Chapter 4 - Bloodlines and Barricades
The realization struck Suite A with the force of an artillery shell.
Daniel’s hand slowly slipped from the steel door handle, his knuckles white and rigid around the grip of his pistol.
His chest rose and fell in ragged, shallow surges.
He looked from the door to his infant son, whose shrieks were growing weaker, hoarser, slipping into dangerous hypoxia.
"He set the trap," Daniel whispered, the words tasting like ash in his mouth.
"Marco didn't care about the fifty thousand dollars.
He orchestrated the raid on your brother's apartment to pull me out of St. Jude's."
"The monitors, Daniel!" I shouted through my own blinding tears.
"Look at his saturation!
Eighty-two percent!"
The survival instinct of a neonatal nurse overpowered the sheer, gut-wrenching terror of my brother's fate.
I couldn't help Michael from this room.
If I abandoned Leo now, both brothers—mine and his—would be corpses before the night was through.
I stood up, holding Leo securely against my shoulder, and began pacing the small circumference of the room with long, deliberate, rhythmic steps.
I forced my lungs to expand and contract with slow, exaggerated breaths, creating an artificial cadence of calm.
"Come here," I commanded Daniel.
The mafia boss blinked, startled by the sheer authority in my voice.
"I said come here!"
Daniel moved swiftly, stopping in front of me, towering over us with the heavy firearm still clutched in his right hand.
"Holster that weapon," I ordered, my voice trembling but ironclad.
"Your adrenaline is poisoning the air.
Put it away and take off your jacket."
Daniel hesitated for a fraction of a second, his lethal instincts fighting against the raw authority of a woman holding his life in her hands.
He slid the gun back into its leather harness and stripped off his tailored suit jacket, dropping it carelessly onto the floor.
"Now put your hand on his back," I said, stepping closer until the fabric of his white shirt brushed against my scrubs.
"Not like a stranger.
Firm.
Wide palm.
Spread your fingers to cover his shoulder blades.
Match my breathing.
In for four seconds.
Hold for two.
Out for six."
Daniel swallowed hard, his throat bobbing.
Slowly, with a reverence that seemed entirely alien to a man of his violent stature, he placed his massive, scarred palm over the back of Leo's flannel swaddle.
His hand covered nearly the entire upper torso of the infant.
I pressed Leo tighter between our chests, sandwiching the fragile boy between the nurse who protected him and the father who loved him.
"Breathe, Daniel," I whispered, my face inches from his rough, stubbled jaw.
"Don't think about the docks.
Don't think about Marco.
Think about your son's lungs."
Daniel closed his eyes.
A deep, shuddering breath rattled through his broad chest.
He matched my rhythm: slow, deep, oxygenating the blood.
Beneath his massive palm, Leo’s frantic gasps began to synchronize with ours.
The infant’s tiny forehead rested against the warm hollow of my collarbone, his cheek pressed directly over my racing carotid artery.
Slowly, miraculously, the monitor above us responded.
Eighty-four.
Eighty-seven.
Ninety-one percent.
Leo let out a long, shuddering sigh, his small hands relaxing against the cotton fabric of my scrubs.
The screaming ceased, replaced by the soft, steady hum of his breathing.
Daniel opened his eyes.
They were wet with unshed tears, burning with an unholy mixture of profound gratitude and terrifying, murderous resolve.
"You have the heart of a lioness, Rachel Jenkins," he whispered, his voice trembling slightly.
Before I could answer, the red light above the suite's intercom flashed violently.
A sharp, panicked buzz cut through the room.
Daniel stepped back, his hand instantly returning to his weapon as he pressed the wall console.
"Speak," he barked.
The voice of the exterior guard, Tony, came through the speaker, breathless and high-pitched.
“Boss!
The freight elevator just got locked out from the basement levels!
Hospital security isn't responding on the radio!
We have six men in civilian tactical gear coming up the north stairwell!”
"How far out?" Daniel demanded, his voice turning into ice.
“They just breached the third-floor fire door!
They'll be in this corridor in sixty seconds!”
"Seal the blast door," Daniel ordered without a second of hesitation.
"Engage emergency quarantine lockdown on Suite A.
Nobody gets in, and nobody leaves until I tell you."
“Boss, there are six of them and only two of us out here—!”
A muffled, rapid series of suppressed thuds echoed through the intercom, followed by the sickening thud of a heavy body hitting the floor.
The connection died with a screech of feedback.
My blood turned to ice.
"They're outside," I gasped, holding Leo so tightly I feared I would bruise him.
"They killed your guards."
Daniel moved with terrifying, fluid speed.
He slammed his palm against the emergency quarantine lock on the inner wall.
A reinforced steel security shutter dropped from the ceiling frame with a deafening crash, sealing the suite off from the corridor like a vault.
The heavy magnetic deadbolts slammed into the reinforced concrete frame with three distinct, heavy clunks.
"We have four inches of ballistic-grade steel between us and the hallway," Daniel said, his eyes scanning the room for tactical advantages.
"The walls are reinforced concrete.
They can't breach this door with small arms.
They'll need C4 or heavy thermal lances, and setting off explosives in a hospital brings the FBI within eight minutes."
"They don't need to blow the door," I said, a wave of horrific medical realization washing over me.
I pointed toward the air intake vents near the ceiling.
"This is a negative-pressure isolation suite, Daniel.
It pulls air continuously from the central HVAC system to prevent airborne pathogens from entering the general ward.
If they release fentanyl aerosol or carbon monoxide into the fourth-floor ventilation ducts, the filtration system will pump it directly into this room."
Daniel’s face drained of color.
He looked at the ceiling vents, then looked down at his premature son, whose lungs could not tolerate even a fraction of toxic gas.
"How do we shut it off?" Daniel demanded, leaping onto the edge of the supply counter.
"The manual shutoff valve is behind the maintenance access hatch above the ceiling tiles!" I yelled.
"The red lever!
Turn it ninety degrees clockwise!"
Daniel didn't wait.
He grabbed the edge of the acoustic ceiling grid, ripping the fiberglass tiles down with a shower of dust and aluminum brackets.
His massive hands reached into the dark plenum space above, feeling blindly through the insulated ducts.
A sharp, metallic hiss began to echo through the ventilation shafts.
A faint, sweet, chemical odor drifted down from the ceiling—a smell every trauma nurse recognized with instant horror.
Isoflurane.
Surgical anesthetic gas.
They were pumping high-concentration halogenated ether into the air ducts to knock us unconscious through the ventilation.
"Daniel, now!" I screamed, pulling Leo’s swaddle over his nose and mouth, sprinting toward the far bathroom where the air was temporarily trapped.
With a roar of pure animal exertion, Daniel gripped the heavy brass lever inside the dark ceiling shaft.
The veins in his forearms bulged like thick cables as he hauled against the rusted valve.
A screech of grinding metal echoed through the ductwork as the internal fire damper slammed shut.
The hiss abruptly ceased.
Daniel dropped from the counter, coughing roughly from the plaster dust, landing lightly on his feet.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, his eyes wild with adrenaline.
"The intake is sealed," he gasped, his chest heaving.
"We have whatever air is trapped inside this room for the next thirty minutes."
Then, the heavy steel shutter facing the hallway shook violently.
BANG.
BANG.
BANG.
Three heavy blows rattled the four-inch ballistic plate.
Then came a muffled, electronically amplified voice through the external medical intercom panel.
It was Salvatore Bianchi.
“Daniel,” the voice crackled through the small speaker with mocking warmth.
“Open the door, nephew.
Uncle Marco just received confirmation from the docks.
Your little informant, Michael Jenkins, has been cornered at the river’s edge.
Open this hatch, surrender the child into Marco's guardianship, and maybe your little nurse will get to bury her brother in an open casket.”
I collapsed against the bathroom doorframe, my knees finally giving out completely under the crushing weight of the nightmare.
My brother was trapped.
May you like
We were sealed in a steel tomb with thirty minutes of oxygen.
And Daniel Russo was standing in the center of the room, looking at his son with the expression of a demon who had just decided to burn the entire world to ash.
