The Year I Stopped Being His novel Chapter 346

At 2:00 AM, the hallway of The Haven Medical Center was so quiet you could hear the low, electric hum of the fluorescent lights.

Garrison was lying fully clothed on the cot in the break room, his lab coat still on and his glasses still perched on his nose, clutching a half-read follow-up report.

The door violently crashed open, slamming into the wall with a deafening thud.

"Director Foster! Room 521—the patient is seizing!"

521.

The second the number registered, Garrison was wide awake. He ripped the blanket off himself and sprinted out of the break room, his lab coat billowing wildly in his wake.

When he shoved open the door to Room 521, he was greeted by a nightmare that would be burned into his brain forever.

Sloane's body was bowed into an unnatural, agonizing arch. Her spine hovered above the mattress, her head thrown violently back, the veins in her neck bulging sharply against her skin.

Every muscle in her body was convulsing completely out of control. The IV in the back of her hand had been ripped out by the violent thrashing, scattering droplets of blood across the pristine white sheets like crushed rose petals.

She clawed blindly at the bed, her fingers scraping against the mattress before locking into a death grip on the corner of her pillow, her knuckles turning bone-white.

Then, she vomited.

A mix of bile and stomach acid spilled from the corner of her mouth, running down her jaw and soaking into her collar and the pillow.

It was projectile vomiting and tonic seizures triggered by a catastrophic spike in intracranial pressure. Garrison had read about it in textbooks, had seen it in clinical practice, but the person writhing on the bed right now, being subjected to this torture—was Sloane.

Garrison's fingertips trembled. He rushed to the bed, scooped her convulsing body into his arms, and rolled her onto her side against his chest. One hand cradled the back of her head, while the other gently forced her eyelids open to check her pupils.

"Sloane, Sloane?!"

"Don't be afraid. I'm here. I'm right here!"

He could feel her violently jerking and spasming against him, like a bird shot out of the sky, its wings still thrashing desperately even as the light slowly drained from its eyes.

"Push lorazepam intravenously to control the seizures! Rapid-infuse mannitol to drop the intracranial pressure! Crank the oxygen mask to max flow!"

The nurses scrambled into action. The needle pierced her vein, and the medication was pushed in cc by cc. The mannitol drip flowed in a rapid, unbroken stream.

The lorazepam kicked in, shifting her seizures from full-body rigid contractions to paroxysmal spasms, but she remained unconscious. Her eyes darted erratically beneath her lids, and that same weak, involuntary whimpering continued to slip from her throat.

They pushed a second dose of painkillers.

Still nothing.

They maxed out the intracranial pressure meds. Still nothing.

The back of her neck was drenched in cold sweat, her hospital gown clinging tightly to her skin, outlining every microscopic tremor of her shoulder blades. She was still dry-heaving, her body curling tighter onto itself with every wretched gasp.

Garrison stood beside the bed, the needle of the syringe in his hand trembling faintly.