Chapter 3 - The Thirty Seconds
The bedroom turned into a battlefield.
Dr. Vance, his hands shaking so hard he almost dropped the glass syringe, scrubbed the rubber injection port on Vincent’s central line with an alcohol pad and slammed the needle home. He plunged ten milliliters of clear calcium gluconate directly into the vein leading straight to Vincent’s heart.
“Calcium is in!” Vance shouted, his voice cracking with desperation. “Thorne, get the insulin! Ten units of regular insulin, fifty milliliters of D50 dextrose!”
The monitor was screaming continuously now, a high-pitched, solid tone interrupted by jagged, wild spikes on the green screen that looked like a earthquake readout. Vincent’s body went rigid on the mechanical bed. His eyes rolled back into his head until only the yellowed whites were visible beneath his dark lashes. His back arched off the mattress, his fingers clawing blindly at the air, his chest heaving against the white restraint straps.
“Hold him down!” Dr. Reed yelled, grabbing Vincent’s left arm while two other specialists threw their weight across his legs. “He’s seizing!”
Maya didn't stand back. She stepped directly up to the head of the bed, her bare hands reaching down to grab Vincent’s right wrist. His skin felt like ice—clammy, wet, and burning with the violent electricity of a heart firing blind.
“Vincent,” Maya said, her face six inches from his ear, her voice dropping into a firm, grounding anchor that ignored the screaming alarms around them. “Stay still. Don't fight the calcium. Let it work.”
For a fraction of a second, amidst the violent thrashing, Vincent’s head snapped toward her voice. His dark, bloodshot eyes opened slightly, locking onto Maya’s face through a haze of agony and dying oxygen. He didn't see the twelve famous doctors panic-stricken around him. He saw the girl in the navy maid’s tunic holding his wrist with hands that didn't shake.
Dr. Thorne shoved Vance out of the way and injected the ten units of insulin followed by the heavy, thick push of fifty percent dextrose.
“Insulin and glucose are in!” Thorne panted, his forehead dripping sweat onto his silk tie. “We need sodium bicarbonate to shift the pH! Give me two ampoules of bicarb!”
“Check the rhythm!” Dr. Reed yelled, pointing a trembling finger at the screen.
The wild, jagged mountain spikes on the monitor began to slow down. The chaotic tremor of ventricular fibrillation faltered, stretched out, and for two terrifying seconds, flattened into a single, straight horizontal green line.
The room went dead silent. Nobody breathed. The only sound was the wind howling outside the heavy glass windows, driving rain against the dark sea cliffs.
One second. Two seconds.
Then, with a heavy, mechanical thud that echoed inside Vincent’s chest, his heart contracted.
A single, crisp, narrow peak appeared on the green screen.
Beep.
Two seconds later, another peak appeared, complete with a clean, gentle P-wave and a normal, rounded T-wave.
Beep.
Then another.
Beep... beep... beep...
The blood pressure monitor on his left arm inflated with a loud, rhythmic hum, cycling through its automated read cycle. The digital display flashed three numbers in bright amber LED light: 110/70. Heart rate: 72.
Dr. Vance collapsed back against the mahogany wall, his chest heaving, his silk tie crooked, his hands covered in sweat. He stared at the monitor as if he had just witnessed a dead man walk out of a tomb.
The other eleven specialists stood around the bed like stone statues, their collective intellect completely silenced by the clean, rhythmic green line beating steadily across the screen.
Maya didn't look at the monitor. She slowly released Vincent’s wrist, stepping back half a foot.
Vincent’s breathing had stabilized. The deep, rattling gasp in his throat had relaxed into a smooth, rhythmic intake of air through his nasal cannula. The gray, papery tint in his cheeks was already fading, replaced by a faint, warm flush of returning blood flow.
His head turned slowly on the white pillow. His dark eyes, clear now, unfocused but intensely aware, moved across the ceiling, bypassed the twelve men in expensive suits, and settled directly on Maya’s face.
He couldn't speak through the oxygen tube in his mouth, but his dark eyes held her with a terrifying, absolute clarity. He had heard her voice. He knew who had held his wrist while his heart was stopping.
The bedroom door slammed open with a heavy, metallic crash.
Three men stepped into the room. At their head was Dominic Costa—Vincent’s fifty-two-year-old uncle, a broad-shouldered man with slicked-back gray hair, wearing a dark wool coat over a three-piece suit. Behind him stood eight armed guards holding automatic weapons, their faces hard and grim.
Dominic’s eyes swept across the room, taking in the open crash cart, the dropped syringe needles on the rug, and the twelve doctors standing in chaotic disarray.
“What happened in here?” Dominic demanded, his voice low, gravelly, and full of immediate danger. “I heard the alarms from the lower hall. Is my nephew dead?”
Dr. Vance wiped his forehead with a trembling hand, opening his mouth to speak. “Dominic... there was an unexpected cardiac event... a sudden electrolyte shift—”
“He was poisoned,” Dr. Thorne interrupted, his voice sharp as a razor. He pointed at the empty glass ampoules sitting on the crash cart tray. “Someone injected concentrated potassium chloride into his secondary IV bag while we were downstairs. If we hadn't caught it thirty seconds ago, Vincent would be dead, and we would have called it natural heart failure.”
Dominic’s face went completely dead of emotion. His dark eyes narrowed into cold slits as he looked at the twelve specialists.
“Poisoned?” Dominic repeated softly. He turned his head slowly to look at the lead security guard, Frank. “Frank. Who was in this room during the dinner break?”
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Frank’s face went pale. He pointed a shaking finger toward the corner of the room. “Nobody, Boss! Just the doctors, the night nurse... and the maid.”
Dominic’s cold, murderous gaze moved across the floor, locking onto Maya.
