Chapter 6 - Code BlueThe SUV’s speedometer touched one hundred miles per hour as I took the Midtown exit toward St. Catherine’s Medical Center, running every red light with the high beams flashing.
My phone was pressed against my ear on speaker mode, the phone ringing into the empty air of the fourth-floor nurses' station.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
"Pick up," I snarled, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white. "Pick up, Claire."
"St. Catherine's ICU. How can I help you?" a crisp, professional voice answered.
"Room 412. Claire Bennett. Put me through to the attending physician immediately!"
"Sir, are you family? Visiting hours don't—"
"I am Dominic Hale! If she stops breathing before I get through those doors, I will personally dismantle this entire hospital brick by brick!"
There was a sharp gasp on the other end of the line, followed by the frantic clatter of a telephone being dropped.
Three minutes later, I slammed the SUV into park directly in front of the emergency entrance, leaving the engine running and the door wide open. I sprinted through the automatic sliding doors, vaulted over the reception desk before the security guard could stand up, and took the stairs four at a time up to the fourth floor.
When I burst through the double doors of the ICU wing, the scene was pure chaos.
Two nurses were standing outside Room 412, their hands pressed over their mouths, while a team of three doctors frantically pumped a manual resuscitator inside the room. A flat, continuous tone was wailing from the heart monitor—a straight, unbroken green line cutting across the screen.
"Code blue! Charge to one hundred fifty!" the lead doctor shouted, pressing the defibrillator paddles against Claire’s bare chest.
Her body jumped violently with the electric shock.
Nothing. The line remained flat.
"Again! Charge to two hundred!"
I shoved past a nurse who tried to grab my arm and threw myself against the glass door, my chest heaving, every muscle in my body locked in terror.
"Claire," I whispered against the glass. "Don't you dare."
The doctor delivered the second shock.
Her back arched off the mattress. The room held its collective breath.
For three agonizing seconds, the monitor remained a flat line. The nurse with the clipboard began to shake her head, raising her hand to note the time of death.
Then, the green line stuttered.
A faint, jagged blip appeared on the screen.
Beep... beep... beep.
"We have a pulse! Sinus rhythm returning!" the doctor yelled, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his surgical glove. "Get the epinephrine ready! Push two milligrams now!"
I exhaled a breath I felt like I had been holding since the bullet struck her at the museum.
My knees gave out, and I slid down the hallway wall until I was sitting on the cold linoleum floor, staring at my bloody hands, shaking from the adrenaline crash.
Minutes later, the lead doctor stepped out of the room, looking exhausted, his mask pulled down around his neck.
Mr. Hale," he said, looking down at me with a mixture of professional disapproval and sympathy. "She’s stable. But barely. Whatever caused that sudden respiratory arrest wasn't natural. Her heart rate plummeted from a normal post-op baseline to zero in less than ten seconds. It looked like an acute chemical introduction."
"Where is Nurse Miller?" I asked, my voice dangerously quiet as I pushed myself up from the floor.
The doctor blinked. "Nurse Miller? She wasn't assigned to this shift. Our regular night nurse called in sick, and someone logged into the central terminal using an administrative override at 4:45 AM to swap the roster."
"An administrative override," I repeated, a cold fury settling deep in my chest.
Marcus hadn't just been running security for me. He had left a backdoor open in the hospital's digital registry.
"Is she secured?" I asked.
"The police are reviewing the security footage right now," the doctor said. "She slipped out the side stairwell five minutes ago."
May you like
I didn't answer. I turned on my heel and walked back toward the elevator.
The game Julian and Marcus had been playing was over. They thought they were managing a criminal empire, but they had forgotten the most fundamental rule of the underworld: If you're going to bury your enemies, make sure you dig the hole deep enough.
