, Leo. Find the bleeder."
"I see it!" Leo gasped, his fingers deep inside the abdomen. "The third bullet... it nicked the mesenteric artery. It's spraying. Hand me a vascular clamp. Hurry!"
Claire blindly reached down to the tray, her fingers wrapping around the cold steel of a Satinsky clamp. She handed it to Leo, who slipped it into the dark wound, clicking it shut over the torn artery.
Instantly, the frantic, terrifying spraying of blood stopped.
"Hemorrhage controlled," Leo breathed, leaning his forehead against his forearm for a brief second. "Oh my god. We actually stopped it."
"We're not done," Claire said, her voice steady but urgent. "He needs the blood. Connect the first unit of O-negative to his central line. Run it wide open."
As the rich, red lifeblood began to flow into Nicholas’s withered veins, the flatline alarm on the monitor began to change. Eighty over thirty became eighty-five over forty. Then ninety over fifty. The pale, deathly gray of his face began to give way to a faint, fragile flush of life.
Leo fell back against the concrete wall, sliding down to the floor, his scrubs completely drenched in the blood of Chicago’s most powerful criminal. "We did it. We actually performed a major vascular repair by a cell phone flashlight in an abandoned psych ward."
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Claire stood over Nicholas, checking his pupils and adjusting the IV line. She looked down at his face—unconscious, helpless, yet still carrying the rugged, intimidating aura of a man who ruled an empire.
"We saved his life, Leo," Claire whispered, her own strength finally beginning to waver as the adrenaline faded. "But now comes the hard part. We have to keep him hidden from the monsters who want to finish the job."
