Chapter 11 - The Spark of Life
"Charge to fifty joules! Clear!" Dr. Marcus yelled, slamming the small pediatric paddles down once more. Diego’s frail body arched off the mattress, his head snapping back, his uninjured arm falling limp over the edge of the white sheets.
Julian stood frozen in the doorway, his lungs seizing, his heart tearing into shreds. "Diego..." he whispered, the sound torn from the deepest, darkest chamber of his soul. "Don't leave me. Diego, fight!"
For four agonizing seconds, the flatline continued to scream its mechanical death knell across the sterile room.
Then, a microscopic blip appeared on the green monitor.
Beep.
Another pause. Julian fell to his knees beside the bed, burying his face into his son's cold, motionless hand.
Beep... Beep... Beep.
The chaotic, frantic alarm ceased, shifting back to the slow, steady rhythm of a fragile heartbeat.
"Sinus rhythm restored," the head nurse gasped, wiping a sleeve across her forehead, her hands trembling as she adjusted the emergency intravenous lines. "Blood glucose is rising. Sixty... seventy-five... stabilizing."
Dr. Marcus collapsed against the stainless-steel counter, catching his breath. He turned to Julian, his eyes wide with a mixture of horror and relief. "The saline drip was laced with massive units of concentrated rapid-acting insulin. If you hadn't called when you did, Julian... another sixty seconds, and his brain would have starved. He would have been gone."
Julian slowly lifted his head. His tears were gone, replaced by an aura so terrifyingly cold that the attending nurses instinctively backed away toward the hallway.
"Who hung that bag?" Julian asked, his voice a low, vibrating growl of absolute destruction.
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Dr. Marcus swallowed hard, glancing at the chart hung at the foot of the bed. "Nurse Practitioner Thomas. He was assigned to this floor two hours ago as a temporary registry relief."
Julian stood up. He walked to the window overlooking the hospital parking lot. Down below, a figure in dark blue medical scrubs was hurriedly sprinting toward a black sedan parked in the shadows of the ambulance bay.
