Enigma Black (35 page)

“I’m Paul, by the way,” the balding man extended a hand to Chase.

“Chase,” he said, taking the man’s hand.

“Well, Doc,” Paul stated in a hushed tone as to not alert the others of what he was about to say. “I hate to say this, but if we don’t get those patients out of here soon it may be too late. Heck, chances are that it is already too late.”

“I know, but we still have to try.”

“You’re the Doc…” Paul again coughed uncontrollably, the wheezing in his chest becoming more audible.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine…I’m fine…” Paul was obviously brushing his question off in favor of putting on the strong-man front.

With relief filling her voice, another resident exclaimed, “They’re coming!”

Cheers erupted from the room.

“Thank you, doctor!” The young woman wrapped her arms around Chase.

“Yes, doctor. If you hadn’t thought of this, we’d probably all still be lying out there in that hallway, dead.”

Chase blushed. “Don’t thank me until your feet hit the pavement.”

A loud clang sounded through the room, signaling that the firefighters’ ladder had struck the window frame.

“All right,” Chase ordered. “Everyone line up single file.” He turned to Paul. “Once the last one is on the ladder we’ll head down the hall. Just remember to hold your breath and hit the floor when it’s necessary to breathe again.”

“Can do, Doc.”

Single file, they headed down the ladder to the safety and fresh air below. Chase stood looking out the window, ensuring everyone made it down without incident. Paul locked eyes with him.

“It’s now or never.”

He nodded, and together they dislodged the sheet from underneath the door, took a deep breath and ran out into the hall in the direction the resident had indicated the remaining patients were located. Flames were fanning out across the second floor, creating even more of a hazard for Chase and Paul while they struggled to ration the precious oxygen they’d stored in their lungs. Near the end of the hall, Chase glanced in room after room, hoping to catch a glimpse of those who’d been left behind. Finally, as their oxygen was running on low, they located the first of three rooms. Chase motioned to Paul to take the first room while he ventured a few feet down to the second one, turning around when Paul spoke, his wheeze far more profound now.

“What…if they’re hooked…to machines?”

“Unhook them.”

“Won’t that…kill them?”

“Either they die here from smoke inhalation or they die outside where they at least have a fighting chance.”

Paul nodded, and the pair entered their respective rooms. The smoke stung Chase’s eyes, his lungs burned in his chest. He hit the floor. The air down there was becoming too saturated with smoke that what little oxygen had clung to the floor before had now almost been depleted. Coughing, Chase crawled to the side of the hospital bed where he carefully unhooked the arterial line, catheter and ventilator from Ms. Branigan, the elderly widower whose fall down the stairs had landed her in Hope Memorial’s Intensive Care Unit nearly two weeks ago. Unhooking her now would most likely cause her condition to decline resulting in her demise, but he couldn’t bear knowing that a person had perished in such a cruel and inhumane manner under his watch. Carefully, he lifted Ms. Branigan from her hospital bed and ran back into the hallway. The heat from the flames rising up from the floor below all but scorched his exposed flesh in the process. Upon entering the room leading to freedom, Chase breathed a sigh of relief. Rescue workers were making their way back up the ladder.

“Doctor, you need to get down here now; the whole building is about ready to collapse,” one of the rescuers commanded.

“I will as soon as you take her.” Chase leaned out the window with Ms. Branigan, transferring her securely into the rescuers arms. “Did the other two make it down all right?”

“What other two? Do you mean the group that came down earlier?”

Chase’s heart sank to his stomach. “No, there should have been two more right after that. A middle-aged man carrying another patient.”

“Haven’t seen them.”

“I’ll be right back.” Chase inhaled fresh oxygen into his lungs before running back out into the hall. Behind him he could hear the rescue worker shouting, “Wait! It’s suicide going back in there.”

Ignoring the encroaching flames, he ran down the hallway, praying he’d find Paul with a pulse. Holding his arm out-stretched, he counted the door frames as he ran past them. The smoke was growing thicker and blacker, making visibility next to nothing. If he remembered correctly, he figured he’d been about fifteen rooms down, which would mean Paul was in room fourteen. Chase knew this would be his last trip back. In the back of his mind, he knew that if he made it back from this second run, it would be a miracle. It was a thought he continued to shrug off even as he entered the fourteenth room. The window in the room cast enough light inside that he could make out the hospital bed with the form still lying in it.

Just as he began to wonder where Paul had gone, he tripped over something on the floor falling elbow-first into the hospital bed. Dazed, he guided his hand along the floor, searching for the object that had tripped him. After scouring about a foot of linoleum, his hand felt an object. At first, all he felt was fabric. Fabric quickly turned into skin the moment that he realized what had become of Paul.

He couldn’t leave Paul here to die. Paul had been brave enough to put his life on the line just as he had. With great difficulty and using the last ounce of strength he had, he lifted Paul, positioning him onto his back. In doing so, dizziness suddenly overcame him. Almost dropping Paul, he crashed into the wall, a cough escaping his burning throat. If he didn’t get out of here now, he was sure he would die.

Time seemed to move slower as he entered the hallway with Paul’s deadweight weighing him down heavily with each footstep. His coughs were increasing in frequency and the dizziness was almost too much to bear, but on he went. He mustered up strength he didn’t know existed, swearing that, at times, it felt like he had left his body and was watching the figure of himself trudging down the hall.

“Come on,” he told himself. “You won’t die here, not now.” But he knew there was only so much smoke a person could inhale before dying was completely out of their control. With lungs blazing, Chase entered the escape room.

“You’re damn lucky,” the rescuer yelled. “We were about ready to pull the ladder away.”

Chase coughed uncontrollably, leaning down to prop Paul against the window frame. “Here,” he said between coughs. “Take him down. I’ll follow you.”

“You’d better. It doesn’t sound like you’d make it much longer in there.”

The rescuer motioned for assistance from the crew on the ground and, once the other crew member joined them, Chase lowered an unconscious, limp Paul down the ladder into the arms of the awaiting rescuers. Taking one last look at the inside of Hope Memorial, he proceeded out of the window and down the ladder. He was shaky from the lack of oxygen in his blood. It was a feeling he knew would pass but it was still incredibly uncomfortable nonetheless. When he reached the ground, he went over to Paul to assess his condition. Paul’s skin was ashen, his lips blue, a sign that he wasn’t breathing. Chase hastily examined him, feeling his wrists for signs of a pulse. There was none. Frantically, he opened Paul’s mouth, realizing why. Suet had caused Paul’s throat to swell shut, making an impasse for air and ensuring that CPR would be fruitless.

“Help me take him to one of the tents,” Chase barked an order to one of the rescuers. He grabbed Paul’s midsection while the rescuer grabbed a hold of his legs. A tracheostomy was the only thing that could save Paul and he needed it done now. Placing him on a surgical table from equipment that was both salvaged from Hope Memorial and brought over from nearby Grace University Hospital, Chase made a quick assessment of his surroundings and available resources. Rushing over to him, a nurse offered her assistance.

“What do we have here, doctor?”

“I need a scalpel…fast. He needs a tracheostomy or he’s not going to make it.”

The nurse scrambled to locate a scalpel on a nearby tray. “I’ll get the trach tube from Grace.” She hurried across the tent area in search of a tube.

Taking a deep breath, Chase made a horizontal incision across Paul’s neck directly above the sternum, dissecting the skin, effectively exposing the trachea. The nurse appeared with the trach tube. “Good timing,” he said amidst an incision to the tracheal ring. Without taking his eyes from his work, he asked the nurse to find sutures, dressings, a ventilator and a d-fib.

“The sutures and dressings are already on that tray,” she said, pointing to the small stainless steel freestanding tray. “But I think they’re using all of the heavy equipment right now,” she announced dejectedly.

“Just see what you can come up with.”

The young nurse nodded and ran off to go foraging through the tents. Chase inserted the tracheostomy tube into the incision. He then located the sutures on the tray and proceeded to weave them through Paul’s wound, closing up the incision surrounding the tracheostomy. It was an operation performed under less than perfect circumstances with the risk for infection being exceptionally high but, for what it was worth, he’d made do with the available resources. Even though, despite his best efforts, he knew that if the right equipment could not be found, Paul was as good as dead.

“Doctor Matthews,” the nurse came rushing back with another doctor following hot on her heels. Chase noticed a cart being pulled behind them and did a double take to confirm that he saw what he thought he was seeing. On the cart being pulled by the nurse and pushed by the Grace University physician was a ventilator and defibrillator, both of which Paul’s life depended upon.

He may have a chance after all
, Chase thought. Chase grabbed the cart from the nurse, pulling it the rest of the way to the surgical table, where he hooked it up to the tracheostomy tube while the other doctor started it in motion. Re-checking Paul for a pulse, Chase was relieved when he was able to locate a weak one in Paul’s carotid. After several minutes of working on him, the color slowly began to return to Paul’s face, replacing the blue-grayish hue.

“Good job, doctor. It would appear that you have saved this man’s life,” the doctor from Grace University proclaimed.

“He’s not out of the woods yet. It’s hard telling how long his brain was deprived of oxygen.” Dizziness had resumed its battle with him and was overtaking his body even more so than before. He stumbled to a folding chair, sitting down with his head lowered to try to counteract its effects.

“Don’t be so modest, doctor,” the young nurse joined in. “Without you, he never would have had a chance.”

Chase held his head in his hands, the voices of the doctor and nurse nothing more than mere mumbles in his ears; his vision was fading. Instead of breathing, he was now wheezing as he had heard Paul do.

With concern in her voice, the nurse asked, “Are you all right, Dr. Matthews?”

Chase nodded, knowing full well everything was far from all right. Before today, he’d passed out exactly two times in his life and he knew the feeling very well.

“Dr. Matth…” Chase looked up at the nurse and then slumped from his chair to the ground.

“Someone grab an oxygen mask!”

As he drifted further into unconsciousness, his thoughts traveled back to Celaine, her radiant smile as beautiful as he remembered, a trail of blonde hair flowing from her while she motioned for him to join her in her run through the halls of Hope Memorial.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The Impossible

Blake was struggling as I’d never seen him before, as I’d never thought possible. He wasn’t going to die in front of me. Not without a fight. In pain, I picked myself up from the pile of splintered wood comprising the remains of the pallet that had disintegrated upon my impact. Rushing at The Man in Black, I struck him with the full force of my body, only to be met with solid resistance as soon as we made contact. It was like slamming into a brick wall, and it caused me to end up flat on my back without having even budged him. Instead, I just barely succeeded in jostling him enough so that Blake was able to wriggle free, escaping the wrath of the wooden spear.

Furious, The Man in Black turned his attention to me, lifting his enormous arm like a sadistic mallet. Completely mesmerized by my first time ever having seen him in person outside of the simulator, I couldn’t help but notice the most striking characteristic about him: the disproportionate size of his extremities. His arms were massive. In the few seconds I had to analyze them, I came to the conclusion that there was no possible way they were organic in nature.

His arm swung at my head, prompting me to counter in defense by rolling my body sideways, coming within milliseconds of being struck by his battering ram of a fist. Springing back to my feet, I sprinted over to Blake before The Man in Black could realize I’d escaped his wrath.

“Are you all right?” Blake asked.

“Just splendid. You?”

“As far as I can tell, I am. That was amazing, by the way. I’ve never seen him outrun like that before.”

The Man in Black turned around, visibly angrier than before.

“He’s out for your blood now.”

“Let him bring it on. I’m out for some blood of my own.”

“Remember your training; flank him. Don’t try to go all Wonder Woman on me.”

As much as I wanted to abide by Blake’s orders, there was a storm brewing inside of me that, after ten years, had just about reached its climax. The calm before the storm was beginning to pass and the dark clouds were starting to roll in. And it was only a matter of time before I let the lightning strike.

“On my mark,” Blake’s voice resounded clearly within my ear piece.

My body tensed, each muscle making its presence known. I trained my sights on The Man in Black, contemplating my plan of attack.

“Now!” Blake ordered.

Together, our feet left the ground, zeroed in on a common target that few had attempted to hit but of which all had wished they could. Even though I was running faster than humanly possible, it still felt as though time was standing still, a few feet seemingly taking hours to traverse. My mind was racing with a myriad of thoughts and emotions. Would the last image my eyes captured be of this despicable monster? What does death feel like? Was I truly capable of killing another living being? Unlike most questions in life, these had answers which I would soon discover, ready or not.