Suddenly, I’m hurtling back in time. I’m suspended, hair hanging in a curtain around me, and I’m cold, so, so cold. My breaths come out in white puffs, labored. Everything hurts. And next to me, Harper is suspended, too, but there’s blood, so much blood, and she’s not breathing—
Finn was right when he accused me of trying to placate the survivor’s guilt I feel about Harper by finding the truth about him—trying to save one because I couldn’t save the other. Except Finn was never supposed to be something I could lose.
I drop to my knees, sliding closer to Finn, knees pressed to his side. I nudge Sloane out of the way.
The only sound is the unbreaking beep of his heart monitor.
We’re out of time. And I don’t know how to do this.
Brain damage starts after four minutes without a pulse and without air flowing in and out of the lungs. Or is it three minutes? Five? And how long has it been?
“What are we doing, Jo?” Sloane asks.
I swallow dryly. Take in the room, the kids, and Finn, lifeless at my feet.
“I need you all ready to move,” I say. “And I need some space.”
“Jo, we’re running out of time—” Sloane starts.
“I know,” I snap. “I know. But we can’t leave him.”
A fierce determination crosses Sloane’s face. She moves to Aisha and Jasper. The three lean heavy into each other; there’s no way to tell who is shouldering the most weight.
I force my focus back to Finn.
Finn. He’s not a haunting anymore but a real, physical being beneath my hands.
And for the second time this week, I begin chest compressions. Thirty times, then I tilt his head back, open his mouth, press my mouth to his, and blow.
No change.
Again, and then a third time.
It’s not working.
“Damn it, Finn,” I say, but he can’t hear me.
I have no idea what to do. There’s no defibrillator to press to his chest and shock his heart into beating again.
“We need epinephrine,” Sloane says. “My brother is allergic to peanuts. We always carry an EpiPen around. It increases your heart rate. Maybe…” It’s like she’s speaking underwater, her voice muffled. It’s hard to make out past the pounding of my heart.
And then I understand.
Adrenaline.
I push to my feet, rushing to the only thing other than vats in this room. A cupboard with a glass front and shelves inside full of bottles with names I don’t recognize. The middle shelf holds a bunch of thick syringes filled with colored liquid. There are smudged letters on each of them. I snag one with what appears to be anE.
I tug open the cupboard, grab one of the syringes, and run back to Finn, dropping at his side. I uncap the syringe and scan Finn’s body, hesitating.
When people have allergic reactions, the EpiPen goes into the meaty part of the thigh. But in biology, we learned all about pathways to the heart. It takes time to travel through the bloodstream. Time we don’t have.
“I’m sorry,” I say. Unlike Sloane and Aisha, Finn wears only paper-thin pants, leaving his chest bare. Before I can talk myself out of it, I plunge the needle into his chest, as close to his heart as I can get, and push the medicine into him.
“Wait!” Sloane cries, too late. “That’s not epinephrine! It’s supposed to be clear.”
“What?” I breathe. “What the hell is it, then?”
Sloane shakes her head. Her mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
