The Serophim Breach (The Serophim Breach Series) (35 page)

“So . . . what do we do?” he asked.

Karen turned to look at the girl. She looked too small to have been so violent those few hours ago. Once again, her resolve wavered, and she wondered if there might not be another way. Maybe if they went back to Brandon, they could find something . . .

A wave of sudden nausea swept over her, and her knees threatened to buckle. The edges of her vision contracted, her peripheral vision going dark, and she swayed slightly, a light ringing in her ears. She lifted a hand to her head and felt Thad supporting her left elbow. His voice was muffled behind the ringing and the sound of her own pulse; she couldn’t make out what he was saying, but he sounded concerned.

Just as suddenly as it had washed over her, the feeling ebbed, and the edges of her sight returned.

“Karen? Sit down.” Thad’s voice was raised, and he was bent over, looking into her face with wide eyes.

She sank down onto the edge of Leilani’s bed and held her head in her hands for a few moments.

“What happened?” Thad finally asked. “How long has it been since you slept or ate anything?”

She tried to gather herself, swallowing hard to clear her throat. The feeling of sickness was gone, replaced instead by a weakness that reminded her of her first few months of medical school, when she had functioned on four hours of sleep for every thirty-six-hour shift until she had collapsed on the couch in her tiny apartment and slept for eighteen hours straight.

“Tired, maybe,” she said simply, knowing the answer didn’t quite make sense. But she knew, and so did Thad. Whatever had altered Brandon’s blood and stopped Leilani’s heart was beginning to affect her. There was no way to know how much time she had left, but it was not prudent to assume it was much.

“Charge the defibrillator,” she commanded wearily, pushing herself back up to her feet. Gingerly, she slipped the attachment from the girl’s finger, and the monitor immediately showed a flat line, followed closely by the alarm that would normally bring the nurses running. But she knew there were only two left on this floor, and they were likely far enough away that they wouldn’t hear it in time. Even if they showed up, she’d send them away with her normal authority, off to fetch her some kind of intravenous treatment. She switched off the alarm, just to be safe. The printout wouldn’t show cardiac arrest or any kind of anomaly, but at least she would have a flat line, and that was a start.

The hair on the back of her neck lifted on end at the sound of the defibrillator charging behind her. There wasn’t any kind of charge building in the room, she knew, but it still felt as though her follicles stood higher as the whine increased. She wondered if something about the electricity was causing a kind of instinctual reaction in whatever was in her blood, but quickly dismissed that as ridiculous, the musings of an overstressed, injured doctor about to attempt to bring an already living person back to life.

Thad pushed the crash cart closer to Leilani’s bed as Karen pulled her gown down to reveal the bare flesh of her chest. Then she lifted the paddles from their cradles and pressed one firmly into the left side of the girl’s rib cage, the other just above her right breast. She glanced up at Thad, who watched grimly, his jaw clenched tightly. He gave her a tight nod.

“Clear,” she said quietly, routinely, and pressed the button.

Leilani’s body arched up in a distorted contraction, then slumped back to the mattress limply. Automatically, Karen glanced at the monitor before she remembered that she would need to feel for the girl’s pulse manually. She put a hand to her chest and waited, feeling nothing—not the ragged breathing or the beating of a heart. Quickly, she pressed her fingers into the girl’s neck, searching for the pulse and finding nothing.

“Shit,” she said, replacing the paddles. At the last second, she scooped up the finger monitor and pinched it back onto Leilani’s finger; the screen remained in flat line.

“Clear!” she said, more intensely, and shocked the girl again. Her body lifted up in the same contraction, then flopped back down. They checked the screen again and watched as the blip that translated to the shock slid off, followed only by the same flat line.

“Increase the charge,” she growled, not turning around to ensure that Thad had followed her command. She waited until the machine beeped ready, then replaced the paddles and sent another charge into the girl’s body.

“Nothing,” Thad said.

“Damn it,” she hissed, dropping the paddles. She moved to stand over Leilani’s body and started chest compressions, counting to herself as she worked to manually beat the girl’s heart, ignoring the feeling of the ribs bending beneath her weight.

“Come on,” she whispered fervently. But nothing changed.

“Call the OR!” she demanded, continuing to work at the girl. She knew that was useless; the last time she had been downstairs, the ER had been full, the military had been setting up triage units outside, and her attack had led to panic among the waiting patients. That had been over an hour ago; it was impossible to imagine what it looked like down there now. They had even shut off the elevators to prevent unauthorized personnel from accessing the higher floors of the hospital. There was no way the operating rooms weren’t full already, and she didn’t know what could be done at this point anyway.

Finally, she felt Thad’s hand on her arm, and she let her hands fall to her sides. She couldn’t understand; why would it bring Brandon back, and kill this girl? Why would it work on one, and not the other? There wasn’t anything else that could have made the difference between them.

She turned on her heel and stalked to the other side of the room, leaving the body behind her. It was impossible to deny that her hopes had been high; despite the unsavory idea of going through a painful electric shock and momentarily being dead, the alternative prospect seemed much worse. And now her experiment had cost a girl her life.
Foolish, impulsive,
she berated herself.

“Karen,” Thad called to her, “stop. Calm down. There’s something to be learned here. We just have to figure out what it is.”

She quelled her revulsion at his clinical attitude, telling herself that he was right, that at least they could pull some information from this that might lead them toward another solution. Pulling in a deep breath, she turned to face him again.

“It’s got to be time,” he said simply. She just looked at him, puzzled.

“You said that when Brandon went into cardiac arrest, that’s when you did the defibrillation, right?”

She nodded. “Yes, immediately.”

“And Leilani also went into cardiac arrest, right?”

“Right. But the power went out—”
“And by the time it came back up, she registered a pulse again.”

Karen’s eyes began to clear, and she stood up straight.

“That’s right.” Karen glanced at the clock. “So the heart has been dead for over nine hours.”

“And we don’t know what kind of effect the drug or the technology might have on the muscle system,” Thad continued. “I mean, there’s never been a case like this. We had no idea what to expect.”

“So . . . this is all time sensitive,” she concluded.

Thad nodded, his eyebrows lifting suddenly.

“And . . . holy shit, I didn’t even think about this . . . you saw that second sample from Brandon. He still has no white cells. None. I presumed that once whatever was suppressing them was gone, his body would start manufacturing them again. But maybe once this thing shuts down a system, it’s shut down for good. You know?”

His face paled as he considered the implications, and Karen felt the first real tendrils of fear clutch at her stomach. Even if the drug was stopped, the effects might be irreversible. And if that meant no white blood cells, it also meant those infected weren’t long for this world. Without a defense against infection, even the most benign of bacteria would quickly become fatal; the kidneys would struggle to function, and the liver would be overwhelmed. The list of complications expanded in her mind, and she let out a long exhale.

“Tell me about it,” Thad answered, his eyes on the floor. She could tell he was thinking all the same things she was and had come to the same obvious conclusion. They were dealing with something that even when cured was incredibly dangerous, and probably meant other epidemics would follow.

“We have got to get word out. Get the CDC up to speed . . . something,” he said.

“How? Phones are down, Internet is down, even the cell towers are out,” Karen responded. They had tried contacting the mainland in every way possible several hours earlier and hit a wall each time. The generators that powered the hospital kept the computers and phone running, but without power to the island, there was no way to take advantage of their position.

“Hey,” Thad said, suddenly looking up, “what about the guys outside?”

Neither one of them had even seen the military triage tent that they had been told was going up outside, but Karen had seen a few young men in fatigues standing near the ER doors when she had been downstairs. They had seemed friendly enough, offering help to those showing up injured and direction to those who had just come to the hospital out of fear. She was certain that the bright lights would be a welcome beacon to the people of the surrounding neighborhoods.

“They’ve got to have some way to talk to the mainland, right?” Thad continued. “Or at least the Big Island?”

She nodded thoughtfully. A plan was beginning to take shape in her head, and she knew that if Thad was right about the military’s communications, they’d be one step closer to controlling this event.

“You’re right. They’ve got to have some independent means of communication. So we go to them once we have this theory confirmed,” she said.

Thad surveyed her face.

“Isn’t that . . . don’t we have it confirmed? It doesn’t work.”

She shook her head, holding his gaze.

“No. It doesn’t work after the heart has stopped for a certain period of time. And maybe that’s not even true, but we don’t have a good way to test it right now.”

He eyed her carefully as she paced slowly along the back wall.

“But it worked with Brandon. Defibrillation started his heart, and as best we can tell, killed the nanites in his bloodstream. So if we test it on one more subject and get the same result . . .”

Immediately Thad was on his feet, towering over her.

“Are you crazy? We’re
not
trying this on you!” he shouted, jabbing his finger at her face.

She held up her hands defensively and said, “Why not? You know as well as I do we need someone recently infected who’d give consent to the treatment. You want to go explain to an already panicked room of people what’s going on and ask for volunteers for an experimental treatment that thus far has a fifty-fifty rate of success? I sure don’t. And I also don’t want to end up like her.” Karen gestured toward Leilani’s pale figure. “And I don’t want to end up like Brandon. If his white cells don’t return, how the hell is he going to survive?”

She realized with a start that she was shouting; her eyes narrowed, and her face screwed up in anger. Thad was watching her warily, both concern and anxiety in his eyes.

“What?” she shouted, feeling the fury boiling in her chest.

He didn’t react for a long moment, but just watched her face as she tried desperately to control her breathing, to slow her heart.
Probably spreading it faster
, she thought to herself.

“Do we have an electroshock unit?” he finally asked.

Karen considered this briefly, then shook her head.

“No. Psych doesn’t use those anymore, at least not here. I can’t think of any other department that would have something like that, and really, we don’t have time for a scavenger hunt.” She steeled herself and did everything she could to make her face impassive. “The defibrillation is our only option.”

Thad argued with her perfunctorily for a few more minutes, but eventually, after a long moment of silence, she saw that she had won. They moved the defibrillator to a room down the hallway, where she set up an assisted breather, a solar blanket, and a heart monitor next to the bed. As she removed her jewelry, she explained to him what he would need to do if her heart stopped, who to call, and what to say. He listened, nodding, as she talked, and she hoped he was truly paying attention. People survived electric shock all the time, she knew; but people also died from it every day.

She sent him out of the room as she slipped out of her clothes and into a hospital gown, cringing slightly at the idea of Thad seeing her bare chest. Finally, she stretched out on the gurney and called him back in.

It wasn’t until he set the unit to charge and she felt the hair lift on her neck again that the tears sprang up in her eyes. She wiped them away quickly, while Thad’s head was still turned, determined not to sway him from their decided course. If this didn’t work, she’d likely be dead in a few days anyway. Suddenly, she remembered Brandon.

“Thad, if something happens, I need you to move Brandon to a quarantined room. Restrict his diet, like you would for a leukemia patient. And you’ll have to bring someone else on board. Tell them everything we know so far.”

She worried briefly that her acknowledgment of the danger had pushed Thad too far when he didn’t respond. But finally, without looking at her, he answered that he would.

He moved to stand next to her with the paddles in hand.

“It’s on the lowest setting?” she asked, and he nodded.

She mentally ran over her body, checking for any jewelry she might not have removed, knowing full well it was all sitting on the counter on the other side of the room. Gingerly, she pulled the gown down to reveal her chest, avoiding Thad’s eyes. Karen pulled in a deep breath, feeling the stretch of her lungs as she breathed deeply for the first time in several hours. A small part of her lamented that it was stale and sterile hospital air she sucked in and not the heavy, fragrant breeze of the island.

She exhaled and closed her eyes, waiting for the cold of the paddles against her skin. The contact still surprised her, and she felt Thad wince when she jumped.