Chapter 4 - The Patient in Room 714The room smelled of antiseptic, iodine, and the metallic tang of blood.
On the hospital bed lay a young man who couldn't have been more than twenty-two years old. His face was strikingly similar to Callum’s—the same sharp jawline, the same dark hair—but right now, his skin had the pale, translucent quality of parchment. A thick white bandage was wrapped around his abdomen, stained with a dark circle of crimson where a surgical drain was leaking fluid.
This was Leo Thorne. The golden boy of the syndicate’s next generation, gunned down in a turf war that was threatening to tear the city apart.
"Get the crash cart from the alcove," I ordered, snapping into clinical mode so fast that my personal fear completely evaporated. Years of night shifts in the trauma unit had trained my brain to compartmentalize chaos into manageable biological tasks. "And shut that door. If any light spills into the hallway, the nurses on the floor below will call code triage."
Callum moved with terrifying efficiency. He pulled the heavy blackout blinds shut over the windows, locked the door from the inside, and wheeled the stainless-steel crash cart over to the side of the bed.
I ripped open a sterile packet, pulled out an 18-gauge IV catheter, and inspected Leo’s arm. His veins were collapsed, flattened by dehydration and shock.
"His blood pressure is crashing," I muttered, my fingers pressing against his inner wrist, searching for a pulse that felt like a fluttering moth. "His system is going into hypovolemic shock. If we don't get broad-spectrum antibiotics and saline running in the next ninety seconds, his kidneys are going to shut down permanently."
"Do it," Callum said, standing at the foot of the bed, his hands gripping the metal railing so tightly his knuckles turned white. For all his power, for all the men he could command and the empires he could shatter with a phone call, he was completely helpless in front of a plastic bag of saline.
"I need a central line," I said, looking up at him with sweat beading on my forehead. "My hands are shaking from the adrenaline dump in the shaft. I missed twice on a kid earlier tonight, Callum—I cannot miss this one."
Callum didn't hesitate. He stepped right up to the side of the bed, placed his large, warm hand directly over my trembling right hand, and held it steady.
His skin was surprisingly calm.
"You won't miss," Callum said, his voice deep, steady, and vibrating with absolute trust. "Breathe, Sarah. Focus on the vein."
The warmth of his hand anchored me. The chaos of the federal agents, the elevator shaft, and the syndicate wars melted away, leaving only the rhythm of the monitors and the pale skin of the boy on the bed.
I took a slow, deep breath, aligned the needle with absolute precision, and slid the catheter home.
A dark flash of blood appeared in the hub.
Success.
I hooked up the saline and antibiotic drip, taping the line securely to Leo’s skin. Within thirty seconds, the digital monitor beside the bed beeped as blood pressure readings began to stabilize, climbing from eighty up to a safer baseline of one-hundred over seventy.
Leo let out a long, shuddering sigh in his sleep, his chest rising and falling with a steadier rhythm.
I stepped back, wiping my brow with the back of my arm, suddenly acutely aware of how exhausted I was.
Callum stood staring at his brother for a long moment before turning his dark eyes back to me.
"You saved his life," Callum said, his voice thick with an emotion he clearly wasn't used to expressing.
"I did my job," I said, untying my stained lab coat and tossing it onto a chair. "Now comes the hard part, Mr. Thorne. Because even if we stabilized him, we are trapped on the seventh floor of a hospital surrounded by federal agents and local police. You can't wheel him down the front lobby in a patient gown."
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Before Callum could answer, a heavy thud echoed against the hallway door.
Followed by a voice that made my blood run cold.
