Free The Night Season by Chelsea Cain Page B

gray-haired chest was bare except for two white adhesive pads, one on his right shoulder above the nipple, the other on his left flank at the bottom of his rib cage. White wires stretched from the pads to the machine on the crash cart. He looked ashen and sunken, like an old man.
    They’d used a dummy the day that Susan had seen the new AEDs demonstrated. The machines saved time. In the old days, there’d been crash teams—someone from cardiology, respiration. It took a village to read the ECG, interpret it, and operate the machine. With the AEDs, the nearest medical staff could begin defib immediately.
    This was what they’d said at the press conference when the hospital had switched to the new technology.
    “Stand clear,” the AED said again. “Do not touch the patient. Analyzing rhythm.”
    It was so quiet then that Susan could hear her pulse beating in her ears. Her throat swelled.
    The five medical personnel in the room stood in suspended animation around Henry’s bed, waiting for the shock.
    People didn’t arch their backs and jerk off the table the way they did on hospital shows. They just sort of flinched. No one had talked about that at the press conference.
    “Come on,” one of the doctors said, like he was in his car and the engine wouldn’t turn over.
    Susan felt Archie looking at her and glanced over at him. She knew that he could hear the quiet, too. He was watching her, waiting for the slump of her shoulders, the tremble of her jaw—some clue that it was over. Claire had sunk down to the floor and was resting her head on her knees. It had been too long. You didn’t need a press conference on defibrillation to know that.
    Susan turned her gaze back into the room, just in time to see the AED administer the third shock.

Remember the clear light, the pure clear white light from which everything in the universe comes, to which everything in the universe returns; the original nature of your own mind. The natural state of the universe unmanifest.
    She saw Henry wince. Like someone startled by a distant sound.
    She held her breath. The pulse in her ears thrummed.
    “Check pulse,” the AED said calmly. “If no pulse, give CPR.”
    Susan couldn’t see the heart monitor, not that she could have made anything of it. It had the attention of everyone in the room, though. They watched it without blinking, without moving a muscle, like they were at mission control waiting for Neil Armstrong to announce that he’d landed on the moon.
    One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
    Susan had always gotten in Henry’s way. She’d annoyed him from the start. He’d been trying to protect Archie, and she came along intent on making Archie relive his nightmare. Henry had tried to protect her, too, to keep her safe. But she’d ignored every warning he’d ever tossed her way, nearly getting herself killed in the process. That was how she was with men in authority. She either rebelled against them with all her might, or fell in love. Never anything in between.
    Wait.
    Henry’s jaw moved.
    Not a muscle spasm. Susan didn’t know how, but she knew it to be true without hesitation. This was something different. Something intentional. His jaw opened. His chest—which had seemed so sunken and pale, so decrepit—expanded and lifted. His skin flushed.
    “He’s breathing,” someone said.
    Susan felt hot tears running down her cheeks. If Henry lived through this, she would listen to him, she wouldn’t get in the way, she’d be less annoying.
    Please, God. I promise.
    “We’ve got a heartbeat,” someone else said. “It’s getting stronger.”
    Susan turned toward Archie and Claire and grinned, wiping her face with her sleeve. They had heard. Archie was already helping Claire to her feet.
    Susan’s phone rang. She knew who it was. She reached into her purse and turned off the volume.

CHAPTER
    15

    Archie was used to pain. There was the physical pain—the ribs that still ached where Gretchen had broken