Chapter 16 - The Nurse's Bluff
The corrupt surgeons inside the glass room picked up massive, terrifying bone marrow extraction needles, moving slowly toward my sleeping children.
Absolute, primal desperation flooded my veins, overriding every single ounce of fear in my body.
"Stop the procedure right now, Arthur, or you will be dead in less than five minutes!" I screamed, my voice echoing violently off the sterile walls.
Arthur raised a trembling hand, pausing the surgeons just inches away from my babies' fragile spines.
He looked at me with a mixture of immense irritation and dark curiosity, wheeling his chair slightly closer to where I was pinned.
"And why would a pathetic little hospital nurse make a threat like that?" he rasped, coughing up a small amount of blood into a sterile cloth.
I took a deep breath, relying entirely on the five years of intense pharmacological training I had acquired working in the trauma ward.
"Because when we were hiding in the cornfield last night, I injected both of my sons with a highly concentrated dose of Heparin and a synthetic glycoprotein inhibitor," I lied flawlessly.
Damien looked up from the floor, his eyes widening slightly as he instantly caught onto my desperate, brilliant bluff.
Arthur frowned, signaling his lead surgeon to step out of the observation room to evaluate my claim.
"If you extract their marrow right now, their blood is completely saturated with anticoagulants," I explained, speaking rapidly with cold, clinical precision.
"The moment you introduce their cells into your heavily compromised immune system, it will trigger a catastrophic, irreversible internal hemorrhage."
I stared directly into Arthur’s hollow eyes, projecting an aura of absolute, unwavering confidence.
"You will bleed to death from the inside out before the marrow even begins to graft."
The lead surgeon checked Arthur’s medical chart, his face draining of color as he realized my fabricated medical scenario was theoretically lethal to the old man.
Arthur slammed his fist against the armrest of his wheelchair, his chest heaving with furious, ragged breaths.
"How long until the synthetic inhibitors flush out of their tiny systems?" Arthur demanded, his voice shaking with furious impatience.
"Seventy-two hours," I lied again, buying us the most precious, critical window of time we desperately needed.
Arthur glared at me with pure, unadulterated hatred, knowing he had no choice but to wait or risk a painful, immediate death.
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He ordered the guards to lock Damien and me in the facility’s underground holding cells until the boys' blood was supposedly clean.
As the guards dragged us away, I locked eyes with Damien, silently confirming that our deadly countdown had just begun.
