Chapter 5 - The Underground Surgical Table
The basement smelled of damp concrete, machine oil, and the sweet, medicinal tang of pressurized oxygen tanks.
Julian was standing beneath a single bare bulb hanging from the rafters.
He had cleared an old wooden workbench, wiping away layers of dust with a clean towel, and placed Violet upon it.
The cat was lying on her right side, her breathing now shallow and rapid, her belly heaving against her ribs.
Dante was standing near the heavy iron boiler door, an unholstered Glock 19 resting loosely in his left hand, barrel pointed toward the floor.
"Did he leave?" Julian asked as Camille reached the bottom of the iron stairs.
"He left to sweep the perimeter," Camille said, breathing heavily.
"Which means we have perhaps twenty minutes before he realizes your car is still parked three blocks away."
"I don't need twenty minutes," Julian replied.
"I need you to fix her."
Camille set down the emergency kit she had carried down under her arm: sterile drapes, two vials of propofol, an endotracheal tube, a manual ventilator bag, and a minor surgical pack.
"I cannot perform a full diaphragmatic hernia repair on a wooden workbench in a dirt basement, Julian."
"Then she dies here?"
Camille looked at Violet.
The Maine Coon’s gums were turning a dusky, pale lilac—the unmistakable sign of hypoxia.
"I can relieve the pleural pressure," Camille muttered, her brain calculating dosages and anatomical margins.
"I can perform a closed needle thoracocentesis to pull the trapped air and fluid out of her chest cavity, which will buy her twenty-four to forty-eight hours of stable breathing."
"Do it."
"I need you to hold her head."
Julian stepped forward without hesitation.
He stripped off his charcoal overcoat, rolled his crisp white shirt sleeves up to his elbows, and placed his broad hands on Violet’s shoulders.
His forearms were corded with muscle, crisscrossed by old, faded knife scars that spoke of a childhood far removed from penthouses.
"Talk to her," Camille ordered as she snapped on sterile latex gloves.
"What?"
"Cats listen to vocal frequency. If you go silent, she thinks you’re waiting to strike."
Julian swallowed once.
He leaned down until his mouth was two inches from the cat’s ear.
"You're not dying in this filthy basement, Violet," he spoke in a low, velvet rasp.
"Elena spent six weeks teaching you how to jump through the conservatory window. You don't get to quit because of a cracked rib."
Violet let out a faint, reedy purr.
Camille prepped the skin over the eighth intercostal space with a quick swipe of iodine.
She picked up a twenty-gauge butterfly catheter attached to a three-way stopcock and a sixty-milliliter syringe.
"Hold her completely still," Camille warned.
"If she jerks when I penetrate the pleura, the needle could lacerate the lung lobe."
"She won't move," Julian said.
He pressed his chest against the cat’s flank, anchoring her with immense, controlled power.
Camille inserted the needle with a quick, decisive thrust just above the rib margin.
She turned the valve and pulled back on the syringe plunger.
Instantly, the clear plastic cylinder filled with amber-tinged pleural fluid and trapped air.
Twenty milliliters.
Forty milliliters.
Violet’s heaving chest visibly relaxed.
The dusky purple tint in her gums receded, replaced by a healthier, capillary pink.
The cat drew in its first deep, unrestricted breath in three days, its great tail giving a single, contented twitch against the workbench.
Julian let out a breath he seemed to have held since entering the clinic.
"Is it done?"
"For now," Camille whispered, capping the needle and disposing of the fluid in a waste tray.
"The tear is still there. She will need an orthopedic surgeon and soft-tissue reconstruction within two days, or the organs will adhere to the pericardium."
Julian looked down at his ruined shirt, stained with iodine and cat fur, then up at Camille.
"You took a massive risk upstairs."
"I took a risk for an innocent animal."
"Marcus Vance would have burned this building to the ground with you inside if he found her."
"Marcus Vance is a coward who hides behind lawyers and rented guns," Camille said coldly, stripping off her gloves.
"I've dealt with worse men than him in this emergency room."
Dante suddenly stepped away from the boiler, pressing an earpiece tight against his ear.
"Julian."
"What?"
"One of my scouts at the rail yard just radioed in."
Dante looked between Julian and Camille, his expression grim.
"They found the cabin."
Julian straightened up, his face instantly hardening into stone.
"Is she there?"
"The fire was still smoking when they got there ten minutes ago," Dante said quietly.
"Marcus's sweepers found it first. But Elena wasn't inside."
Camille froze, her fingers pausing on the zipper of her kit.
"If she wasn't inside, where is she?" Camille asked.
Dante looked down at Violet, who was now sitting up on the workbench, grooming the silver fur along her left paw with sudden, frantic intensity.
Between the cat’s wet claws, caught in the dense fur of her pads, was a tiny scrap of torn paper, soaked in coal dust and river water.
Julian reached out, his fingers surprisingly delicate as he pried the sodden scrap from the cat's paw.
He held it up to the bare hanging bulb.
Scrawled in waterproof grease pencil, in shaky, feminine cursive, were two words and a series of numbers:
LOCK 9 — 04:00
Camille stared at the handwriting.
"Lock 9 is the old abandoned barge gate on the south canal," she breathed.
"That canal floods during high tide every morning at four."
Julian pocketed the scrap, his eyes fixing on Camille with an intensity that made the hair on her arms stand up.
"You know the canal system, Dr. Hart?"
May you like
"My father worked the barge locks for thirty years before Vance Maritime bought the shipping lanes."
Julian reached out and picked up Violet, wrapping her securely in his dark overcoat.
