Chapter 9 A Near Death Experience
A near-death situation is one effective way to send a family gathering into utter chaos.
One second, I am the sacrificial lamb on a marble altar, and the next, the high priestess of the Wolfe clan is crumpled on the Persian rug.
The chaos that follows her collapse feels so out of place for this kind of family. They all seemed so composed, high and mighty, like nothing could ever phase them.
Now, they look like a flock of colorful, expensive-looking birds startled by a gunshot.
After making sure I’m okay, Alistair moves to her side in an instant. He moves with a grace that doesn’t falter even in a crisis. He gently lays the Old Madam flat, his large hands supporting her head. He doesn’t look as panicked as the rest of the people in the room. His face is a mask of focus and the only thing that indicates his panic is the white of his knuckles as he grips her shoulders.
"Get her nitroglycerin!" Alistair barks. His voice cuts through the rising murmur of the room and everyone pauses. It’s like his voice sent a wave of calm through this.
His father turns to the man standing by the door. "Move! It’s in her bedside drawer!"
The butler disappears into the shadows of the hallway. We can all hear him running until his footsteps fade away. I stand on the edge of the circle, my hands clenching the fabric of my cream dress.
I place my hand on my chest as I watch Alistair check her pulse. That’s when I realize that my heart isn’t racing. In fact, instead of my heart racing, my brain is making all kinds of calculations and observations.
It is the same feeling I used to get when my mother would walk me through the woods, pointing out the difference between a leaf that heals and a leaf that kills.
I watch Celia Wolfe. Her skin is turning a terrifying shade of slate gray. Her chest isn’t rising and falling in the heavy, labored way of a standard heart attack. Her limbs give a subtle, rhythmic jerk, and her eyes have rolled back, showing only the whites. I take a step close so I can look at the pulse point in her neck.
It isn’t thumping.
I start counting the pulse per second. I try to recall the differences between pulse counts and what they mean. Her pulse right now is a chaotic, high-speed tremor that I recognize from one Chapter of my mother’s journals.
This isn’t a simple blockage that nitroglycerin can fix. It is something else.
I take a step forward, my mind already cataloging the symptoms. Nitroglycerin is a vasodilator. It opens the pipes. But if the pump has lost its rhythm entirely, opening the pipes won’t do a damn thing. It might actually make it worse by dropping her blood pressure to zero.
I try to move closer to the center of the room, but a wall of lavender silk suddenly blocks my path.
It is Beatrice Wolfe, Alistair’s aunt. Her eyes are red and wide, and I realize that the heavy perfume I noticed earlier belongs to her.
"Stay back!" Beatrice shrieks. She places a hand on my chest and shoves, her rings catching on the delicate lace of my neckline. "You’ve done enough. You’ve killed her. Are you happy now? You brought your filth into this house and broke her heart!"
"I need to see her," I say. My voice is low, steady. I don’t have time for her hysterics. "She isn’t having a heart attack, Wolfe. Move out of the way."
"You arrogant little brat," she spits. Actually spits because apart from the spite in her voice, tiny drops of saliva land on my face. I calmly swipe it off and take another step forward but she doesn’t move. She stands there with her hands akimbo and her frown deepens.
"I’m trying to help."
"You’re a high school dropout. You’re a nobody. You don’t get to touch her."
I don’t argue. I don’t have the luxury of time. I reach out and grab her wrist, twisting just enough to make her gasp and stumble to the side. I step past her before she can scream again. I drop to my knees on the other side of the Old Madam, opposite Alistair.
I place two fingers on Celia’s carotid artery. The vibration is there. It is a specific, twisting rhythm.
Now that I can feel it for myself, I know I’m right.
Torsades de Pointes.
A "fringe" condition is, rare and lethal if you don’t know what you’re looking at.
"She’s in ventricular tachycardia," I say, looking directly at Alistair. He looks up at me, his brow furrowed, his gray eyes searching mine. "Specifically, Torsades. Her heart is twisting like a ribbon. The nitroglycerin will kill her faster."
A scoff erupts from behind Alistair. It is his uncle, a man with a bloated face and a voice like wet gravel. "Ventricular what? Don’t listen to her, Alistair. She probably read that on a blog once. She didn’t even finish her senior year. She’s probably trying to finish your grandmother off so no one will oppose this marriage anymore."
The butler returns, breathless, holding a small brown vial. He hands it to Alistair’s father, Arthur Sr., who is hovering over his mother with a trembling hand.
"Get it into her mouth," Arthur Sr. commands.
"Don’t," I warn.
They ignore me. Arthur Sr. pries his mother’s jaw open and slips the tablet under her tongue. We all watch, the room holding its collective breath. For thirty seconds, nothing happens. Then, Celia’s face goes from gray to a deep, bruised purple. Her breathing stops entirely. The jerking in her limbs becomes more pronounced, then suddenly, she goes limp.
"She’s not breathing!" the aunt screams. "Alistair, do something!"
"I told you!" I say, my voice cutting through the panic. I pull a small metal case from my hidden pocket. I had a habit of carrying it around as my mother did. The cool weight of it in my palm is the only thing keeping me from spiraling. "Torsades leads to brain death within five minutes once the pulse fails. You’ve just wasted two of them."
Alistair turns his full attention to me. The world around us seems to vanish. The shouting relatives, the sobbing aunt, the indignant father: they all become background noise. There is only Alistair, his beautiful gray eyes, and the lethal stillness of his grandmother between us.
"What do you need?" Alistair asks.
"Magnesium sulfate," I say. "High dose. Injection solution. Now."
Alistair looks at the butler. "Do we have it?"
The butler looks like he wants to melt into the floorboards. "No, sir. We have the standard emergency kit, but magnesium sulfate isn’t part of the protocol. The ambulance is ten minutes away."
"She doesn’t have ten minutes," I say.
I flip the latch on my metal case. The scent of lavender and sharp, earthy herbs wafts up, but underneath it is the clean, metallic smell of the vials I have there.
The fact that I picked this up last minute before leaving the house, feels like the heavens knew this moment would happen.
I pull out two small glass containers filled with a clear, shimmering liquid. I developed this myself, a concentrated magnesium derivative combined with a stabilizer my mother used for the heart tremors her dad used to suffer.
"What’s that?" Beatrice asks.
"A home remedy," I reply softly.
"FDA approved?"
"It’s potent but untested by any lab other than my mum’s. And it is the only thing that will stop the twisting in Celia’s heart."
I reach for a syringe in the side compartment. I can feel the entire room moving closer to watch what I was doing.
"Absolutely not!" Arthur Sr. bellows. He reaches out to grab my arm, but Alistair’s hand shoots out, catching his father’s wrist in a grip that looks like it could crush bone.
"She’s going to use a home brew on the matriarch of the Wolfe family?" Beatrice Wolfe yells, her voice hitting a glass-shattering register. "She has no medical degree! She’s a girl from the sticks with a box of potions! Alistair, if you let her touch her, you’re an accomplice to murder!"
"She has to go to the hospital!" another uncle shouts. "Get the car! We can’t let this girl treat her like a lab rat!"
The noise is deafening. They are more worried about the optics of a high school dropout saving the Old Madam than they are about the fact that she is currently dying on the floor.
Alistair doesn’t move. He stares at the two vials in my hand. He looks at the way my fingers are steady, the way I am not looking at the shouting crowd, but only at the woman whose life is slipping away. He looks at me, and I see the internal war in his eyes. He is the head of the clan. He is the man who just offered to give up his empire for a contract.
He looks into my eyes as if he’s searching for something. I don’t look away. I hold his gaze.
"Alistair, stop her!" his father commands.
Then Alistair stands up, his shadow falling over the entire room. He lets go of his father’s wrist, but he doesn’t step away from me. He steps in front of me, forming a physical barrier between me and the rest of his family.
"Listen to me," Alistair says. The room goes quiet, not because they want to, but because his presence demands it. "The ambulance won’t make it. The nitroglycerin failed. If we wait, she’s gone."
"So you’re going to let her do it?" Beatrice Wolfe asks.
"Yes," Alistair says. He turns his head slightly, his gaze sweeping over every person in the room. "If anything goes wrong, I alone will bear the responsibility. I will step down. I will face the legal consequences. But right now, Emily is the only person in this room who isn’t just standing around waiting for a miracle."
He looks back at me. "Do it, Emily," he commands. "Now."