Chapter 7 - The Long Night
By December, Manhattan was covered in a thick blanket of winter snow.
Inside the VIP isolation suite on the tenth floor of Mount Sinai Hospital, the rhythmic, mechanical beep of heart monitors filled the dim room.
Owen lay in the high-tech hospital bed, his skin pale and translucent, surrounded by intravenous lines and complex monitoring equipment. His heart function had dropped to under twelve percent. He was living on borrowed hours, held together by aggressive medical pumps and sheer willpower.
Dr. Harris stood at the foot of the bed, reviewing the telemetry screens with a heavy heart.
“He’s at the very top of the national transplant list, Dr. Evans,” Harris whispered to Sarah, who sat beside the bed. “But finding a compatible heart with his rare AB-negative blood type and specific tissue match within the next forty-eight hours is statistically almost zero.”
Sitting on a small chair beside Owen’s pillow was Hannah.
She wore a blue cardigan over her dress, her small legs dangling off the chair. She hadn't left the hospital room in four days. She refused to sleep in the adjacent suite provided by the hospital, insisted on eating her meals beside Owen, and held his right hand while he slept.
Owen opened his eyes slowly, his breath faint against his oxygen mask.
“Hannah...” he whispered.
Hannah leaned in immediately, wrapping her small hands around his fingers. “I’m here, Dad.”
“You should... go home with Mrs. Gable,” Owen rasped, every word a mountain to climb. “It’s... cold here.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Hannah said firmly, her jaw set with that same practical determination she had shown in the alley. “We have to finish the piano duet, remember? You promised you would teach me the second part of Mozart’s Sonata when the snow stopped.”
Owen smiled faintly behind his mask. “I promised... didn't I?”
“Faulkners don't break promises,” Hannah said, leaning her forehead against his hand. “You told me that.”
Suddenly, the electronic monitors above the bed began to sound an urgent, high-pitched alarm.
The green line showing Owen’s heart rhythm distorted into erratic, violent jagged spikes—ventricular fibrillation.
“Code Blue!” Dr. Harris shouted, lunging forward to press the emergency call button on the wall. “Get the crash cart! Now!”
Within seconds, six nurses and doctors burst into the room.
“Get the child out of here!” a nurse yelled, grabbing Hannah’s shoulders.
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“No! Let me stay! Dad!” Hannah cried, fighting against the nurse’s grip, her small fingers trying to hold onto Owen’s hand as she was pulled back toward the door.
Owen’s vision dimmed to black. The shouting, the flashing red warning lights, and the mechanical alarms faded into a deep, silent darkness. The last thing he saw before the world disappeared entirely was the small girl in the blue cardigan screaming his name from the doorway.
