If.
“How long?” Cassian asks. “How much longer?”
I say nothing.
The seconds tick by. Thirty. Sixty. Ninety.
I feel the corridor map of his body in my mind. Blood no longer moving through vessels. Oxygen no longer reaching tissues. The retina, starved almost instantly. Synapses beginning to misfire, then go silent.
At two minutes, I feel the old training rise up in me like a reflex.
Start compressions now. Shock again. Don’t wait. Don’t lose brain.
I do not move.
My jaw tightens around the urge.
Two and a half minutes.
My thumb taps lightly against the edge of the crash cart. I watch the clock. I watch the monitor. I watch the line of Talon’s throat for any sign of spontaneous effort.
There is none.
Three minutes.
Every fiber of my training screams now. Everything I was ever taught about saving lives howling at me to act. And I just stand here. Letting a man die on a table.
I let thirty more seconds drip out.
At three minutes and thirty-five seconds, I finally move.
I grab the bag-valve mask from Cassian’s hands and squeeze, forcing air into Talon’s lungs. His chest rises. I let it fall, then squeeze again. Oxygen alone will do nothing without circulation, but I am already reaching for the other syringe.
“Epinephrine,” I say. “Increases peripheral vasoconstriction, drives blood to the core when we get it moving.”
I inject the drug into Talon’s arm. Then I position my hands over Talon’s sternum.
“Cassian,” I say. “When I tell you to, take over compressions.”
He nods. “Understood.”
I begin.
My palms press down and the table creaks softly under the motion. The monitor’s chaos tightens into something that almost looks orderly, then dissolves again. I feel Talon’s ribs beneath my hands, the give and resistance of cartilage and bone.
One. Two. Three. Four.
Between breaths and compressions, I glance at the clock. Three minutes fifty seconds. Four minutes ten. We cannot cross five.
“Switch,” I say, stepping back.
Cassian slides in. His compressions are deeper than mine.
“Good,” I say, grabbing the defibrillator paddles again. “Keep going.”
I charge the machine.
“Clear.”
