Chapter 20
Liv
The door slam shut behind me, sealing off the noise of the street and cops. Meanwhile, everything in the rig sharpens in the silence. A moment later, the front door slams shut and the engine turns over. The ambulance lurches forward, lights flashing, siren cutting through the night.
And the woman in front of me is in crisis.
I slide the pulse ox back onto her finger after it slipped off again and she flinches, jerking her hand back like I burned her.
But she gives it back right away when she realizes what it is and I get the device onto her.
The result pops up on the screen overhead.
Shit. Her oxygen saturation is dropping fast, already in the low eighties.
And her breathing is shallow and uneven, like her body can’t remember how to do it on its own.
Classic signs of shock and trauma, and something else.
“Hey,” I say, dropping down beside her and forcing my voice into something steady. “Stay with me okay? Look at me.”
Her eyes find mine, wild and searching. Good, she’s still here.
“Please-” she gasps, her lightly blue tinged lips parting. “Don’t- don’t tie me-”
“I’m not,” I interject, easing my hands back to show her. “Nothing’s tying you down. I promise. This just reads your oxygen. That’s it.”
Her chest rises and falls too fast and too shallow. She nods, but it’s jerky and uncertain.
I make sure she can see my every movement as I grab the non-rebreather mask, bringing it toward her face.
She panics instantly. “No- no, I can’t-”
“It’s just oxygen,” I explain quickly. “Nothing else. You control it. You can take it off whenever you want, okay?” I suggest, even though I’m silently hoping that she won’t pull it away until her O2 level is higher.
But it works. The key is control. I don’t move until she nods. Then I place it gently over her mouth and nose, keeping my hands light, ready to pull back if she starts to spiral.
Her breathing stutters, then pulls deeper.
Still uneven and wrong. I run through the rest of my assessment quickly, hands moving and mind cataloging in an effort to keep my focus off of the rising fear that the paralytic hasn’t worn off yet.
The bruises on her wrists are rectangular, consistent around her wrists, and deepening.
There are ligature marks, finger-shaped, around her neck in a clear choking pattern.
The lacerations across her arms are of varying ages, her fingers also show signs of cyanosis with a blue tinge in her nail beds, and her feet-
God. They’re torn open from running barefoot.
Her abdomen tightens when I press close and her shoulders hitch when I reach near her neck.
She has triggers, specific ones.
I adjust automatically, changing angles and working around what I can instead of pushing through it.
“You’re doing really good,” I tell her because it’s true. She is. “Just keep breathing for me.”
Her eyes flick around the rig, like she’s looking for someone. Alex, smartly, is still sitting out of view behind her head.
“Hey,” I soften my voice, pulling her focus back to me. “Stay with me. Just me, okay?”
She barely nods. Her hand without the pulse ox on it reaches out to me, lightly circling my wrist. “They said I wouldn’t get hurt,” she whispers. The words land like they did outside, heavy and painful. “If I just did what I was told,” she adds, her voice breaking. Her hand slips from my skin.
My breath becomes shallow, but my hands move again. “You didn’t deserve any of that,” I say, firm but gentle. “None of it.”
Her head shakes weakly. “I tried,” she laments. “I did everything right.”
Her oxygen ticks up, eighty-six now, but her breathing is still off. It’s shallow and uneven like she doesn’t trust her own body. I’m sure it’s got to be the medication still working a little.
“What happened?” I ask carefully, keeping my tone neutral and open. “Can you tell me?” Maybe it’ll help me to help her physical state.
Her eyes unfocus for a second, like she’s slipping somewhere else. “They-” she swallows hard. “They stuck a needle in my leg.”
My stomach drops. “What kind of needle?” I ask, though I have a feeling that I already know the answer.
“I don’t know,” she says quickly, panic rising again. “I didn’t- I didn’t know-”
“That’s okay,” I soothe. “Just tell me what you felt.”
Her fists clench and release repeatedly, like she’s remembering how to use her fingers. “I couldn’t move,” she whispers. “I tried to- I tried to fight, but-” Her breathing fractures again. “My body just… stopped.”
I see Alex shift in his seat, not closer but listening harder.
“I couldn’t scream,” she continues, her voice hollowing out. “I couldn’t even breathe right. I could feel everything, but I couldn’t-” She chokes on her words again. “I was just… stuck.”
My mind is spiraling. She was administered a paralytic. Nadine was right; they’re using it to kill their victims. “Okay,” I say softly, grounding her again. “You’re not there anymore. You’re here with me.”
Her eyes snap back to mine, tears spilling over. “They put something in my throat.”
My pulse spikes. “What do you mean?” I ask, keeping my voice steady by sheer force.
“A tube,” she whispers. “They put a tube down my throat.”
Jesus.
“I could hear myself breathing,” her voice shakes as she unravels. “But it wasn’t me. I wasn’t doing it.”
Mechanical ventilation… while conscious. They stuck an endotracheal tube down her throat while she was awake? My stomach twists hard.
“I couldn’t move,” she repeats. “I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t-” Her voice breaks completely this time.
I adjust the oxygen slightly, to accommodate for all the talking she’s doing. “Hey, stay with me. You’re safe now. Nothing is going to happen to you here.”
She shakes her head again, tears streaking through the dirt on her face and catching at the edge of the mask. “They waited, said I had to be calm enough first. That I had to learn.”
A knot forms in my chest.
“Then they left,” she murmurs. “And someone else came in, some guy in a suit.”
She pauses long enough for silence to fill the rig. Even the siren feels distant for a second. Her hands tremble, fiddling with the elastic band on the non-rebreather mask. I wait, expecting her to pull it off. But she doesn’t, finally letting her hands fall back to her lap.
“I couldn’t move,” she says again, like she needs me to understand that part most of all. “But I felt all of it. He used me… like I wasn’t even a person. Just a hole. It hurt. I couldn’t stop him. I couldn’t…”
She doesn’t finish the sentence. She doesn’t have to.
The air in the rig feels too thick and heavy.
Behind her, Alex isn’t moving anymore. Instead, his expression is filled with anger and restraint, and he looks like he’s holding himself together by a thread.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, because it’s the only thing that doesn’t feel like a lie.
Telling her it’ll be okay feels like a farce; I can’t say it to her right now but I’m just not sure.
The only thing I know for sure right now is that I’m scared too.
I thought, and the detectives did too, that this ring was killing their victims with a paralytic so that they could never talk.
But it’s all so much more horrible than that.
Her eyes search mine. “They said it would be easier if I didn’t fight,” she whispers.
My throat tightens. “They lied,” I tell her quietly.
Her breathing stutters again. “I ran,” she suddenly says, like it’s extremely important that I know that she fought to do that. “I waited until they forgot about me. Until they thought I was-” Her voice shakes. “Until they thought I was broken.”
My chest aches. “You’re not broken” I tell her. “You got out.”
Her eyes close briefly. “I didn’t think I would,” she admits.
Her oxygen climbs, eighty-nine now. Still not good, but better so I adjust the mask again, check her pulse, her respirations, and grounding myself in the rhythm of the work so I don’t get pulled into my own thoughts and the fear.
And it’s terrifying without even going through what she has.
I reach for my tablet with one hand, documenting as I go. The voice recognition is picking up everything she says, surprisingly given how quietly she’s speaking because of the hypoxia.
Behind her, I hear a quiet shift. I glance up at Alex, still out of her sight. But his eyes are on mine. On her. On everything. There’s no distance in them now, no detachment. Just something raw and dangerous.
And for the first time, I understand. Not just that this is bad, not just that it’s bigger than we thought. But that whatever we’re dealing with is calculated, clinical, and intentional. This isn’t chaos. It’s design.
“We’re almost there,” Scott calls from the front.
I nod, even though he can’t see me.
“Hey,” I say softly to her. “Stay with me just a little longer, okay? You’re doing so good.”
Her hand finds my wrist again, even looser than before. “Tired,” she whispers.
“I know,” I say. “But don’t go to sleep yet. Stay with me.”
Her eyes flicker then settle on me. Still here, still fighting.
I keep one hand on her, grounding her, while the other adjusts the masks, checks her pulse again, and keeps her anchored to this moment instead of the one she just came from.
Behind her, Alex doesn’t move or speak. But I don’t need him to. Because the silence now isn’t distance. For weeks, I’ve felt like something big was coming. But it isn’t.
It’s already here.