The Heiress He Underestimated novel Chapter 220

Chapter 220 Resuscitation

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Finished

Elera looked at the colorful candies in her palm. She ate one. The sugary shell cracked, then the chocolate melted. It was so normal, so stupidly simple. A tiny burst of sweetness in the sterile, anxious room. She ate another.

“Thank you, Xan,” she said.

He just nodded, shoving his hands in his pockets. He found a spot to lean against the wall, opposite Frost. The two men, so different, shared a nod. A recognition of their shared, exhausted watch.

The vigil settled into a rhythm. The four of them–the wife, the friend, the ex–fiancé, the bodyguard- keeping watch in the soft, electronic gloom. Clara dozed off in her chair, her head tipping back, snoring softly. Frost remained a statue, his eyes periodically scanning the room and the door. Xan stared at the floor, lost in his own thoughts, his own guilt and ghosts.

And Elera watched her husband.

She talked to him in her head. Come on, you stubborn man. You’ve been through worse. Remember the cytokine storm after the first treatment? You beat that. You beat your sister’s corporate raids. You beat my father’s pathetic kidnapping plot. This is just the final boss. And you’ve got the cheat code. I gave it to you. So use it.

She must have dozed off herself, because the next thing she knew, her head was jerking up from where it had fallen against the bed rail. Her neck screamed in protest. She blinked, disoriented, her eyes flying to the monitors.

The heart rate was the same. The blood pressure was the same.

But the cellular activity monitor.

The wave,the beautiful, steady wave that had been scrolling across the screen, was gone.

In its place was a flat, green line.

A cold hand closed around Elera’s heart. She shot to her feet, the stool clattering backwards. “No.”

The noise woke Clara, who jolted upright. “What? What’s wrong?”

Frost was already at the foot of the bed, his eyes sharp. Xan pushed off the wall.

Elera’s hands flew over the sensor array controls, checking connections, recalibrating. “The graft signal. It’s flat and it’s not reading.” Her voice was tight, clinical, but panic was a live wire underneath.

Dr. Evans, as if summoned by the shift in energy, hurried in. “Problem?”

“The cellular uptake monitor has flatlined,” Elera said, her fingers flying. “It could be a sensor failure. It has to be a sensor failure.” But even as she said it, she was looking at the other monitors. Drakonius’s heart rate was beginning to climb. A slow, steady increase. 80… 85… 90…

“He’s tachycardic,” Brenda noted, her voice calm but alert.

6:57 pm P P P P

Chapter 220 Resuscitation

“BP’s starting to drop,” Dr. Evans said, his earlier awe replaced by professional concern.

It wasn’t the sensors.

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Finished

The graft was failing. His body was rejecting it. And the rejection was triggering another catastrophic immune response, starting with his heart racing to keep up with the internal chaos.

“Start an epinephrine drip,” Elera ordered, her mind clicking into emergency mode. “Point one micrograms per kilo. And get me five hundred milligrams of Methylprednisolone. Now. We have to suppress this reaction.”

Brenda moved to the drug cabinet. Dr. Evans adjusted the IV.

But the numbers kept getting worse. The heart rate hit 110, then 120. The blood pressure continued its slow, sickening slide.

“Elera…” Clara whispered, her hand over her mouth.

Elera ignored her. All her attention was on Drakonius. She placed her stethoscope on his chest. His heartbeat was a frantic, galloping rhythm. She listened to his lungs. She heard the faint, ominous crackle of fluid beginning to build. Pulmonary edema. His body was drowning itself from the inside.

“He’s going into distributive shock,” she said, the words like stones in her mouth. “The cytokine storm is back and this time around it’s worse.”

She worked with a brutal, focused efficiency. She called for different medications, adjusted ventilator settings, ordered cooling measures reinstated. She was a general on a battlefield that was collapsing around her, issuing orders to slow the advance of an invisible, cellular enemy.

For twenty minutes, it was a brutal tug–of–war. They would get his heart rate down, and his blood pressure would dip further. They would stabilize his pressure, and his temperature would spike. It was like trying to plug five leaks in a dam with only two hands.

And then, the sound they all dreaded.

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