Chapter 3 - The Crash Cart Protocol
"Code red! Incubator Four! Infant desaturating rapidly!" Clara shouted, leaping from her chair and sprinting toward the room.
Dominic was right behind her, his face turning the color of ash as he slammed his hands against the glass observation window. "Leo!"
Inside the room, Kevin Vance froze, dropping a vial of epinephrine onto the linoleum where it shattered into a thousand glass shards. "His airway is spasming! I—I can't intubate, his trachea is too small!"
"Step aside, Kevin!" Clara barked, her voice brooking zero argument.
She scrubbed her hands, snapped on sterile gloves, and slid her hands through the incubator ports. Her heart pounded with the familiar, ice-cold adrenaline rush of a combat zone, but her hands remained terrifyingly steady.
"He's going into anaphylactic shock!" Kevin panicked. "We're losing him!"
"Not on my watch," Clara muttered.
She bypassed the failing intubation kit, recognizing instantly that the infant's airway was blocked by a severe mucous plug triggered by Halston's aggressive medication. With surgical precision, she grabbed a micro-suction catheter, guided it down the infant's microscopic airway with a deftness that left Kevin gaping, and cleared the blockage in a single, breathless motion.
"Bag him! Pure oxygen, gentle pressure!" Clara commanded.
Kevin fumbled with the manual resuscitator bag, delivering steady, rhythmic breaths.
For five agonizing seconds, the monitor flatlined into a continuous, torturous shriek.
Dominic gripped the door frame so hard his knuckles turned white, his breath fogging the glass. "Clara..." he whispered, a sound so broken it barely registered above the alarms.
"Come on, little warrior," Clara whispered fiercely, pressing two fingers gently against the baby's tiny chest, initiating a micro-CPR rhythm while keeping her eyes locked on the monitor. "Don't you dare quit on your father. Breathe!"
Blink.
The green line on the monitor twitched. Once. Twice.
Then, a steady, rhythmic beep returned to the room.
Beep... beep... beep...
Leo let out a tiny, fragile whimper, his chest rising and falling on its own.
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Clara let out a long, shaky breath, wiping a bead of sweat from her forehead. She pulled her hands out of the incubator, looking across the room to meet Dominic's haunted, hollow eyes through the glass.
The billionaire slid down the doorframe, sinking slowly to the floor with his head in his hands, trembling with the delayed shock of a man who had just stared into the jaws of absolute hell.
