Chapter 8 - The Edge of Life
"Marcus!" Nora shouted over the howling wind and sirens. "Give me your knife! Now!"
Marcus, pale and fading, managed to unclip a tactical folding knife from his belt and toss it into the back.
Nora caught it. Her hands, which had been stained with wine twenty-four hours ago, were now covered in Julian Mercer’s blood. She ripped Julian’s silk tie from his neck, tearing open his dress shirt.
The right side of his chest was swollen, drum-tight with trapped, pressurized air that was actively suffocating his internal organs.
"Julian, hold on," she pleaded, tears mixing with the melting snow on her face. "This is going to hurt like hell."
She needed a hollow conduit to decompress the thoracic cavity. Her eyes darted wildly around the wreckage.
Her gaze fell on Julian’s solid silver Montblanc pen lying on the floorboard.
She grabbed the pen, unscrewed the ink cartridge, and discarded it, leaving a hollow, rigid silver tube.
She took Marcus’s tactical knife, wiped the blade against Julian’s torn, clean undershirt, and located the second intercostal space in the midclavicular line on his right chest.
She didn't hesitate. She couldn't afford to.
She plunged the blade between the ribs, twisting it slightly to create an opening into the pleural space.
Julian’s body convulsed, a ragged, agonized gasp tearing from his throat even in his semi-conscious state.
Immediately, Nora shoved the hollow silver pen casing into the incision.
*HIIIIISSSSSSSSS.*
A violent, explosive rush of trapped air and dark blood hissed out through the silver tube.
The sound was the most beautiful thing Nora Bennett had ever heard.
Almost instantly, Julian’s chest settled. The tracheal deviation corrected itself. His shallow, dying gasps deepened into ragged, rhythmic breaths. His eyelids fluttered, his pupils reacting to the flashing police lights illuminating the snowstorm.
"I’ve got you," Nora sobbed, leaning over him, pressing a sterile dressing from the car’s emergency kit around the pen to maintain the seal. "I’ve got you, Julian. Don't you dare close your eyes."
Julian looked up through the crimson haze of pain. His vision focused on her tear-streaked, fierce face. Even in the jaws of death, surrounded by broken glass and twisted steel, she was commanding the universe to obey her will.
His trembling hand lifted, his bloody fingers gently touching her jawline, brushing away a tear.
"I knew it..." Julian breathed, his voice a ghost of its former power. "A queen."
Reinforcement vehicles screeched to a halt around the wreck. Doors flew open. Heavily armed Mercer security personnel, followed closely by tactical paramedics, swarmed the vehicle.
"Step back! Step back!" a paramedic shouted, pulling open the Maybach’s door.
"He has a penetrating right thoracic wound with a tension pneumothorax!" Nora barked, her voice snapping with absolute authority. "I placed a makeshift needle thoracostomy with an open conduit. Do not remove the casing until you have a chest tube and a Pleurovac ready! Set suction to negative twenty centimeters of water! Get two large-bore IVs in his antecubital veins, run warm saline, and prepare four units of O-negative blood!"
The paramedic stared at the silver pen protruding from Julian’s chest, then looked at Nora’s blood-soaked emerald gown.
"Who the hell are you?" the paramedic gasped.
May you like
"She’s Dr. Nora Bennett," Julian whispered from the floor, his voice faint but commanding enough to silence the storm. "And if you drop her orders... I’ll have your badge."
***
