Chapter 11
ELEVEN
Gail kept lifting the phone receiver, but every time she did she was met with silence.
The line was dead, and her cell phone didn’t have any bars.
If that wasn’t unsettling enough, being stuck inside this room was making her claustrophobic.
The brightest thing in here was the readout on her daughter’s heart machine.
Otherwise, emergency backup lights spread shadows into the corners.
“What is going on? Why can’t we call out? ”
“I don’t know,” Nurse Torres said, her eyes blank.
Gail couldn’t just stay here while her daughter’s life hung in the balance. She left Phoebe to peek through slots in the blinds out to the hallway. Maybe she could spot a reason for hope that this would be over soon.
“Please, ma’am, get away from there.” Nurse Torres came up behind her and beckoned her away from the window.
“We can’t just be expected to stay holed up in here. I don’t see anything.” A stamp of frustration, like a petulant child, but her nerves were stretched and frayed.
“It doesn’t mean we’re safe, Ms. Chapman. Please.” The nurse came over to her, holding out her hand.
If she expected Gail to take it and step away, she had another think coming.
The heart monitor started beeping wildly. Gail turned to watch in horror as the line spiked and dipped. Phoebe was pale and sweating. “Do something,” Gail begged the nurse.
Torres was already at Phoebe’s side. “She’s arresting, and there’s only one thing that can help her.”
“What?” Gail screamed out, fear gripping hold of her. She should know, having been here before, but it was like her mind had left her.
The nurse remained calm, soothing her daughter, rubbing the hair back on her forehead. “It’s okay, sweetheart. Everything will be okay.”
“Why aren’t you doing anything?”
The machine continued to beep. The spikes had lower peaks, but the rhythm remained erratic.
“Do something!” Gail never felt more helpless in her life.
“She needs a defibrillator, and…” The nurse’s eyes widened, and jabbed toward the door.
“They’re out there?” Gail blanched. She never understood why one wasn’t always in the room near her daughter, just in case. Probably due to budget restraints. Money determined life and death.
Torres nodded. “But we can’t go out there.”
“To hell with that! Tell me where, and I’ll go get it.”
“I can’t let you do that.”
Gail got in the nurse’s face. “Tell me where to get one! Now!”
“They’re on wheeled carts next to the nurses’ station, but I told you, we can’t go out there.”
“I’m not just going to stay here and watch my daughter die.”
“You go out there and run into the gunmen, you could both die.”
“I don’t matter. Only Phoebe!” To hell with being swallowed by hopelessness. Her baby’s life was on the line. She stormed out the door, ignoring the nurse’s protests at her back.
Voices came to her ears from down the hall, transmitting scared, nervous chatter. Gail looked back over her shoulder at the room, and Nurse Torres was peeking out through a crack she made in the blinds. Spotted, she let the slots fall back into place.
Gail crept down the hall toward the nurses’ station, keeping a lookout for the gunmen.
The voices she’d heard were coming from inside a room with a plaque on the door that read Nurse Break Room.
It sounded like there was an altercation inside.
Was a gunman in there, just mere feet away, with only a door standing between them?
Not my problem, she told herself. She just had to grab a cart with a defibrillator and get it back to her daughter. She saw them next to the desk. Her hand was on one when there was a loud bang.
She ducked to the floor behind the desk, her ears ringing and her heart thumping furiously. Gunfire!
It came from inside the break room. The earlier chatter and scuffle transformed into screams and crying.
Not my problem, she screamed again in her head while she stood. She planned to just grab the cart and run. But there was a charging tray with three walkie-talkies on the desk, and she snatched one. She couldn’t call out on the phones, so maybe this would work.
She grabbed the closest cart and pushed it back to the room in a run. When she was within a foot of the door, Nurse Torres threw it open and swept her inside.