Chapter 3 - The Edge of Death
|
The monitor in Trauma Room One emitted a shrill, continuous tone that pierced the sterile air.
Red warning lights flashed across the consoles surrounding Arabella’s bed.
“She’s crashing!” a female physician shouted, shoving a crash cart forward.
“V-fib! Charge the paddles to two hundred!”
Vincent froze in the doorway, his breath locked inside his chest.
Arabella’s body looked terribly small against the wide hospital mattress.
Her skin had turned the color of damp parchment, and her lips were tinged with a faint shade of blue.
The brown curls that usually smelled of vanilla and rain were matted with dark, congealed blood against the white pillow.
“Clear!” the doctor barked.
Arabella’s chest jerked upward as the electric shock surged through her heart.
The line on the monitor fluttered, but remained dangerously flat.
“Charge to three hundred!”
“Come on, Arabella, don't you dare,” Vincent whispered under his breath, his hands balling into trembling fists.
“Charge again! Clear!”
Another violent jolt racked her fragile frame.
For three agonizing seconds, the machine screamed.
Then, a jagged spike broke through the flat green line.
A faint beep echoed through the room.
Then another.
And another.
“Sinus rhythm restored,” the nurse breathed, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her sleeve.
“Blood pressure is eighty over forty-five, but stabilizing.”
The doctor turned around, noticing Vincent standing inside the room like a looming shadow of death.
“Sir, you cannot be in here during a resuscitation protocol,” she said, her voice shaking with adrenaline.
“I am not leaving her,” Vincent replied, his voice raspy and devoid of compromise.
“She almost died just now.”
“She needs an immediate exploratory laparotomy to find the source of the secondary hemorrhage.”
Vincent walked to the side of the bed, his boots heavy against the linoleum floor.
He looked down at Arabella’s pale face, tracing the deep purple bruising across her cheekbone.
Gently, using only two fingers, he brushed a bloody strand of hair away from her forehead.
Her skin was freezing cold.
“You take her to surgery,” Vincent commanded, turning his dark gaze to the lead surgeon.
“You use every resource this hospital owns.”
“If you run out of blood, buy more.”
“If you need the finest vascular surgeons on the East Coast, I will have them flown in by private helicopter within forty minutes.”
The surgeon swallowed hard, recognizing the sheer power behind the man’s terrifying composure.
“We will do everything within human power, Mr. Cavallo.”
“Make sure you do,” Vincent said, leaning down so his lips were inches from Arabella’s ear.
“You hear me, Arabella?” he whispered, his voice cracking with an emotion he had hidden for six years.
“You don't get to leave me.”
“You still have to hand me my schedule tomorrow morning.”
“Fight, damn it.”
The orderlies unlocked the wheels of the gurney and began wheeling her swiftly toward the surgical elevators.
Vincent walked beside the bed until the red surgical doors slammed shut in his face.
He stood alone in the hallway, looking down at his hands.
They were shaking.
Vincent Cavallo, who had looked down the barrels of rival guns without blinking, was trembling in an empty corridor.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed a direct number.
His head of security, Dominic, answered on the first ring.
“Boss?”
“Lock down this entire hospital floor,” Vincent ordered, his tone deadly and absolute.
“Put two men at every staircase, three at the elevators, and snipers on the adjacent parking structure.”
“Nobody enters the surgical wing without my personal authorization.”
“And Dominic?”
“Yes, Vincent?”
May you like
“Bring me Marco.”
“I want to know why my personal schedule was leaked to Salvatore Moretti.”
