Page 125 of Asystole

Since I’m seated directly behind him, correctly assuming he’d feel better in the front where he felt like he had some control, I gently massage his shoulders.

“Hey, we’re gonna be okay. Something better will come along. You could always apply at Mass General,” I tell him.

Technically, Mass General is Boston Memorial’s competition, but hey, if Boston Memorial is stupid enough to let Logan go, then Mass Gen. deserves a shot at him.

“I don’t know,” Logan says, patting my hand as we bank left around the northernmost tip of the island. “I hated being on the opposite schedule as you for the last quarter. Ideally, I’d work days like you so we could spend all our nights together, so I’m not sure taking another gig at a hospital would work.”

Before I can respond, Erik’s voice fills our headsets.

“If you guys look to your left, you can see the California lighthouse. The views from the top are pretty awesome, but it… doesn’t beat what you’re seeing… up here.”

Erik almost sounds like he’s losing his breath despite sitting perfectly still—minus using the joystick.

“Hey, man. You feeling okay?” I ask, ever on alert thanks to my day job.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. Sometimes I just get a little overheated up here.”

Craning my neck, I see that one drop from earlier has multiplied. I mean, we are basically in a glass box flying into the setting sun… and it is the Caribbean.

Erik’s not a small man, either. The Dutch tend to be very tall, and Erik is on the heavier side and in his mid-fifties. I assume he made his fortune, raised his kids, and then left his homeland to fly tourists around in paradise as a retirement plan.

And not a bad one.

Erik recovers and points out the white-sand beach below us.

“That’s a pop…popular spot for…locals,” he says, barely getting the words out before he slumps forward, totally unconscious.

When his body pitches forward, he pushes the stick forward too, making the nose of the helicopter dive straight toward the ocean. As if that weren’t bad enough, we’re also starting to roll to the right.

I don’t know much about helicopters, but I’m pretty fucking sure flying sideways or upside down isn’t something they can do.

“FUCK!” Logan yells.

“ERIK!” I cry at the same time.

“Chase!” Logan calls. “You’ve gotta pull him back there with you. I can’t get him off the stick!”

Unstrapping my seatbelt, I almost land face-first on the glass as the ocean looms closer.

Grabbing Erik by the shoulders, I pull him upright so Logan can grab the cyclic stick.

The man is bigger than I thought, but I pull until I have his upper body in the back with me, trying to create as much room for Logan as I can. I’m pulling him against gravity, though, and it’s really fucking hard.

Chapter 45

Logan

Holy shit. These helicopters don’t fly that high to begin with, and when we start our nosedive, I’ve never felt time run out as fast as it does in these ten seconds. If Chase doesn’t Hulk our pilot over these seats to get him off the control stick, we’re going to meet our Maker when we crash into the water and break apart like a ceramic plate.

As it is, not only am I fighting a low-G pushover with the sudden nosedive, I’m fighting a vortex ring state—we’re descending into our own rotor downwash, and warning lights and alarms are blaring all around this chopper.

Come on, baby, I think to myself, unsure whether I’m talking to Chase, begging him to get Erik’s body out of my way, or to the chopper to work with me. I’m not familiar with this model, but I know helicopters. I can make it good for you, I promise the inanimate object currently trying to kill me and the man I love.

Heaving like our lives depend on it—which they do—Chase pulls Erik’s body until he finally gets the man and his legs in the backseat.

Scrambling into the vacated seat, I try to pull us out of this spinning nosedive. Ideally, I need to perform a Vuichard recovery, applying contralateral pressure to the joystick to stop the lateral spin, but the problem is that I’m quickly running out of space and the water is unforgiving. So, saying a quick prayer, I pull back on the stick while also applying a lateral force in the direction of our spin.

If the rotors lose their thrust, I’ve just killed us all, but I don’t have time for trial and error, and we’re dead anyway if our nose touches the surface of that water.