Chapter 7 - The Secret in the Cuff
Lauren looked at Josie, then at Vance.
“She’s right,” Lauren said. “The hospital was built on the old 19th-century cannery foundations. The laundry chutes drop straight down to the sea wall where the municipal barges used to haul away contaminated linens.”
“It’s a thirty-foot drop into the old sump,” Vance said, shaking his head. “The baby won’t survive that impact.”
“We don’t drop him,” Lauren replied, grabbing a nylon equipment bag from the cabinet. She dumped out the sterile dressings and rapidly packed it with pediatric resuscitation gear, an ambu-bag, a manual suction bulb, and two vials of epinephrine. “There’s a maintenance ladder bolted to the service wall right next to the laundry shaft. But we have to cross forty feet of open corridor to reach the linen bay.”
Outside, the metallic shriek of the chains giving way echoed through the hall.
*Crack!*
A flash-bang grenade detonated in the main corridor, sending a blinding burst of white light and a concussive shockwave through the frosted windows of Trauma Three.
“Josie, ears!” Lauren shouted, pulling the little girl down behind the stainless steel counter.
Vance pushed his back against the wall beside the door, his pistol raised. “Lauren, when I kick this door open, you run straight across to the linen service door. Do not look back. Do not stop for Grace, and do not stop for me. You understand?”
“Vance—”
“I swore an oath too, Lauren,” the captain said, his jaw locked tight. “Now get those kids out of here.”
Vance kicked the lock release on the door and burst into the hallway, his weapon barking twice into the smoky crimson haze.
Shouts erupted in the corridor. Muzzle flashes flickered like strobe lights against the walls.
Lauren scooped Eli against her chest with her left arm, gripped Josie’s cold hand with her right, and lunged out of the room.
The corridor was thick with acrid white smoke. On the floor near the nurses' station, Dr. Harrison Grace was crawling on his hands and knees, clutching his leg, weeping hysterically. He saw Lauren and reached out a trembling hand.
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“Lauren! Help me! They’re not going to let anyone leave!”
Lauren didn’t even slow down. She leaped over his outstretched arm, pulling Josie behind her, and hit the swinging stainless steel doors of the linen room with her full weight.
