Chapter 7 - Escape from the Fifth Floor
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Inside Room 512, Tessa’s hands didn't shake once.
Having spent the last two years learning every button and alarm on her little sister’s cardiac equipment while spending sleepless nights by her bedside, Tessa hit the green BATTERY OVERRIDE switch on the milrinone infusion pump, coiled the power cord onto the IV pole, tucked the one-eared brown teddy bear and the titanium thumb drive beneath Chloe’s blanket, and kicked the master wheel brake off the hospital gurney.
"Put your head under the pillow and cover your ears like we’re playing submarine, Chloe!" Tessa ordered, pulling two thick hospital pillows and a lead X-ray apron hanging on the wall hook right over her ten-year-old sister’s head and torso.
Out in the corridor, bullets from Victor’s strike team chewed into the drywall and shattered the glass medicine cabinets at the central nurse’s station.
"Main elevators are locked down from the lobby, Boss!" Matteo shouted, blood running down his neck from a flying glass cut as he reloaded behind the corner wall. "Victor’s got men in the lobby and the ambulance bay! If we stay on five, they’ll box us in before CPD Swat even gets the call!"
"We don't go down to the lobby!" Roman barked, backing into Room 512 as Tessa rolled the gurney toward the threshold. "Mercy General connects to the old Teaching Annex across the alley via the third-floor skybridge! Take the biohazard freight elevator behind the surgical prep room down to three!"
Roman grabbed the front frame of Chloe’s rolling hospital bed with his left hand, pulling it down the back service corridor at a dead run while Tessa steered the rear handles with her bandaged hand and Matteo walked backward behind them, firing three-round bursts to keep Victor’s gunmen pinned behind the nurse’s station.
They burst through the double doors of the dirty-linen freight vestibule. Roman slammed his fist onto the oversized red call button.
Miraculously, the heavy freight car was sitting right on the fifth floor.
They rolled Chloe’s gurney inside, and Roman hit the 3 button, followed by the red emergency door-close override.
Just as the heavy steel bi-parting doors clanged shut vertically in the center, a hail of 9mm rounds hammered against the outside steel plate!
Wait—as the freight elevator descended past the fourth floor, the digital indicator above the door suddenly blinked out, the overhead fluorescent cage light died, and with a violent mechanical jolt, the elevator brakes clamped onto the guide rails—stopping the car dead between the fourth and third floors!
"Someone in the basement maintenance room just killed the breaker for the freight shaft!" Matteo cursed, shining his tactical flashlight upward toward the steel ceiling escape hatch ten feet above the floor.
Tessa looked down at the glowing blue screen of Chloe’s cardiac infusion pump.
Because the portable battery unit on the hospital pole was five years old, the sudden voltage spike when the building’s breaker tripped had hadn't affected it—Wait. During the sprint out of Room 512, a stray bullet ricochet from the hallway had nicked the lower plastic casing of the lithium battery pack on the IV pole, and the charge indicator was dropping rapidly: 14%... 12%... 9%... LOW BATTERY ALARM.
A shrill, rhythmic warning beep began echoing inside the dark steel elevator shaft.
"Tessa?" Chloe whispered from beneath the lead X-ray apron, her little hand reaching out to grab Tessa’s skirt. "My chest feels funny."
"The battery pack on her milrinone pump was hit in the hall!" Tessa gasped, her voice cracking with sheer terror as she looked up at Roman in the beam of the flashlight. "If that pump shuts off for more than three minutes without a wall outlet, her pulmonary pressure spikes and she goes into right-heart failure! We can't climb through a ceiling hatch with her—she needs a hospital bed and 110-volt power in two minutes!"
Above their heads in the elevator shaft, the metallic clang of boots jumping onto the fifth-floor hoistway doors echoed down the dark concrete chimney—Victor’s men were prying open the upper shaft doors to shoot straight down through the roof of the cab!
Roman looked at the four-foot gap at the bottom of the elevator car where the lower half of the third-floor steel doors sat thirty inches below their floor level.
"Matteo," Roman said, his voice dead calm as he holstered his pistol and gripped the iron lip of the manual vertical door latch at their feet. "Help me pry the third-floor outer door latch open from inside the shaft. There’s a thirty-inch vertical drop onto the third-floor corridor tile."
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"Boss, a hospital gurney weighs three hundred pounds!" Matteo grunted, wedging his steel combat knife into the safety interlock latch while Roman wrenched the heavy lower steel door panel downward with raw, brutal strength until the safety springs screamed and gave way, opening a four-foot gap looking out into the brightly lit third-floor pathology hallway!
"You and I jump down onto the third-floor tile first," Roman said, his muscles corded like steel cables beneath his torn white shirtsleeves as he dropped down onto the third-floor hallway floor and braced his broad shoulders squarely beneath the lip of the open elevator shaft. "Tessa pushes the front wheels over the edge, and we catch the entire bed before the wheels hit the floor. On three!"
