Amberly walked into her apartment to find Eleanor Henry pacing in the living room. The older woman gasped when she saw the bandage on Amberly's forehead and rushed to embrace her.
"Oh, my dear girl! Are you alright?"
"I'm fine, Eleanor. Just a scratch," Amberly reassured her, her voice gentle. "How is Forest?"
Before Eleanor could answer, a panicked shout came from the master bedroom upstairs. It was the family doctor.
"Call 911! Now! Mr. Henry is non-responsive!"
Amberly's blood ran cold. She and Eleanor raced up the stairs.
The news of Calvin's near-fatal accident had been the final straw. The shock and terror had triggered what Amberly had feared: Forest had collapsed. A massive, acute stroke.
He was convulsing on the bed, his breathing shallow, his heartbeat erratic and faint on the portable monitor the doctor had hooked up.
"I'm losing him!" the doctor yelled, his hands shaking as he tried to administer a shot. "It's too severe!"
Eleanor crumpled, a sob of pure despair escaping her lips.
Amberly, however, was a rock of pure calm. She pushed past the frantic doctor and knelt by Forest's side. She turned to the terrified housekeeper. "The black medical bag I left with you this morning! Bring it, now!" The woman nodded and ran, returning moments later with the kit. It contained a handheld computing device and several thin wires ending in micro-electrode pads.
"What is that?" the doctor demanded, aghast.
"Experimental nerve stimulator," Amberly said, not looking up. "Get out of my way."
With the practiced, steady hands of a surgeon, she applied the pads to specific points on Forest's head, neck, and chest. Her fingers flew across the handheld screen, inputting a complex series of commands-voltage, frequency, waveform.
The device whirred softly. On the heart monitor, the jagged, failing line that was about to flatline suddenly jumped. It began to steady, to find a rhythm.
Forest's convulsions ceased. His breathing deepened.
The family doctor stared, his mouth hanging open. In thirty years of practice, he had never seen anything like it. It was a miracle.
Just then, the EMT team burst into the room, ready for a crisis. They stopped short, taking in the scene: the stabilized patient, the stunned doctor, and the young woman calmly operating a device that looked like it was from twenty years in the future.
"Who stabilized his vitals?" the lead paramedic asked, his eyes wide as he looked at the monitor's steady readings.
The doctor numbly pointed to Amberly.
Amberly rose, her work done for the moment. She addressed the paramedic directly.
"The device has stabilized his intracranial pressure," she said, pointing to a readout on her handheld screen, "but it's flagging a high probability of a cerebral thrombosis. It estimates you have less than an hour in the golden window before permanent damage sets in."
Her use of precise medical terminology, her confident diagnosis, and her impossible results left the entire team speechless.
They worked quickly, moving Forest onto a stretcher and rushing him out. The lead paramedic gave Amberly one last look, a mixture of awe and profound confusion in his eyes.
Eleanor grabbed Amberly's hand, her own trembling. Tears streamed down her face, but these were tears of gratitude.
"Amberly," she whispered, her voice choked with emotion. "You saved him. You saved him again."
