Chapter 8 - The Seconds on the Floor
Jonathan shed his heavy overcoat in a single, violent motion, letting the expensive wool drop unceremoniously onto the dirty entryway floor. He stripped off his suit jacket, rolled up the sleeves of his crisp white dress shirt, and dropped to his knees in the puddle of water beside the fallen woman.
He did not look at the broken glass. He placed his bare fingers firmly against the side of her neck, searching for the carotid artery.
The skin beneath his fingers was freezing, slick with cold perspiration.
For three agonizing seconds, he felt nothing. His pulse hammered in his ears so loudly it drowned out the radiator’s hiss.
Then, faint and erratic, a weak, fluttering beat tapped against his fingertips.
Thump... thump... pause... thump.
"She's alive," Jonathan breathed, the words tearing out of his chest like a ragged prayer.
He leaned down, pressing his ear to her lips. Her breathing was dangerously shallow, a faint, rattling whisper that barely moved the air. Her pupils, when he gently lifted her right eyelid, were unequal and sluggish.
Jonathan’s gaze swept across the floor, cataloging the immediate surroundings. On the edge of the kitchen counter above her lay an open cardboard box containing a blue plastic auto-injector pen, its safety cap still locked in place, alongside an empty prescription vial labeled Insulin Glargine.
Hypoglycemic shock. Or an acute diabetic emergency compounded by severe dehydration.
She hadn't had the strength to unlock the pen before her blood sugar plummeted, sending her crashing into the floorboards with the glass of water.
Jonathan grabbed his phone from the pocket of his suit trousers, tapping the live connection to his security desk.
"Vance! Floor four, apartment 4B! Thirty-eight West Forty-Seventh Street!" Jonathan barked into the microphone. "Female, late twenties, severe hypoglycemic shock, unresponsive, pulse weak and irregular, respiratory depression! Tell the paramedics to bring intravenous dextrose and glucagon! Break the front door if it's locked!"
"Medics are three blocks out, sir! They have your transponder! Two minutes!"
Jonathan set the phone down on the floor, its screen glowing against the wet linoleum.
He looked back at the woman. Her lips had taken on a faint, bluish tinge. If she stayed on the freezing floor tiles in this unheated room, hypothermia would accelerate the cardiac failure before the ambulance could navigate the snow-choked avenue.
Jonathan reached down, slipped his arms under her shoulders and knees, and lifted her from the puddle of water. Her body was terrifyingly light, her head rolling back against his chest like dead weight.
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He carried her three paces to the pull-out sofa, laying her down onto the thin mattress. He stripped the heavy woolen blanket from the back of the sofa, wrapped it tightly around her shivering frame, and began rubbing her cold hands vigorously between his own palms to force circulation back into her extremities.
From the doorway, Sophia watched, her small body frozen, her stuffed rabbit clutched so tightly against her chest that its seams creaked.
