Dropped.
“So we’re playing chicken with the drug and the patient’s life,” the doctor asked.
“Yes.”
Jackson was dying. Rapidly, inexorably dying. I could stop it. I longed to stop it. Sweat broke out on his face. His limbs trembled. My own heart almost stopped with worry for my husband.Not your husband. Your patient. This is not Jackson. This is a man you must save. Do what you know you have to do and save him.
Dropped. Dropped.
Dove.
My medical instincts screamed.
“Pushing the neutralizer,” I said. My hand was already in motion, shoving the second drug into the IV.
Dropped.
Dropped.
Stabilized.
Climbed.
Doctor Flannigan forced a breath out between flattened lips. “Beginning hemofiltration,” he said. “And wishing for a goddamned drink. You cut itfine, Sebastian. I almost had a heart attack, and I wasn’t on the table.”
“I know,” I said, but I thought,Me, too.
The hemofilter hummed to life. Blood zoomed through the tube and into the filter itself, where membranes would pull out the unhealthy gunk before it drained back into his body. It’s kind of gross and kind of fascinating, like most of medical science.
Doctor Flannigan dropped into a nearby chair. “When you said, ‘I’m making this up as I go along,’ I do not think I anticipated you meant thatliterally.Or that ‘balance the effectiveness with the risk’ meant ‘do the limbo with vitals’.”
“Sorry,” I said with a wince. “The truth is, this is the problem with Trigeneris right now. Why it’s not on the market. Managing the waste has the scientists in the Van Horn labs snarling and pulling out their hair. And that’s in patients who aren’t as profoundly affected as Jackson is. For most of the patients, they have margin for error. A little wasted Trigeneris effect time won’t hurt anything. That’s not the case, here. Jackson is an outlier. He’s pushing the effectiveness of the drug in all directions.”
“And we have to do it again.”
“Twice more before we can give him the final dose.” I chucked the syringe into a sharps disposal box, and prepared another one.
As I looked up from my task, I caught Doctor Flannigan’s gimlet gaze. “You good to do that again? Really?”
I smiled, though I couldn’t say why. I felt no humor, no levity, just the urge to grimace and hope it served as an acceptable facial expression. “I have to be. Jackson needs me.”
“When he wakes up, I’m going to tell him you’re a crazy son of a bitch.” Doctor Flannigan stood up and stretched his neck side to side. “All right, Sebastian. I’ve got the crash cart right there in case I need it.”
“For Jackson.”
“No. For me. Because this game of chicken is going to give me a fucking coronary.”
* * *
“Sebastian!”
“Not yet.”
“Are those numbers supposed to be dropping?”Randall. Too calm. Just like I felt. Too calm, clinging to my nerves with teeth and toenails.
“They’re maximizing the effectiveness of the drug by leaving it in your son’s system as long as they can.”The liaison had caught on.
Vitals dropping. Dropping. More sweat on Jackson’s face. His limb tremors felt more like full-body shudders this time.