Chapter 7 - The Transfusion of Sins
The room exploded into synchronized, high-intensity medical action.
Dr. Chen didn't waste a microsecond analyzing the dramatic poetry of the moment. She slammed her hand down on the crash cart. “Direct donor line! Stat! Nurse Jackson, prep the donor chair! Nurse Davis, get Khloe onto the gurney! We are running a direct cross-match and emergency tandem transfusion directly into the central line!”
Isabella lunged forward, her face twisted in a feral, hysterical rage. “NO! Stop! You can’t use her blood! It’s contaminated! She’s an unregistered civilian—she’s lying! Reynolds, tell them she’s lying!”
Reynolds didn’t move. He stood pinned against the wall by Frank Alvarez’s heavy service weapon, his face gray, his career and life in utter ruins.
Isabella tried to grab Dr. Chen’s arm, but I stepped into her path.
I caught her by the throat, driving her backward until her spine hit the reinforced glass of the private balcony window. The glass shuddered under the impact. I didn’t choke her, but my hand was an iron vise around her jaw, forcing her to look me in the eye.
“Touch them,” I whispered, my voice vibrating with a deadly calm that terrified her far more than my previous rage, “and I will throw you off this terrace before the police even hit the lobby.”
“Marcus…” she choked, her painted fingernails clawing at my wrists. “She’s a lunatic… she’s trying to steal our family’s money… she’s a blackmailer—”
“Shut up,” I said.
Behind me, the medical team worked with the frantic precision of a battlefield trauma unit. They hauled Khloe onto the mobile operating gurney. Elena sat quietly in the recliner beside the wall, her arm already swabbed with brown iodine, a thick-gauge needle sliding smoothly into her median cubital vein.
The dark, rich blood flowed instantly through the clear plastic tubing, running through a rapid-infusion warmer and directly into the central line anchored in my wife’s neck.
Khloe let out a ragged, trembling gasp as the vital fluid hit her circulatory system. The pale gray pallor of her skin began, miraculously, to recede. The fetal monitor’s flatline hum stuttered, caught a beat, and then surged back to life:
*Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.*
110 beats per minute. Rising. 120. 130.
“We have a viable rhythm!” Dr. Chen shouted, unlocking the gurney’s wheels. “Move, move, move! OR 3 is prepped! Marcus, put on scrubs and follow us! Security, hold this room!”
The team surged out of the suite, the gurney rattling violently across the floorboards as they sprinted down the hallway toward the surgical elevator. Elena walked alongside them, an IV pole rolled by a dedicated nurse, the biological lifeline between the rejected mother and the dying grandchild stretching taut but holding firm.
I released my grip on Isabella’s throat.
She slumped against the glass, sliding down onto the floor, clutching her neck, her designer clothes disheveled, her hair hanging in greasy strands over her face.
Frank Alvarez stepped forward, pulling a pair of steel handcuffs from his tactical belt.
“Mr. Vance?” Alvarez asked, looking at me with grim determination. “The NYPD Strategic Response Group is downstairs. The District Attorney’s office has already been alerted to the tampering with medical equipment.”
I looked down at Isabella.
She looked up at me, coughing, a twisted smile bloodying her teeth. “It doesn’t matter, Marcus. Look at the clock. It’s 10:45 PM. Even if Chen delivers that thing alive, an emergency premature infant delivered at twenty-eight weeks in the middle of hypovolemic shock will never survive seventy-two hours. The neonatal mortality rate is over eighty percent. The trust will dissolve on schedule. I still win.”
I leaned down until my lips were inches from her ear.
“You forgot one thing, Isabella,” I whispered.
She blinked, her arrogant smirk faltering slightly. “What?”
“Father’s codicil didn’t say the baby had to survive seventy-two hours inside this hospital.”
I stood up, adjusting the cuffs of my suit jacket.
May you like
“It said the baby had to survive seventy-two hours. Period. And I have four billion dollars worth of resources to keep my daughter breathing. Frank, cuff her to the radiator. If she moves, shoot her in the leg.”
***
