Melissa pushed through the door behind Eddie. He started giving Blaine cardiopulmonary resuscitation. ‘His breathing’s shutting down! Get a resuscitation mask and hook him up to oxygen, or something. Tell me what to do!’
‘You shouldn’t be doing that, Eddie, we don’t know what—’
‘Shut up, Melissa! And here’s your stupid card.’ He tossed it at her, gave Blaine two ventilation breaths and continued the compressions.
‘Two people in the sample group died post-therapy!’
Eddie’s head came up, his eyes dark with anger. ‘And four died awaiting gene therapy! Quit your fear-mongering, Mel, and call Carl—or someone from the hospital! He’s on the verge of cardiac arrest. How are you going to “fix” him then without a heart-lung machine? He can’t exactly take his pills now, can he?’ Immediately he gave another two breaths.
She clenched her jaw as she prepared the oxygen line. After attaching a resuscitation mask to the tubing, she signalled for Eddie to stop the rescue breaths. Hot tears ran down her nose as she bent to position the mask over Blaine’s mouth and nose. Fear and fury thrashed about within her as she turned on the flow to the required rate.
Slowly Blaine’s breathing stabilised and his heart rate seemed to improve, but Eddie was quite right. Because of the boy’s condition, his body couldn’t use the oxygen efficiently. His vital signs were starting to deteriorate. And what excuse would she have for a dead young man in her institute, in her purpose-built observation unit?
‘We’ve got to dump him, Eddie.’
‘What?’ Eddie wheeled about to face her. ‘There is no way I’m letting you dump Blaine off somewhere to die!’
‘We’ve got enough samples to do a substantial amount of analysis and continue our research. It wouldn’t be our problem then, Eddie. We’ll just say he escaped after we tried to help him and there was nothing more we could do.’
She felt increasingly self-assured the more she talked. ‘It’s the only way, Eddie. If he dies here, it’s our problem—and a problem that’s not going away. But if he’s gone and all the security footage has been taken care of, well ...?’
She started disconnecting electrodes. Eddie reached across Blaine and wrestled with her, holding her hands away so she couldn’t touch the oxygen mask they’d just set up.
‘Melissa!’ His voice boomed through her head. ‘You’ve just admitted having custody of him to a police detective! Not only that, you’ve claimed him to be unwell and unstable. How do you think you’ll be able to convince them of such a miraculous recovery that you were unable to keep him contained?’
She stared at him. She was breathing hard, the reality of the impossible situation she’d created slowly squeezing the sense from her mind. A stream of sirens screamed from the nearby hospital, the sounds of a major emergency in direct contrast to the piercing silence strung between them in that moment. The only noise was the steady beeping of a monitor.
Soon Eddie found his voice. ‘You did a medical degree, Melissa! You might have done biomed in your higher degrees, but you’re a medical researcher! A doctor! You trained to preserve life!’
‘And promote it through research!’ Something in Melissa snapped. ‘And Ramer has stolen that opportunity from me!’
She ripped her hands away so hard that Eddie’s grip slipped. Lunging at the monitors, she threw them over, smashing them onto the floor in a domino-like series of clatters. As she turned over the final machine, the oxygen gear tore away from Blaine and flew across the floor.
Eddie looked from her to Blaine. The instruments were going wild. Melissa’s unrestrained hair fell over her face, matching the frenzy of her state. As if she wasn’t even there cursing and ranting, he began CPR once again.
‘You can’t do that forever! Besides, it won’t help anyway! Nature has determined he should die! You can’t stop it.’
He ignored her.
Melissa reached out to shove Eddie’s shoulder. ‘I said, we need to dump him!’
Eddie stopped to glare. ‘Call the hospital! Get them to send someone across. Now!’ He then returned to breathing on Blaine’s behalf and forcing the oxygen to circulate.
Air came from her nostrils in heavy snorts. She was prepared to do anything to have her way. She pulled her phone from the pocket of her jacket, ready to hurl it at Eddie. As she drew back her hand, her heart lunged to her toes.
She’d not hung up the call from the police.
Noooooo… Her wail was so high-pitched it was almost silent.
Quickly she stabbed ‘end call’ with her finger. ‘Eddie, we need to run!’
Still he bent over the boy.
Melissa swiped her card and wrenched open the door. From the opposite direction she could see a dozen police officers with weapons drawn. They reached the external door to the anteroom and pulled at it. The vibrations shuddered through the walls.
‘Open the door or we’ll batter it down!’
Frozen, Melissa couldn’t go forward or back. She remained glued to the internal door, scarcely aware as Eddie moved past her to open the external access.
The police rushed in and tackled them both to the floor.
‘Help the boy!’ Eddie’s voice squeezed out, despite the strong men restraining him.
Once the police had them on the linoleum in handcuffs, they were followed by paramedics and one other man. Melissa could see only this man’s shoes. She strained to twist her head. She knew she could convince the detective; she just needed a chance. But the man had a face she recognised. ‘Professor Ramer!’
He stood at the bed while the paramedics assessed Blaine’s vital signs. Glancing down, he caught her eye and shook his head. ‘Did you really think you’d get away with this, Melissa?’ His look was much like a father might offer at a child who had disobeyed a specific directive. ‘And was it worth it?’ He caught sight of the tray where she had left the tablets of Ramer’s Cure.
Melissa hadn’t thought to smash those too.
‘Re-attach the oxygen then dissolve those tablets in normal saline. We need to filter sterilise the solution and administer the dose i/v—as quickly as possible.’
‘It’s only some sort of synthetic sweetener!’
Melissa wanted to kick Eddie. Let the brat die and finish Ramer’s flop. He’d ruined her life! But Professor Ramer’s chuckle rumbled into her thoughts.
‘Not quite, Dr Jonick.’ He ensured he had their attention. ‘It’s a compound the body cannot synthesise or, under normal conditions, utilise. Essentially it’s inert, except to cells in which the defective DNA has been successfully exchanged. I embedded sequences that, once integrated along with the functional DNA, enable the compound to be taken up by the cell to induce a cascade of rescue processes. If we’re lucky it will take effect in time. If not ...’ His face sobered. ‘Seems you didn’t quite grasp the science, Melissa.’
‘Where’s Detective Boyd?’ Melissa mumbled this into the floor, more so out of contempt than any real interest in gaining an introduction. The police officers hauled her up and smirked. She scowled as they took her and Eddie outside, down to the waiting vehicle.
Two adolescents were standing with the Coltons near the building’s exit. One of them she recognised as Sophie, Blaine’s friend. The other she didn’t know.
‘There’s your Detective Boyd.’ They turned her slightly towards the group.
‘That kid?’
‘Yeah, this “kid”,’ the young man’s voice chased after her as she was eased into a police car, ‘aka Jett, Blaine’s other best friend! Best prank call I ever made—and the cops at the local station thought so, too!’