“Sam! What are you doing?”
“Cassie?” Samuel whispered to the sleeping woman in the bed, shocked to see her lying there, both of her legs suspended above her in casts. The last time Samuel had seen her, had been just after they had escaped the Trident building – for the first time. She had worked in the marketing department with him and had been stuck on the fourteenth floor due to her crippling anxiety. Samuel had found her there when he was looking for information on what had happened and together, they had left the building; Cassie assuring him that she would be able to reach her family safely.
Now she lay in a bed in front of him, both her legs broken. He desperately wanted to know what had happened to her, but as he reached out to touch her arm and wake her up, Austin’s hand fell down on his shoulder.
“What are you doing? We need to get the power back on.”
“She worked in Trident,” Samuel answered, his eyes fixated on Cassie much like Austin had been with Daveed. “She worked in my department.”
“Ah man,” Austin paused. He was seeing the bigger picture now though, the backup generator down in the basement his priority. “Let’s try and get the power back on for her then, yeah? Come on, Sam.”
Samuel blinked and moved away from Cassie’s bed, following Austin’s instruction. He pulled open the door to the stairwell and stepped through as the lights suddenly flickered above him again, machines beeping to life in the ward he had just exited. As swiftly as it had turned off, the power came back on.
“What the…?”
“It’s back on! It’s okay!”
Austin’s cheer seemed somewhat premature as Samuel hurried back to Cassie’s side, startling the poor girl awake. She looked up with a confused expression.
“Samuel? What are you doing here?”
“Cassie! What happened? How did you end up like this?”
Watching Samuel question the young woman in the bed, Austin looked around the ward and it dawned on him that while the power may be back on, it didn’t mean everyone was out of the woods just yet. He left Samuel and ran back to where they had left Daveed, sinking to his knees next to the man and searching desperately for a pulse. Nothing. Daveed was dead; despite everything they had tried, it hadn’t been enough to save him. Austin’s fist clenched and his bottom lip wobbled, cursing everyone at the foodbank for what had happened there.
“Help! Someone help! Please!”
With the return of the power, the noises in the small hospital had increased once again, but as Austin knelt in front of Daveed, one voice pierced the air above all others, his head snapping back and forth to try and identify where it was coming from.
“He’s seizing! Help! Please!
Jumping up to his feet, Austin ran toward the sound of the male voice, following the cries until he saw a father struggling to hold his son still as he spasmed and shook in his hospital bed. A woman stood a few feet further back, tears streaming down her face as she looked on in horror, the little boy bouncing around in the bed like a ball loose on a trampoline.
“What’s happening? What’s caused this?”
“It’s his epilepsy,” the father explained, trying to cushion his son’s head and stop him from slamming into the hard bed frame. “He started seizing when the lights came back on. Are you a doctor?”
“No,” Austin shook his head, “but I can help. I’ll be back.”
Sprinting away to the nurses’ station, Austin thankfully knew what he was looking for. He needed to put the boy under before he tumbled out of the bed and seriously hurt himself. He was only a preteen so a small dose would do it, he just needed to find a syringe and the right drug for the job.
All around him, Austin was realizing the trouble that the blackout had caused. Several patients lay lifeless in their beds, their bodies hooked up to machinery that had been down for nearly fifteen minutes, starving their bodies of oxygen or failing to keep their hearts pumping.
“Hey,” Austin caught sight of a man in a doctor’s coat dashing around the corner. “There’s a kid seizing over there, I need to put him out –”
“Here,” the doctor quickly reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a vial of medicine. “Five CC’s if he’s under sixteen. Ten otherwise.”
“Thank you.”
Austin was struck by the willingness of the doctor to help and just hand out medicine; everyone who remained in the hospital now was there to do their bit to help those in trouble however they could, there was no space for selfishness or fear. Tugging open the cupboard doors in the nurses’ station he rifled around inside for a syringe. He tried to channel his husband at that time and do what he would’ve done. Dante was incredibly selfless and would do anything to save a patient – or anyone in need – it was one of the reasons Austin had fallen so in love with the man, overpowered by his kindness and generosity that never seemed to fade or grow weary.
Finally closing his hand around a syringe, Austin sped back to the bedside of the seizing child, the father still trying to keep him still but becoming more and more traumatized as his son flailed in his arms.
“Hold him steady,” Austin commanded, drawing the sedative up into the syringe and flicking it as he had seen Dante do on several occasions, checking there weren’t any potentially dangerous air bubbles in the liquid. He walked to the bedside of the young boy
