Chapter 2 - The Knife and the Straw
The air in the room grew suffocatingly thin.
Cora’s eyelids remained swollen shut, her skin taking on the sickly waxy sheen of oxygen deprivation.
Delphine pressed the second auto-injector into the girl’s opposite thigh.
Click.
She held it for five agonizing seconds before pulling it away.
Nothing happened.
No sudden gasp.
No rush of air into the girl’s collapsed lungs.
Cora’s chest remained completely still.
“It’s not breaking through,” Delphine whispered, feeling the faint, erratic flutter beneath Cora’s jawline.
Sloan reached down, gripping his sister’s limp wrist.
“Cora, wake up,” he ordered, his voice cracking into raw desperation.
“Cora, open your eyes right now.”
The young girl did not flinch.
“Her vocal cords are completely edematous,” Delphine said, her medical training taking over every thought.
“The medication isn’t circulating fast enough because her blood pressure is crashing.”
“If we wait for the ambulance, she will be brain dead in three minutes.”
Sloan looked up from his sister’s body, his face twisted in torment.
“Then fix it, Delphine!” he shouted.
“You’re a trauma nurse! Fix her!”
“I don’t have an operating room, Sloan!” Delphine shouted back, her voice echoing off the walnut walls.
“I need to bypass her throat.”
The men in the room stared at her in utter incomprehension.
“What does that mean?” Sloan asked, his jaw clenching so hard a muscle twitched in his cheek.
“It means an emergency surgical airway,” Delphine said, wiping cold sweat from her forehead.
“A cricothyroidotomy.”
Silence hit the room like a hammer.
“You’re going to cut her throat?” one of the remaining guards stammered, his hand hovering near his weapon.
Delphine ignored the guard completely and locked eyes with Sloan.
“If I don’t make an opening below the swelling right now, she dies in front of you.”
“Do you trust me or do you want to watch her heart stop?”
Sloan’s gray eyes burned into hers.
For three years, he had searched every city on the East Coast looking for the woman who had left him in the night.
He had envisioned a thousand confrontations.
Accusations.
Demands.
Threats.
He had never imagined that when he finally found her, his sister’s life would rest entirely in her shaking hands.
“Do it,” Sloan said, his voice deadly level.
“Get her whatever she needs.”
Delphine spun toward the banquet table.
“I need high-proof alcohol. Vodka or gin, immediately.”
A guard grabbed an unopened bottle of premium vodka from the bar cart and brought it over.
Delphine smashed the seal and poured the clear liquid over her own hands, washing away the restaurant grime.
“I need the sharpest steak knife on that table,” she ordered.
Sloan grabbed a heavy, serrated steak knife from his setting and wiped the blade with a clean linen napkin.
He handed it to Delphine, handle first.
His fingers brushed against hers.
The familiar shock of his touch sent a jolt straight down Delphine’s spine, but she pushed it down into the dark.
“I need a hollow tube,” she said, scanning the room frantically.
“A pen, a rigid straw, anything rigid and hollow.”
The bartender, who had been cowering behind the bar counter, raised a trembling hand.
“We… we have stainless steel cocktail straws at the bar,” the bartender stammered.
“Get one! Now! Wash it with alcohol!” Delphine ordered.
Within ten seconds, a slim, polished metal straw was placed on a clean napkin beside Cora’s head.
Delphine knelt lower, her knees grinding into the hard floorboards.
Her swollen belly ached, sending sharp cramping pains across her lower back.
She placed her left hand on Cora’s throat.
She traced the contours of the swollen neck, searching through the puffy tissue for the landmarks she had studied in medical school.
Thyroid cartilage.
The Adam’s apple.
She slid her index finger down into the small depression beneath it.
The cricothyroid membrane.
A soft space no wider than a thumbnail.
If she cut too high, she would sever the vocal cords and cause permanent damage.
If she cut too deep, she would pierce the esophagus or puncture the carotid artery, causing Cora to bleed to death in seconds.
Delphine had practiced this procedure on silicone mannequins in simulation labs.
She had assisted trauma surgeons performing it on gunshot victims in downtown ERs.
She had never performed it alone on a dining room floor with a kitchen knife.
“Hold her head perfectly straight, Sloan,” Delphine commanded, her voice dropping to a razor-thin calm.
“If she flinches, do not let her neck move a millimeter.”
Sloan leaned down, placing his large, calloused hands on either side of his sister’s skull.
His hands were steady, but Delphine could see the terror behind his eyes.
“I have her,” Sloan said softly.
Delphine poured half the bottle of vodka over Cora’s throat to sterilize the skin.
She gripped the heavy steak knife, positioning the tip directly over the cricothyroid membrane.
“I’m sorry, Cora,” Delphine whispered.
She pressed the point through the skin.
A line of dark red blood welled up instantly, spilling over Delphine’s fingers.
Delphine made a horizontal incision, barely half an inch wide.
The resistance of the dense fibrous tissue gave way with a subtle pop.
Delphine immediately dropped the knife.
She picked up the stainless steel cocktail straw.
Using her finger to guide the opening, she carefully maneuvered the blunt metal tube into the tiny slit in Cora’s trachea.
For two seconds, nothing happened.
The room remained frozen in terrifying suspense.
Then, a wet, violent hiss of air rushed through the hollow straw.
Blood spattered against Delphine’s white uniform shirt.
Cora’s chest rose sharply.
A deep, shuddering gasp dragged oxygen straight down the metal tube and into the starving lungs.
Cora’s body arched slightly against Sloan’s grip as air flooded her system.
The blue tint began to drain from her lips, replaced by a faint, ghostly pink.
Her chest fell, then rose again in a steady, rhythmic pattern.
Delphine slumped back against the base of the dining table, her hands dripping with blood and vodka.
Her breath came in ragged, uneven sobs.
The room exhaled in unison.
Two bodyguards leaned against the wall, their faces pale as sheets.
Sloan kept his hands firmly on Cora’s head, his gaze fixed on the stainless steel straw rising and falling with his sister’s breath.
He looked up slowly.
His gray eyes tracked across Delphine’s bloodstained waitress uniform.
He looked at her trembling hands.
He looked at the deep shadows beneath her eyes.
And then, his gaze dropped to the unmistakable, heavy curve of her belly beneath the stained black apron.
The silence between them stretched, thick with unspoken questions and years of buried rage.
“You saved her,” Sloan whispered, his voice thick with raw, turbulent emotion.
“She’s not out of the woods,” Delphine said, forcing her voice to remain cold and distant.
“She needs high-flow oxygen, IV steroids, and continuous monitoring for a rebound reaction.”
The heavy doors of the VIP suite were suddenly kicked wide open.
Four paramedics in bright yellow jackets rushed into the room carrying a backboard, oxygen tanks, and trauma kits.
Bishop led them inside, his jacket thrown open, his face red with exertion.
The lead paramedic dropped to his knees beside Cora, his eyes widening as he saw the steel straw protruding from the girl’s neck.
“Who performed this tracheotomy?” the paramedic asked, checking Cora’s pulse and pupillary response.
“She did,” Bishop answered immediately, pointing directly at Delphine.
The paramedic looked over at the exhausted, pregnant waitress sitting on the floor in a puddle of blood and spilled water.
“Whoever did this saved this girl’s life,” the paramedic said briskly.
“Airway is patent. Oxygen saturation is coming back up to ninety-two percent.”
“Let’s get the cervical collar on, prep the bag-valve, and move her to the gurney now!”
The medical team swarmed Cora with practiced efficiency, securing the makeshift airway and strapping her to the board.
Sloan rose to his feet.
He stood at his full height, towering over the chaotic scene like a dark monument.
He smoothed the lapels of his suit with deliberate, mechanical movements.
“Bishop,” Sloan said, his voice returning to its normal, terrifying authority.
“Boss?”
“Follow the ambulance to St. Jude’s,” Sloan ordered, never taking his eyes off Delphine.
“Have our private surgical team meet them at the trauma bay.”
“Lock down the hospital floor.”
“Nobody enters Cora’s room without my personal clearance.”
“Understood,” Bishop replied, nodding to two guards as they escorted the gurney out into the hallway.
The suite emptied rapidly.
The paramedics’ heavy footsteps faded down the corridor.
The restaurant staff had already been ushered out by the remaining security personnel.
The heavy wooden doors clicked shut once more.
Delphine tried to pull herself up using the edge of the mahogany table.
Her knees shook violently.
Her lower abdomen cramped again, a sharp warning sign from her exhausted body.
Before her legs could give out, two strong, familiar hands caught her by the elbows.
Sloan lifted her effortlessly, holding her upright against his chest.
His touch was firm, possessive, and suffocatingly close.
Delphine shoved his chest with both hands, stumbling back a step to put space between them.
“Don’t touch me, Sloan,” she gasped, her voice raw.
Sloan did not step back.
He stood inches away, his piercing gray eyes staring straight down at her belly.
“How far along are you, Delphine?” he asked quietly, the dangerous edge in his voice vibrating like a drawn bowstring.
Delphine pulled the edges of her dirty apron around herself defensively.
“That is none of your business.”
Sloan took a slow step forward, closing the distance she had just fought to create.
“You vanished three years ago from our home in the middle of a blizzard,” he said, every word dripping with cold venom.
“You took nothing except the clothes on your back.”
“I tore this city apart looking for you.”
“I thought you were dead, Delphine.”
“Or murdered by my enemies.”
He reached out, his gloved fingers hovering an inch from her rounded stomach.
“And now I find you serving drinks in a dingy lounge, covered in blood…”
May you like
His eyes rose to meet hers, burning with a terrifying realization.
“Whose child are you carrying, Delphine?”
