Dr. Shield's Arc

Chapter 2 of 13

Sherrie left without another word, her boots loud on the concrete until the door swung shut. Shield checked the man's pulse again. Still there. She pulled a stool beside the table and sat down to wait. Twenty minutes later, Sherrie returned with an hourglass in one hand and a set of keys in the other. She flipped the glass and set it on the workstation beside Shield's surgical kit. The sand started falling. "One hour," Sherrie said, dangling the keys. "These unlock the supply truck parked outside Barry's. You get him talking before that sand runs out, or I drive it somewhere else. No more morphine. No more saline. No more anything." Shield stared at the hourglass, watching the grains cascade down. She had three vials of morphine left. Maybe two weeks of salvaged antibiotics. A dozen suture kits she'd bartered for with surgeries she should have been paid double to perform. The patient's eyelids twitched. His breathing changed. She could wake him now—slap his face, shout questions, let Sherrie have her interrogation. But his lung was still inflamed, his body barely holding itself together. If he panicked, if his heart rate spiked, the repair work would tear open and he'd drown in his own blood before she could stop it. She looked at Sherrie, then back at the hourglass. Half the sand had already fallen. "He wakes when his body's ready," Shield said. "Not before." Sherrie's jaw tightened, but she didn't move the hourglass. She just walked to the door and leaned against the frame, waiting. Shield turned back to her patient and checked his vitals again. His pulse was stronger now. She'd done everything right. But right didn't matter if he didn't wake up in time, and she had no way to make that happen faster without killing him. The sand kept falling.