Wounds - Book 2 (10 page)

“I’m positive! I labeled these syringes myself!”

“Give him another one!”

“But it only had the opposite…!”

“Damn
you!” Kahayn snatched the syringe from the anesthetist and pushed in the drug herself.
“Do
what I say!”

Opposite.
Arin was so stunned, he nearly stopped in mid-compression.
The tray, she knocked over the tray…
“Idit?”

“Not now, Arin! Don’t you stop those compressions, you hear me? Do exactly what you’re doing, you understand? Do
exactly
what I say!”

Blate and Nerrit were on their feet. Blate banged open the intercom. “Colonel Kahayn, don’t you lose this man, don’t you lose him, or I’ll…!”

A tremendous crash, and then Blate was staggering back against Nerrit as the door into the viewing booth slapped open. A burst of gunfire roared into the air above his head: the distinctive staccato snap-crack of large-caliber rifle fire. Blate ducked as bullets tore a seam into the ceiling. Chunks of tile and plaster rained down on his back and pinged off his arms as he curled up, trying to protect his head. He heard the rifle fire sweep counterclockwise and then hit the glass with a hollow bap-bap-bap! He rolled away from the front of the booth just as there was a solid smack of a boot against the glass and then a thunderous smash as the glass gave way in a jagged shower. The air stank of burnt cordite and hot metal.

“Nobody move!” A woman’s voice. Blate looked up to see a giant of a woman: blond, with a scar arcing across a disfigured left jaw and no nose.

I know her, I know her!

Another bang of doors bursting wide open, and Blate jerked his gaze down to the operating room. Two people barreled through the doors leading to the recovery room: a slim, small woman with dark curls—
her skin, so pale, like Bashir
—and a broad, muscular man with a shock of long brown hair whom he recognized instantly.

“Kahayn!” Saad screamed. He leveled his rifle. “I’m here to send you to
hell!”

“No, Saad, no!” The small woman, by Saad’s side and then, my God, yes, Arin, too.

“Saad,
no!”
Arin screamed, lunging for Kahayn who stood to his left, by his side. Kahayn was shocked to immobility, the defibrillator paddles still in her hands. “Saad, you don’t understand! Don’t shoot her, don’t
shoot!”

But Saad fired.

Chapter
11

T
he rifle was set to three-round bursts, and when Saad pulled the trigger, the bullets screamed from the barrel. The distance was so scant that Lense heard the crack at the precise instant the bullets hit.

The first hit the woman with the defibrillator paddles. A rose of brown blood blossomed on her surgical gown, and she went down without a sound.

The second hit the man with black spectacles who was screaming at Saad to stop—
Arin, that’s got to be Arin
—because he’d lunged for the woman to push her aside. Lense saw blood spray erupt from the hump of Arin’s shoulder, and then he crashed to the floor.

The third hit no one because everyone had hit the deck, and smashed into the opposite wall.

“No, Saad, stop!” she cried. “What are…?” But then she saw Julian. She sprinted for the table; her gaze jittered over his body: the endotracheal tube, the IV tubes, and his scalp with purple lines to mark incisions, they’d shaved his head….

She spun around and snagged what must be the anesthetist by the collar. “You, what’s going on?”

“He’s in arrest.” The anesthetist was a pruned, wizened man, and when he spoke, his lips quivered. “Looked like heart block, followed by v-fib; Kahayn was just going to defibrillate!”

“No!” A man’s voice, hitching with pain. Arin, on the floor, on the opposite side of the table and struggling to his knees. He was panting, and his face was gray. “She put something in the dye and she switched out the drugs!”

“What?” cried the anesthetist.

“What?” Saad said.

“On purpose, she did it on purpose! She knocked over the tray; she must’ve rigged the other tray, mislabeled the syringes. That’s why she put him on the cooling blanket, to protect his brain when she stopped his heart!”

“Oh, no,” said Saad. His voice was stricken. “What have I…?”

Of course.
Lense’s mind raced.
Bring his metabolic rate down; the brain will shut down, but it won’t die; like cold water drowning, he can still be revived even after hours; that must’ve been what she planned….

“I’m a doctor, but you have to help me,” she said to Arin. She threw a frantic, helpless look at all the drugs and machines. “I’m out of my element here; what do I do?”

“Keep calm.” Arin’s face was twisted with pain as he clambered to his feet and blood sheeted over his fingers from his shoulder. “Just do exactly what I say.”

The big woman had made her first mistake: not searching him. Nothing Blate could do to capitalize on that yet. Maybe, though, soon. For now Blate watched, his fury growing with every passing moment: as Arin, that traitor, led the woman—
like Bashir, exactly like him
—through each step. Switching off the cooling blanket, setting it to warm Bashir’s body as she administered drugs and then sent electric bolts charging through Bashir’s body. Saad roughed the anesthetist back to his feet to monitor Bashir, keep the ventilator going. Five minutes, ten, and then fifteen…

And they brought Bashir back to life, an inch at a time.

First the hesitant, irregular blips from the cardiac monitor and then the blips steadied, picked up speed. He heard the anesthetist sing out a blood pressure, and he saw the woman, the one like Bashir, and her wet cheeks and knew she wept with relief.

But Blate had eyes, and so he saw many things at once: not just Bashir but off to his left, the blond woman; out of his right, Nerrit, who’d edged closer.

“How soon can you move Bashir?” The blond woman. She moved closer to the blown-out window. “Saad, we’ve got to get out of here and—”

She was interrupted by a shout. “My God!” It was Arin, and Blate’s right eye saw Arin crouched over Kahayn. “She’s still
alive!”

Saad and the woman with the curls, simultaneously: “What?”

“What?” said the blonde and, out of his left eye, Blate saw her start forward.

That’s when the big woman made her second and last mistake. Because he moved into her blind spot. And he had eyes.

Saad watched Lense revive Bashir, and he held his ground, his rifle up, covering the others. But he felt numb. Kahayn had tried to
save
Bashir….

Because she couldn’t think of another way, and she didn’t tell Arin, or else he’d have let us know. She must’ve thought I’d never believe her, not after Janel…

So when Arin called out that Kahayn lived, his heart squeezed with a sudden spasm of hope. Yes, maybe there was some atonement for this wretched business, some way of letting Kahayn know that her efforts hadn’t been in vain, and if they could get out Arin, and Kahayn,
too…

He glanced up when Mara shouted, and then he saw Blate whip around, a pistol in his right hand.

“Mara!” He swung his rifle, trying to catch Blate before he could fire. “Mara, look
out!”

The viewing booth boomed with a roar like thunder.

Blate saw Saad out of his right eye. Saw the big man pivot, that rifle come up. Saad’s bullets were faster. But Blate had a head start, and he was closer. He lunged for the big woman and pulled the trigger two seconds before Saad fired. His pistol jerked, and there was a spurt of yellow-orange muzzle flash. The bullet bored into the woman’s right eye and kept going. Her head exploded in a cloud of fine brown mist and brain and bone.

But Blate was already down, rolling for the door. Something hummed over his head and then there were three sodden
whops
as the bullets slammed into Nerrit.

Blate didn’t stop. He banged out of the booth, his left hand already dragging out his radio to raise the alarm.

Lense saw Mara’s head blow apart, and then a figure barreled out of the viewing booth. “Saad! He’s getting away!”

“You can’t catch him!” Arin’s teeth were clenched, biting back pain. “Too far from here to the hall! Saad, you’ve got to clear out, you’ve got to
go!”

Saad swayed, turned. He swiped his streaming eyes. “Elizabeth,” he said hoarsely, “can you move Bashir?”

She shook her head. Julian was breathing on his own now but still unconscious. “You’d have to carry him. I could cover you, but I don’t know…”

“No.” Saad was in control again. He flicked his rifle at the nurses and anesthetist, who were still cowering. “You, get out.” When they didn’t move, he said, “I don’t ask twice.” Then, as they scurried out, Saad turned to Arin. “You, too.”

“I’m staying.” Arin started wrapping his shoulder. “I die now, I die later. It’s all the same to Blate. And Kahayn’s still alive. I can’t leave her.”

“We’re not dead yet,” said Saad. He shouldered his rifle. “Elizabeth, help me move Bashir to the floor…easy now,” he said, as they slid Bashir off and eased him down.

It was only then that Lense realized Bashir was totally naked beneath the sheets. He was starting to shiver now as his body fought off the hypothermia. She swaddled him in sheets and drapes. Then she clutched his chilled hands in hers and put her mouth to his ear. “I’m here, Julian; it’s Elizabeth. Don’t worry; it’s going to be all right.” She clamped down on tears. “I’m going to get you out of here.” She didn’t know if he heard. She didn’t know if it were even true.

Saad jerked a metal gurney onto its side, swinging it around between them and the door that led to pre-op. Then he kicked the brakes on the operating room table and clattered it to the operating room doors. Bending at the knees, he wrapped his arms around the single, off-center pedestal, wedged his right shoulder under the table and heaved. The table was blocky and very heavy, but it toppled with a loud, metallic bang. Saad braced it against the door, then scuttled back and began overturning instrument trays and maneuvering the ventilator to make a barrier.

“I can hold them off for a bit,” he said. “Elizabeth, can you help Kahayn?”

Lense bent over the woman. Kahayn was on her back. Her neck veins bulged. Lense ripped open Kahayn’s gown, using the surgical scissors again to split the gown in front and then slit her scrubs in two. The wound was centered directly over the lower part of her thick, armorlike sternum: a round ugly hole punched into her flesh. But there was no exit wound.

Suddenly, there was a squall of static and then a frantic voice coming over the radio on Saad’s left shoulder. The sound was so loud and so unexpected that Lense’s heart nearly jumped out of her mouth. Saad listened, then shouted, “Say again?”

“Soldiers!” A voice scratchy with static. Cracks of gunfire. “There are too many, we can’t hold them off, we can’t—”

“Doren!” Saad keyed his radio again. Got nothing but static. “Doren, do you read me?” More static.

Lense went cold.
Soldiers on the way. They’ll kill Arin but not Saad. They need Saad, and they’ll probably keep Bashir and me alive so they can—

“Pericardial tamponade,” said Arin.

“What?” Lense looked at Arin. “What did you say?”

“Her neck veins, the entry wound. She’s got pericardial tamponade; must’ve hit the heart!” Still clutching his wrapped shoulder, he shuffled closer on his knees. “If you can decompress the pericardial sac, maybe we can fish out the bullet and repair the tear.”

“Here?
Now?”

“There’s no time,” said Saad.

“I haven’t got anything better to do,” said Arin. He looked at Lense. “Bashir is stable. Please.”

She took a deep breath, nodded. She helped Arin struggle into a right glove, and then snapped on a pair of her own.

“Go for a subxiphoid approach,” said Arin. “Just make a window with a scalpel.”

“This won’t even be close to sterile.” Lense felt for the notch at the junction of Kahayn’s ribs and drew a scalpel in short vertical. Blood welled up and Arin sponged it away with his good hand. She cut again, and this time she was through skin and into skeletal muscle.

“Easy,” said Arin.

She cut again. There was the staccato sputter of gunfire not far now, just down the corridor from the operating room.

“Hurry.”
Saad, by her side, his body angled, trying to shield her.

“Do what it takes,” said Arin. “Don’t hurry. We’re not going anywhere.”

“There’s no time!” Saad scuttled closer. “I want you out of here, Elizabeth! Leave Bashir. You and Arin just get out.”