Raymond Delgado gripped my forearm, his hands shaking.
"Sweetheart... don't go, don't leave me..."
The room was not quiet.
Andrea Winfield had pulled out my nasal cannula.
A hum filled my ears.
My life had started counting down.
On the monitor, my heartbeat dropped fast.
...
...
...
Heart rate falling, blood pressure crashing.
The air thinned and thinned. I couldn't get a breath.
My heart ran like an old computer, slower and slower.
The crying in the room grew louder.
Every face was stricken with grief. They all knew the patient had entered her final moments.
Beep—
The heart monitor flattened into a single line.
Jesse Fuller crossed the room in one stride and lunged to the machine.
"How did the monitor come loose?!"
Andrea checked in a panic.
"The leads slipped off."
Jesse looked at her, long and hard.
"Nurse Winfield, this is serious negligence."
Andrea hurried the electrodes back onto my body.
"Dr. Fuller, it really wasn't me."
The head nurse frowned.
"Andrea, you'll stay late and think about what you did."
She adjusted the oxygen saturation back to a proper level.
Fresh oxygen flowed into my nose.
Like a drowning fish, I was back in the water.
"This is nonsense." Dr. Lambert's face had turned. He couldn't hold it anymore.
He was the neurology expert the Delgado family had paid a fortune to bring in for the consult.
One second he'd pronounced the patient dead.
The next, a resident-in-training openly stated the opposite.
"Jesse, mind what you say."
Dr. Lambert lowered his voice.
"This patient was brain-dead four years ago. Her family couldn't accept it, so they've kept her body going ever since."
Only the flat, monotonous tone of the monitor was left in the room.
Jesse said, "A moment ago, the patient was communicating with me."
At that, Raymond's head snapped up, stunned.
"Dr. Fuller, what did you say? My wife is really alive?"
Jesse walked straight to the bed and took the patient's hand again.
The fingertips didn't move.
He waited quietly another minute.
No miracle came.
His expression slowly turned grave.
Could it be...?
Had his judgment been wrong?
But just now, clearly...
Jesse let go, ready to explain the situation to Dr. Lambert.
Just as his fingers were about to withdraw.
My index finger hooked into his palm again.
Warmth poured into my hand, and fingers stiff for years slowly came back to life.
I gave it everything I had.
Tap tap tap tap tap tap...
I sent the Morse code.
【She】
Jesse jolted, his eyes flying around the room.
Nurse Winfield.
The female attendant.
The head nurse.
He gripped my hand again and tapped a line of Morse code into my palm.
【Who is she?】
Andrea got there before him, taking out a penlight.
She pried my eyelid open.
In my field of vision: the deep furrows on Dr. Lambert's forehead, the despair in Raymond's eyes, the hypocrisy on Andrea's face.
The penlight burned into two spots of glare across my sight.
I heard her say:
"No visual tracking, no response to sound. Dr. Lambert, Dr. Fuller says the patient moved her finger, but that would be an incidental muscle movement, the kind you see in a vegetative patient."
Dr. Lambert neither agreed nor disagreed.
These tests had been run many times over the past four years.
Raymond covered his face, hiding the pain.
Andrea finished her checks and closed my eyelid.
My world went dark again.
Snap— Jesse pinched Andrea's ID badge between two fingers.
His voice carried a rare edge of aggression.
"Nurse Winfield oversteps into making a diagnosis. Why not take the doctor's chair while you're at it?"
