Page 93 of Heart of Danger
“No!”Mac screamed, pure panic prickling through his system. Panic and blinding, crippling fear.
He knelt, gathering Catherine to him. She was utterly slack with the boneless look of the dead.
No!
“Medic bag!” he screamed just as Nick thrust it into his hands. As he scrambled to find the defibrillator patches, fit them into the tiny battery, disengaging the Securloc of Catherine’s ballistic vest, tearing open the shirt underneath and fitting the patches to her white white skin, he totally ignored the fact that touching her was like touching something inert…dead.
No!
Every time he’d touched Catherine it had been like her skin sang to him. Life pulsed in her, touching her was like touching life itself. Warmth and energy travelled through him at the slightest touch of her. He could feel her heart beating, the swirl of emotions that was Catherine, the gentleness and light that was uniquely her.
Touching her had been sheer magic, always, a touch that brought him to life, too.
Not like now, where there was nothing beneath his fingers but a cold blank void.
He turned on the switch with sweaty fingers. Her back arched and for a second he thought—she’s come back to me!But it was nothing. It was the electrical current running through her muscles, artificially contracting them.
He pressed the current again and her back arched again, high, slumping back down lifelessly.
There was a loud noise in the cabin and it took him a moment to realize it was him, screaming at her tolive, goddammit live!
Another pulse, she arched and fell back. Mac lay his hand on her chest, something he’d done a hundred times these past days and every time it was as if her skin kissed his. Warmth and welcome slid into him in honeyed pulses and he’d grown addicted to the feeling. Always, always...except now.
Now there was nothing under his hand but emptiness.
No!
He had no idea if he screamed it aloud or only in his head. Didn’t matter. He tore the patches off and began manual stimulation of her heart, the skin lifeless under his hands but he didn’t care because he was going to bring her back to life himself, she was going to live through his hands, as he lived through hers.
Left hand on her chest, the heel of the right hand over the back of the left, compression at least 5 cm deep, 100 compressions per minute.
Training kicked in and he pumped her chest hard, rhythmically, unceasingly, counting the compressions like a chant, over and over again. Sweat dripped from him onto her chest and his hands were white with the pressure and he couldn’t give up, wouldn’t give up…
“Boss.” Nick’s hand on his shoulder. “She’s gone. I’m so sorry. I saw the stunner, it was red, set to kill. She caught killer current. I’m so sorry, boss.”
Mac wasn’t listening, could barely hear him. There was noise in his ears, the static of panic as he tunnel visioned and there was only his hands over Catherine’s heart and Catherine’s heart silent under them, and nothing else in the entire world.
He chanted the numbers, loud, so he wouldn’t have to listen to Nick. He didn’t want to hear him, he didn’t want to hear anyone, he didn’t want anyone or anything, all he wanted was to feel her heart beat under his hands and he was going to stay here for a hundred years if he had to, just like this, willing her back to life.
Pumping his own life into her because he couldn’t exist without her. Everything he was, all his thoughts and dreams and fears, it was all there in his hands, his hands were beating her heart for her. He’d do that. He’d do that forever, his heart would beat for hers, he’d do anything, anything at all…
Tears were mixing with the sweat and dripping onto Catherine’s chest. His eyes stung but it never even occurred to him to wipe his eyes, his brow, because Catherine needed his hands, needed him for her heart to beat.
“Boss…” Nick spoke again, a note of pity in his voice.
Mac shrugged away the hand. He’d slap it away if he could but he couldn’t leave Catherine, not for one instant because he was her. His hands were reaching deep inside her now, beneath the skin, through bone and muscle, reaching for her heart, pumping heat into her…
His hands grabbed her heart, squeezed it directly somehow, though he was still compressing her chest, 100 beats a minute, steady steady…and below, he was touching her heart, touching it with everything in him and if he could have, he would have given her his own life but he couldn’t, he could only work his hands on her chest, 100 compressions a minute.
He chanted and worked and sweated, frenzied and terrified.
“ETA fifteen minutes,” Jon announced but Mac didn’t hear. Didn’t want to hear. He wanted to stay here forever, heels of his hands over his love’s heart, because as long as they were here, he didn’t have to let her go, didn’t have to say goodbye…
“Mac…” Nick said low. It was the first time Nick had ever called him by his name. Mac chanced a look up and saw tears in Nick’s eyes. He didn’t know Nick could cry. “She’s gone,” he whispered.
No!
No, he wouldn’t let her be…gone. His mind shied away from even thinking the worddead. Because Catherine couldn’t be dead. Nothing would make any sense at all in the world if she were dead. She was life itself and joy and that heart of hers, that magical heart of hers…
