Surge (55 page)

“I’m a-alr-right,” Cory coughs out and tries to shove me off.

I ignore him and starts dragging his stubborn ass to the door. As soon as I go to open it, it’s kicked in and I see John, Tommy and Carlos topple in. Three sets of eyes take in the scene and move to intercept. Carlos snatches Olivia from me, John slings his arm around my waist and Tommy assist Cory out of the house. Five pairs of male feet stumble their way down the crowded front steps, where two collapse on the ground at the bottom. I feel John hook his arms under mine, and start to drag me further back. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Cory getting the same treatment from Tommy, as Carlos jogs away with Olivia.

“Jared!” Sarah screams. John drops his hold from me about a hundred feet away from the flame engulfed house.

“I’m alright!” I call back and start coughing.

John pounds his fist on my back until I stop. I think he did more harm than good, but he was only trying to help, so I won’t kill him. Unless he does it again. Cory’s still hacking away, but he manages to crawl over to Olivia and uncover her face.

Underneath the blanket, she has a bag wrapped loosely in her arms on her chest, so Cory throws it aside. Once it’s out of the way, he starts shaking his head and pressing on her chest with a weak hand. It takes my oxygen deprived brain a minute to figure out why the depraved fuck’s feeling her up, and I’m starting to become more pissed as the seconds tick by with his hand still fondling her. But then it clicks into place, and I get it.

He isn’t copping a feel at all, Olivia’s not fucking breathing.

<~~~<~~~
~~~>~~~>

“H-help her,” I manage to choke out.

John’s eyes follow mine, and he shouts for Akio, while shoving Cory out of the way. Once it’s cleared, John puts his ear near Olivia’s mouth before tilting her chin back, and taking over Cory’s poor attempt at chest compressions. He counts out thirty before puffing two breaths of air into her mouth. I can see the worry on John’s face as he gets nothing, and starts the process over again. Knowing that John, who as I mentioned earlier was a lifeguard for four years and certified in CPR training for eight, is worried about her condition makes me ten times more panicked. I crawl my own way over to hold her cold hand in mine.

Cold hands equal death, so I immediately start massaging warmth into her fingers. I know somewhere in my faulty brain that this is just fruitless effort if she isn’t breathing, but it calms me a little to do something other than sit there and just watch. Picking up her hand, I see a flash as something hits the ground. Looking down, I find that goddamn bullet which Olivia’s been saving for Cole. Knowing that she would be pissed if she lost it, I stuff into the backpack Cory tossed aside, before squeezing her icy fingers. John continues his compressions until he reaches another thirty count, and puffs a few more breaths into her mouth. Akio reaches Olivia before John begins compressing again. He takes over the third set and lets a weary John take a rest.

Cory’s coughing up black phlegm with tears streaming down his face. I know how wrecked I’ll be if we lose her, and I can only guess that Cory will be destroyed. I don’t say any of that stupid shit that people do to make you feel better. It doesn’t change the fact that your loved one is in severe danger of dying, so I take the other route and offer physical comfort by gripping his shoulder and sharing Olivia’s hand with him.

Cory spares a look at me, before clinging to her hand, and returning his attention to Olivia. Akio’s still performing compressions on her chest to a thirty count. I know that the odds of saving someone lessens by the second, so I’m praying with whatever little faith I have left that whoever the fuck is in charge up there, throws a little help my way for once. I’m an orphan living in the Apocalypse, surely I deserve a little bit of mercy? If not, he can go fuck himself. I won’t ever think about him again.

Akio’s breathing the second breath into her mouth, when Olivia’s beautiful eyes open wide and she turns to heave to the left. Be it divine intervention, or just plain coincidence, I don’t give a fuck; nor do I know who moves faster, me or Cory, but I lunge over to one side and he takes up the other. Both of us immediately start running hands over her hair, face and arms to make sure she’s really alive. When my hands are still on her and she isn’t punching me in the face, I finally glance up to meet her eyes. They’re closed again and I can hear her rasping for breath. Taking up Cory’s method, I pull her onto my lap and tip her chin back to try and open up her air way.

Cory’s still cupping her cheeks and cursing her for scaring him, while I’m trying to keep her breathing. John and Akio’s effort will be for nothing if we can’t keep her lungs functioning. There’s no doubt about it, Olivia’s breathing definitely doesn’t sound healthy, and Akio must agree, since he calls for his kit. How the fuck it survived the fire, I’ll never know, but I don’t care so long as he has something to help her breathe. Oscar passes him the bag and Akio immediately starts rummaging through. Coming up with a scalpel and some tubing, he pushes Cory back and looks at me.

“Hold her still,” Akio orders.

“Why?” I ask uneasily.

“I need to put in a temporary tracheostomy,” he answers.

“A what?” Cory’s ragged voice demands. “You’re going to slit her fucking throat?”

“No,” Akio denies and shakes his head. “I’m going to cut a small hole in the trachea and put this tube in so that she can breathe. She may die otherwise.”

“Then fucking do it already!” Cory shouts and goes into a coughing fit.

Cory starts clutching his hair in both hands, and muttering that
‘he can’t lose her’
in between coughs. Whitney goes over and whispers nonsense to him, and massages his back to try and soothe him. I doubt it’ll work, but it will at least keep him occupied until this is over. How I wish I could be distracted. But then Olivia would be going through this alone and I can’t allow that, so I nut up and shut up.

“I’m serious, Jared,” Akio repeats and shows me his solemn eyes. “If she moves, I’ll cut something that I’m not supposed to, or go too deep.” I nod and lean my head down enough to kiss her forehead.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

I feel Olivia’s shaking hand brush my hair back, before she meets my eyes. Hers are frightened, but she nods for me to do whatever I need to. I pull Olivia over to lay completely across my lap, so that her head is resting in the crook of my left arm and tighten my grip around her with my right one to keep her still for the duration of the procedure. Akio cuts another one of her turtlenecks and pulls the soot covered gauze away from the stitches to expose the area he needs.

The Doc runs his fingers about two inches diagonally down from the end of her vertical stitches, and presses slightly before nodding at whatever he finds. Pulling out gloves, he snaps the latex into place, and takes out the rubbing alcohol. He then pours it on some sterile gauze that came fresh out of its paper packaging, and swipes away the debris to clear the skin in prep for the half assed surgery. When he raises the scalpel to make the incision, I stay his hand.

“Aren’t you going to numb it first?” I ask.

“I don’t have anything,” he responds and nods at a different bag from the one he usually carries. “This was the kit in the BMW.”

“No painkillers, booze, nothing?”

When Akio shakes his head, I want to scour the woods, find the bitch responsible and rip her limb from limb. I bite my lip until I taste blood, but ignore the sting as I nod for Akio to get it over with. This better fucking work, is all I can think of as Akio once more puts the scalpel to her skin. The point of the blade is aimed down and held to the area right above where her clavicles meet. This time I don’t stop him as he presses it in and blood starts pooling around it. Olivia’s wheezing picks up, and she tenses, but doesn’t move otherwise. She’s a hell of a lot tougher than I could ever be, because I probably would have started thrashing immediately once I felt the cool metal touch my skin.

Akio doesn’t even so much as look up from his work to see how she’s doing. I don’t know if it’s out of concentration, or if he just wants this done as fast as possible. Whatever the reason, he doesn’t pause his motion of slowly pressing the scalpel further underneath her skin. Once it’s at the depth he wants, he widens the hole a little and uses tweezers to pry the skin apart. It’s fucking disgusting, and I want to puke, but at the same time, I can’t look away.

It’s like before when there was a huge pile up on the highway, as soon as you got to the point in the traffic jam that you could see the accident, your eyes were glued to the window and you nearly rear ended the guy in front of you so that you can catch a peek at the victims. Sick fucks that we are, we like to witness the suffering of others and say,
’sucks to be them.’
We bob our heads to the radio as we open up our engines and tear down the now cleared highway, continuing on with our lives as if we didn’t just witness someone’s spine being scraped off the ground. Come on, you know you’ve done it. Everyone has, and right now is one of those moments.

The woman I love, and yes I finally said the other four letter curse word, so shut the fuck up already. I’ll puzzle it out later, since I happen to be pretty freaking busy right now. Anyway, the woman I love is currently struggling to breathe and in some of the worst pain I could possibly imagine. The only thing that I can think of as to why Olivia’s not turning that scalpel around on Akio or me is that she knows she needs it to survive, so she grits her teeth and is bearing through it. Like I said, she’s much tougher than I am and I’m not afraid to admit it. Not even out loud if I have to. Okay, maybe a little bit out loud, pride and all that bull.

I know, I know, get out of my fucking head, stop being a pussy and get back in the game. Manning up as much as I can when absolutely do not want to, I take a deep breath and look at the horror show that is Olivia’s throat. Akio’s got clamps and tweezers holding flaps of bloody skin back to expose some pulsing thing underneath. Fighting the urge to vomit on his work, I swallow back the bile in an acidic gulp and cling a little tighter to Olivia. It looks like I’m trying to comfort her, but in reality, I’m comforting myself. I’m going to need to snuggle up with her in the bed to fight away my own nightmares after this. I’ll even take a knee to the balls if I have to, but I know I’ll need to be even closer to her than I have been the past three days to ensure that I didn’t lose her.

Giving her one more tight squeeze, I ease up a little and glance back at the hole Akio’s carving out. Not carving, that’s what that cunt did and set this shit in motion, God I hope she’s been eaten by now. Akio is surgically stretching, there that’s better, he’s surgically stretching the hole to get at the pulsing red thing he uncovered. The hole he puts into what can only be the trachea is no bigger than a dime, but already I can feel the rasping Olivia’s back was vibrating against thigh start to ease away. It’s when he pulls out the tube and starts inserting it into the incision that the wheeze becomes something like when I used to blow spit balls through a straw. Which is essentially what Olivia’s doing in reverse. Instead out blowing out, she’s breathing in the precious oxygen that she was being deprived.

The tube’s sticking out by about three inches when Akio pulls out some gauze and medical tape. He carefully swipes some antibacterial cream around the protruding tube before wrapping it with gauze. Taping the edges in place, Akio uses surgical scissors to cut the tube, so now there’s only about an inch of it sticking out. If you’ve ever seen those commercials for quitting cigarettes where the lady has that hole in her throat, that’s pretty much how Olivia looks like right now. Except there’s a pure white background on her creamy skin with a piece of plastic straw sticking out.

But I ignore all that and look at the beautiful woman who sat still and bore it all. Her tiny nose is scrunched up along with her tightly closed eyes and I can see tear trails cascading down her soot covered cheeks and neck. I brush my thumb under her eyes to wipe away her tears. Feeling the new sensation, her eyes open and they’re still filled with unspilled water. I can’t resist the urge to kiss her, so I kiss her forehead instead, since I won’t kiss her lips until she can cooperate or punch me.

“You did great,” I whisper as I pull and her wide eyes meet mine. “Are you alright now? Can you breathe?”

“She can’t talk Jared,” Akio informs me as he packs away his materials.

“As in ever, or until this is better?” I ask without looking away from Olivia. Her eyes are darting all over my face, maybe I’m dirty or something, I don’t know. But she can go ahead and look all she wants, I don’t care since I’m doing the same thing to her.

“I don’t think it’ll be forever,” he answers. “Just until I can remove the tube, that should close up on its own.”

“So, she’ll be okay?” Cory inquires in a strained voice.

It’s most likely a combination of stress and smoke inhalation. Speaking of, I force myself to glance away from Olivia and look at our temporary safe house. Or should I say pile of ashes. The roof has caved in on the left side, when I think of Olivia and Cory being trapped there, I want to howl like a wounded dog. I’m still staring at the wreckage when I feel a hand touch my hairline and flinch. Not from surprise, but because that fucking hurt.