Nerves of Steel by C.J. Lyons Read Free Book Online Page B

to know what he took."  The girls exchanged glances. 
    "Don't tell them anything," the second one said.
    Cassie glanced up at the police officer.  "I think there's fresh coffee, Officer Rankin."  He hesitated, then nodded and moved down the hall.  "What's your name?" she asked the first one.
    "Linda."
    "I need to know what Brian took," she insisted, locking her gaze on the girl.  "Don't you want to help save his life?"
    The girl sniffed, then reached into her designer jeans and pulled out a single square shaped pill.  She handed it to Cassie.
    "Hey, where'd you get that?" her friend asked.  "Brian said he didn't have enough dough to buy more than one.  Not at fifty a pop."
    "Well, he bought me one.  Said it was an early birthday present."
    "What is it?"  Cassie examined the pill.  The only markings on it were two large X's.
    "It's Double Cross." 
    "What's in it?  Is it a new form of Ecstasy?"  But Ecstasy alone didn't explain her patient's symptoms. 
    "It's FX times X, double crossed.  Don't you get it?"
    Cassie did, all too well.  She returned to the trauma room just in time for all hell to break loose.
    CHAPTER 9
    Drake leaned against his mop handle, eavesdropping.  He beckoned to Rankin, the uniformed officer, who joined him in an empty suture room. 
    "What's up?" Drake indicated the trio across the hall with a terse nod of his head.
    "Kid overdosed at a rave.  Those two were with him.  Wouldn't tell me nothing."
    "They gave it up to the doc.  Said he was doing a new combo of FX and Ecstasy."
    Hart finished talking with the two girls and shook their hands before returning to the resuscitation room.
    "Get their particulars for me," he asked Rankin.  "Miller will send someone from the task force to interview them."
    "Sure thing."
    With the help of the ER's director, Dr. Castro, it had been easy to infiltrate the department and hide amidst the shadows and chaos—the guy cleaning the trash was always a non-entity.  A bit harder to stay out of Hart's sight all night.  But thankfully the ER provided plenty of hiding places and Hart was too focused on her patients to pay attention to anyone else.
    Drake pushed his mop over the linoleum until he stood at the door of the trauma room.  Hart's patient had taken a turn for the worse.  She barked out commands, somehow managing to be everywhere at once.  She shoved a plastic tube down the kid's throat, then started a special IV up near his collar bone.  Every few seconds she would whip her hair back and glance up at the monitor, her eyes blazing with fury at the bad news she found there.
     It wasn't compassion that drove this physician, Drake realized, but passion pure and simple.  Her expression forced a smile from him, despite the grim circumstances.  She didn't look like someone who would accept failure gracefully.
    He stood, riveted by the battle raging in the small room.  At least six people crowded around the boy's still form, moving in a choreography of controlled chaos.  He gripped the mop handle, his fingers growing sweaty, frustrated by his inability to do anything but watch.
    "Some idiot got out his chemistry set and combined FX with Ecstasy," Cassie told her team.  "As if one alone wasn't lethal enough." 
    A new alarm on the monitor clamored for attention.  "Temp's 105 and climbing, oxygen level dropping."
    "He's getting the worst from both drugs.  The FX made his chest muscles too rigid for him to breathe, and the Ecstasy is giving him heat stroke.  We need to cool him down and intubate."  Cassie prepared her equipment, thinking rapidly.   Use the wrong medication, and she could make things worse.  "Valium--should sedate him and help any seizures."
    She wiped the sweat from her forehead and bent over her patient.  Had to get this right the first time.  She tried to pry open her patient's mouth, but his jaw muscles were still in spasm.  Cassie forced herself to take a deep breath and wait for the Valium to work.
    "Damn, that's