Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 10:12 AM
Countdown to Extraction: 65 Hours, 29 Minutes Remaining
Chapter 108: Withdrawal
The baby wouldn't stop screaming.
It wasn't the healthy, indignant cry of a newborn adjusting to the cold air of a delivery room. It was a high-pitched, jagged, relentless shriek that grated against the nerves like a rusty saw blade.
Patrice held the tiny, thermal-wrapped bundle against her chest, gently rocking and swaying in a practiced, rhythmic motion that had soothed thousands of infants over her thirty-year career. But this baby wasn't soothing. Her tiny body, small enough to fit in the crook of Patrice's arm at barely eight months gestation, was incredibly rigid. Her back arched stiffly, her fists were clenched so tight her knuckles were white, and her chin was trembling violently.
"Shh, shh, it's okay, little one," Patrice murmured, her deep voice a low rumble. She adjusted her grip, trying to swaddle the premature infant tighter, but the baby fought the blanket, kicking her legs in jerky, spastic thrusts.
Sharon pushed herself up from the blood-slicked floor. Her knees popped loudly, her legs completely numb from kneeling in the massive hemorrhage. She stripped off her saturated latex gloves, tossing them onto the biohazard tray, and moved toward Patrice.
They had stopped the bleeding. They had clamped the severed perineal arteries, and Patel had pushed the TXA, but the room still looked and smelled like a slaughterhouse.
"She's highly agitated," Sharon noted, her clinical gaze sweeping over the screaming infant in the dim, flickering light of the battery lantern. "She's pink, her airway is clear, her sats have to be in the high nineties... but she's not settling."
Dr. Reyes stood up from the stool, wiping pulverized drywall dust from her forehead with the back of a clean sleeve. She stepped closer, peering down at the red, screaming face of the newborn.
"Look at her muscle tone," Reyes observed, a deep frown carving into her face. "It's hypertonic. She's practically vibrating. And that cry... it's completely abnormal. It's too sharp."
Patrice gently stroked the baby's cheek with a gloved thumb. The infant didn't turn toward the touch to root for food. Instead, she recoiled, letting out another piercing, breathless shriek, her tiny limbs jerking as if the light touch had physically burned her.
Patrice sighed, a heavy, deeply tragic sound. She looked up at Sharon.
"She's withdrawing," Patrice stated flatly.
The word hung in the heavy, bloody, dust-choked air of the operating room.
Sharon turned and looked down at the unconscious woman on the stainless-steel table. When Kimmie had first been hauled into triage this morning, she hadn't been fleeing the bombs or the dead. She and her husband had come in hours before the mechanics had ever breached the lobby, frantic because she was nearly eight months pregnant and suffering severe abdominal cramping.
"Drugs?" Claire Han whispered, her eyes wide with shock.
"What was she on?" Reyes asked, stepping closer to Kimmie and checking her pupils, even though she was in hemorrhagic shock. "Opiates? Meth?"
"Look at her arms," Sharon instructed, her voice tight with professional disgust.
Reyes picked up the blonde woman's pale, limp arm. The skin was dirty, but there were no track marks. She checked between her toes. Nothing.
"She wasn't shooting it," Sharon said, leaning over the table. She gently tilted Kimmie's head back and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Her septum is completely deviated. It's practically collapsed on the left side. She was snorting it. Heavy, sustained usage. Uppers to stay awake, downers to numb the crash. The cocktail just threw her into premature labor, and now the baby is paying the toll."
The infant shrieked again, a terrifying, breath-stealing sound. She was experiencing the absolute, unadulterated hell of chemical withdrawal, her premature brain screaming for a synthetic high it was suddenly denied.
"How do we treat it?" Claire asked frantically. "Do we give her a sedative?"
"We don't have it," Reyes snapped. "We'd need pediatric morphine or methadone drops to wean her safely. Those are kept in the main NICU dispensary on the second floor, and the mechanics own everything below this level now. We can't safely micro-dose an adult pill into a premature infant; it's way too unstable."
"We swaddle her tight, keep her in the dark, and let her sweat it out," Patrice said grimly, pulling the thermal blanket tighter. "It's going to be a miserable forty-eight hours."
Suddenly, a heavy, frantic pounding hammered against the reinforced steel door.
Everyone in the room froze.
"Open the door!" a man's voice screamed from the hallway, his fists slamming rhythmically against the metal. "Open the fucking door! Where is she?!"
"It's the husband," Patel whispered, his hand instinctively dropping to the heavy metal oxygen tank.
"Don't let him in," Reyes hissed. "He's completely unhinged."
"If he keeps screaming in that hallway, he's going to draw every mechanic left on the other side of that barricade directly to us," Sharon said, her voice hard.
Sharon stepped over the lake of blood on the floor and marched toward the heavy steel door. She grabbed the deadbolt, threw it back, and yanked the heavy handle.
Troy Barlow practically fell into the room.
He didn't look like a man who used to have it all. He looked like a sweaty, twitching, uncoordinated mess. He was wearing a once-expensive Brooks Brothers button-down shirt, now deeply wrinkled, sweat-stained at the armpits, and untucked over a pair of filthy khakis. The ninety milligrams of pure Oxycodone he had just dry-swallowed from the broken crash cart in the hallway had violently hit his bloodstream. His pupils were pinned to tiny dots, his eyelids heavy and drooping, but the lingering panic of the apocalypse was fighting the heavy narcotic blanket wrapped around his brain.
He was incredibly, dangerously high.
"Where is she?" Troy slurred, stumbling heavily into the room, his balance completely shot by the downers.
His glazed eyes locked onto the stainless-steel examination table.
"Kimmie?" he whispered, his voice thick.
Claire Han froze. She stared at the tweaking man standing in the doorway. She looked at his frayed collar, his sunken face, the pathetic junkie aesthetic that clung to him like a second skin. Then she looked back at the pale, unconscious blonde woman on the table.
"Oh my god," Claire gasped, the realization hitting her so hard she physically staggered back a step.
Sharon frowned, glancing at the young nurse. "What?"
"That's..." Claire pointed a shaking finger at the man, her eyes wide with absolute disbelief. "That's Troy Barlow. And that's Kimmie. I thought they were millionaires. I saw them on a magazine cover in high school."
Patel's head snapped up. Patrice stopped rocking the baby.
"They were," Patrice corrected, her voice low and completely devoid of pity as she took in the reality of the man in front of them. "A long time ago."
Troy didn't notice the stunned silence. He took a slow, stumbling step forward, his ruined leather loafers slipping in the massive puddle of his wife's blood. The sheer volume of the hemorrhage finally pierced through his opioid haze.
"No," Troy gasped, his hands flying to his head. "No, no. Kimmie."
He lunged toward the table, his coordination completely shot.
"Troy, stop!" Sharon yelled, stepping in front of him and shoving her hand hard against his chest. "Do not touch her! She is completely unstable!"
"She's dead!" Troy wept, his voice breaking into a sloppy, hysterical sob. He tried to push past Sharon, but his knees buckled. "You let her die!"
"She is not dead!" Patel barked, stepping up beside Sharon and aggressively shoving Troy backward. "But she will be if you touch those clamps! Step back!"
Troy stumbled backward, his back hitting the cinderblock wall. He slid down, collapsing into the dirt and pulverized drywall dust, pulling his knees to his chest.
"It's my fault," Troy babbled, his heavy, drooping eyes leaking tears. "I left her in the hall. The bombs hit. I'm sorry, Kim."
"Shut up, Troy," Sharon snapped. "Stop crying for yourself and listen to me."
Troy just kept rocking, his shoulders shaking.
"Troy!" Sharon roared, kicking the sole of his shoe.
His pinned, glazed eyes looked up at her.
"She is alive," Sharon enunciated clearly, forcing the words through his narcotic fog. "But she suffered a catastrophic hemorrhage. She tore through her perineum because she fought the contractions. She lost nearly half her blood volume. If her pressure drops, she codes. Do you understand me?"
Troy stared at her, his mouth hanging open. He gave a slow, sluggish nod.
"Now, look at your daughter," Sharon ordered.
The frantic, jagged screaming of the premature infant finally registered. Troy turned his heavy head, his eyes landing on Patrice.
Patrice stood perfectly still. The baby's face was bright red, her tiny mouth wide open as she shrieked in absolute misery, her body rigid.
"Is she..." Troy slurred, wiping his sweaty mouth with the back of his hand. "Why is she screaming?"
"She's not hungry, Mr. Barlow," Patrice said coldly. "She's crying because her central nervous system is currently on fire. She's in severe withdrawal. You both came in here flying high, and now your premature daughter is detoxing on a metal tray."
The accusation hit Troy through the heavy blanket of the Oxycodone. He shook his head lazily. "No... Kimmie wouldn't... she stopped."
"Don't lie to me," Sharon sneered. "Look at your own eyes. You just popped enough pills to tranquilize a horse while your wife was screaming out in that hallway. You're both using."
"It was just the pain!" Troy yelled, his voice a sloppy, defensive slur, the remnants of his old arrogance flaring up to protect his shattered ego. "You have no idea what it's like to lose everything! The pain..."
"I don't care about your pain," Sharon whispered fiercely, crouching down to his level. "That woman on the table bled for you. And that baby is fighting a chemical war you forced her into. So you have exactly two choices. You can curl up in this dirt, ride out your high, and feel sorry for yourself, or you can sober up and finally act like a father."
Sharon stood up, turning her back on him completely. She looked at the exhausted medical team and the screaming newborn in Patrice's arms.
"Han, go into the supply closet," Sharon ordered, shifting instantly back into command mode. "Find the thickest, darkest blankets we have. We need to build a sensory deprivation tent for the infant over the bassinet to limit the light and noise. We have to ride out the worst of the chemical storm."
Claire nodded rapidly, wiping her eyes, and hurried toward the heavy supply door.
"Reyes, Patrice, you two hold the fort here and keep Kimmie stable," Sharon added, grabbing a clean towel to wipe the sweat and drywall dust from her neck. She turned to the other doctor. "Patel, grab whatever is left of the saline and a fresh trauma kit. As soon as this room is secure, you and I need to get back to the consultation room and check on Minh. We haven't laid eyes on her since she crashed, and I need to make sure she didn't seize again when the blast hit."
Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 10:35 AM
Countdown to Extraction: 65 Hours, 06 Minutes Remaining