Chapter 10
TEN
JESSE
The PICU bay glowed red-gold, like the inside of a half-remembered dream—claustrophobic tunnel focus dissolving everything that wasn’t here and now.
Baby Sloan lay under the radiant warmer, arms barely thicker than my thumb, chest rising in shallow two-second puffs driven by the ventilator.
Its monitor blinked a steady stream of amber information.
Come on, little girl.
My left palm pressed across the fresh incision, gauze squelching warm between glove and skin, my right hand steadying the ventilator circuit so it wouldn’t tug the tube loose. Sweat burned in my eyes, mask shoved under my chin to keep it from soaking through. Hold the pressure. Think. What’s next?
“A-negative,” someone said. Finn. Voice breathless and ragged, slotting into place right next to me. A hard-shelled cooler thunked onto the side table. “For Sloan.”
Relief gripped me like a bout of vertigo, a punch that nearly buckled my knees. Okay. I could do this—step up as the acting attending because Novak was trapped in a dead elevator. Baby Sloan’s odds had dropped the second the lights went out, but now I had blood, and I had Finn.
“Label?” I asked.
He showed me the label, and yes, good. I asked him to get it out, double-checked, and handed the tiny bag to Nurse Choi. She spiked the line.
Ruby-red drops. Life.
When the first crimson trickle reached its destination, I took what felt like my first breath in hours.
Dim light bounced off stainless-steel tools and turned every cable into a shadowed snare.
It was just four of us here: Choi handling meds, a resident fresh to neonatal care with his eyes wide enough to count the vessels, me—and now Finn, a pair of hands I trusted. Thank God.
He was still panting, his chest rising with each harsh breath, attention on the infant. “What can I do?”
The ventilator chimed like an answer, needle-point shrill. What—? Fuck. Something was off, oxygen levels flashing a warning. Problem with the medical air? Some hose pulled loose and leaking? It was rare, really fucking rare, but I’d seen it happen. Now, though? Murphy’s fucking Law.
Okay—plan. The machine might steady, sure. But if it didn’t, we might have to breathe for her by hand.
“Mask,” I told Finn. “Gown, gel up. Be ready for manual ventilation.”
He sucked in a breath, then swallowed his shock and nodded.
“You,” I told the wide-eyed resident, hovering nearby. “Replacement ventilator. Find one.”
“Got it.” He peeled off, shoes squeaking on the laminate floor as if he’d been waiting for a chance to be useful.
Okay, good. Sorted. I checked the wound, keeping half an eye on Finn as he shouldered into a disposable gown, sanitized his hands, and snapped on a fresh pair of gloves.
His fingers trembled just faintly—not fear, I didn’t think so.
Probably adrenaline. He must have sprinted up eight flights of stairs to get here as fast as he could.
I fought a swell of breathless warmth. Not the place.
Instead, I ran the numbers in my head. Baby Sloan, underweight at roughly 4.
3 lbs.—a very small watermelon, if that.
Total blood volume maybe 250 milliliters, less than a can of Coke.
She’d lost, what, maybe a quarter of that?
Finn’s two bags had bought us precious time.
We might need more in a pinch, but that was a problem for later.
“All right, here’s the plan.” I glanced over as Finn stepped up next to me, almost said his name and caught myself at the last second. “Dr. Hayes—neo bag-valve mask from the airway cart, connect it. Bring face pieces in two sizes.”
He darted away, clip light dancing.
“Drip running,” Choi murmured. “Steady.”
“Good.” I eased the soaked gauze, fresh blood still seeping. Could be a slipped ligature. Either way, blood first. We’d fix her when the power came back. We would.
Finn returned with arms full of equipment, breathing steadier now. The ventilator kept flashing its warning, ever more urgent, and I met Finn’s eyes—all focused blue, trusting my lead. Something spiked under my sternum. I shoved it aside.
“Choi?” I slid her a glance. “You’ve got hands? Good—take over compression.”
She nodded, brisk and serious, leaning in to take my place. I watched for a moment, then shifted away to take the doll-sized face piece from Finn. “You’ve done this before?”
Hesitation pulled at the corners of his mouth. “Only in sim labs. Not… this.”
Of course.
“Support the jaw, seal the mask.” I demonstrated the C-shaped grip on the face piece. “Squeeze slow. Watch her chest, not the bag.”
He exhaled. “Okay.”
I gripped his shoulder and let my voice dip low. “You’ve got this.”
He raised his head and held my gaze. “Okay.” Stronger now, more confident. Good.
“When I say go, we switch to mechanical until a replacement arrives.” A beat too late, I dropped my hand and nodded at the ventilator, still hissing away. Weaker now? The baby’s chest still rose, fell, rose again, but—no. I trusted a tipsy med schooler’s math more than I trusted this vent.
“Got it.” Finn slid the prepared bag onto a tray and clipped the hose to a portable cylinder, then stepped in close enough I felt the thrum of energy under his skin. The baby’s blood pressure ticked up by a margin—a tiny victory. We might actually outrun this.
No, we would.
The vent alarm flashed again, more urgently, as her color crept from gray to pale pink, the heart line still choppy. Hold on, little one.
Hiss, rise. Hiss, rise. Time flowed like the steady drip of blood.
Hiss, rise.
A sputter.
Then the ventilator shrilled, a yellow exclamation mark beating in time with the static in my ears.
“We switch,” I told Finn, tighter than I’d meant to.
One nod, a second when our eyes held. Then he moved. I stripped off the ventilator’s mask, rubber tugging against the baby’s paper-thin skin. The alarm spiked again just as Finn sealed the new mask over her face with hands that didn’t shake. Good. I reached for the bag, squeezed.
One breath. A tiny rise of her chest—she took it.
Fuck, yes, God. We were live.
I counted under my breath, pulse heavy in my throat. Rhythm, restraint. Don’t overshoot. Don’t flood her lungs. You are her air.
Sixty seconds. Ninety. Finn shifted his weight, crouched slightly over the bed, as I counted breaths. Around us, the hospital flowed like water.
Three minutes. Time to switch—it would keep us fresher, able to go on longer if we had to. I tapped Finn’s elbow, and he stepped back clean. My turn. I took the mask, palm pressing light but sure. He squeezed the bag. Released. Count to six. Again. Her ribcage lifted just enough.
One more. Steady.
Sweat tickled my temple, a distant sensation, barely enough to register. The air in the room was hot and sticky, disinfectant like a cloud. Somewhere, a voice crackled over a handheld radio. Background, all of it. Didn’t even matter when the world had shrunk to a ten-foot radius.
“Bleeding’s stopped,” Choi murmured, her voice dissolving into shadow.
“Keep watching the back.” I wiped my forearm across my brow, slippery with sweat. “Don’t want to miss a trickle.”
Finn’s body brushed mine as we switched again—focused heat still rolling off him but breath steadier now. His grip was steadier, too, the seal tighter as he mirrored me from before. A flash of something hit hard and fast between my ribs. Pride, maybe.
Focus.
Minutes slipped away. I tapped him out again, took over. We’d fallen into a real rhythm now, could do this for a long time if we had to—half an hour or an hour, lungs for rent. And the cost? Everything.
Ten minutes? Twelve? We traded places again, and his eyes caught mine for something that wasn’t doubt, no, more like a question crackling with words he didn’t say. We can do this, right? Together—we can do this?
My quiet nod felt like a vow and a confession. Yes.
The tense line of his jaw relaxed by a fraction, one corner of his mouth lifting, and Jesus, this. This was how it could be if the world weren’t a minefield, if timing and hierarchy hadn’t thrown up a wall between us. For one suspended breath, it felt like trust—complete and terrifying.
Together.
I shifted away to press Sloan’s foot, counted one Mississippi, two. Her skin bloomed with color faster than before, and my heart gave a hard, triumphant thump. “Perfusion’s better,” I said. “Choi, hang the second unit. Half-rate.”
She reached for the line clamp, no word wasted.
Another switch. Finn’s shoulder pressed against mine—both of us sweating, gowns sticking and peeling. The blood on my gloves now marked his as well, something about that splintering through my concentration, gone in a flash. His breath was shallow but even, laser-point focus on the baby.
Another rise, another fall of her chest. We kept going, holding on to her through latex and plastic.
Somewhere outside the curtain, life still moved—the distant shuffle of another team rushing down the corridor, alarms chirping somewhere further away.
But in here, it felt like the world had quieted to nothing but our shared breaths and a baby the size of my hand.
Minutes stretched and contracted like the ebb and swell of waves. No idea how much time had passed—meaningless when everything was rhythm and sweat and shadows, Finn’s hands brushing mine, our bodies moving together like a dance. The baby was still breathing. We were still here.
And then—the overhead lights stuttered, came back alive in a sudden flare of brightness. The soft thrum of climate control resumed, devices chirped their startup sequences.
The power was back.
Didn’t revive our ventilator, though. I heard Finn’s breath hitch, our gazes catching, tangling. Not in the clear yet—but Jesus, it had to help. Speed up the search for a replacement.
Another switch. Sweat itched on the back of my neck as time slipped sideways.