Chapter 6 - A Heart to Hold
"Sarah. Sarah, look at me."
Nathan pulled his sister into his lap, shielding her from the biting wind. Her skin was ice cold, paler than the snow beneath them. Her pulse was a frantic, terrifying flutter against his fingertips. She was bleeding internally, the trauma from the blow to her head compounding with severe hypothermia.
"Nathan," she whispered, her green eyes—the exact same shade as Lily’s—struggling to focus on his face. "You came."
"Of course I came. I'm your big brother. I'm supposed to protect you," Nathan choked out, tears finally breaking free, falling onto Sarah's cheeks. "I'm so sorry, Sarah. I was so wrong. Please forgive me."
"The kids..." she murmured, her eyes rolling back.
"They're safe! They're waiting for you! Lily is a hero, Sarah. She saved them. But they need their mother. I need my sister. Stay with me!"
"Doc!" Vance yelled, sprinting over with an oversized trauma kit. A medevac chopper was already thumping in the distance, its searchlight cutting through the falling snow. "Chopper is two minutes out!"
"She doesn't have two minutes!" Nathan screamed, his hands flying over her body, assessing the damage. "Her airway is swelling, and she has a tension pneumothorax. Her lung is collapsing."
Nathan ripped open the trauma kit. This wasn't a sterile operating room. There was no anesthesia, no scrub nurses, no bright surgical lights. Just a desperate brother in the snow, fighting the grim reaper with his bare hands.
"Vance, hold her steady. Do not let her move," Nathan commanded. He pulled out a large-gauge decompression needle. He found the second intercostal space on her chest, right at the mid-clavicular line.
"Forgive me for this, Sarah," he whispered. He thrust the needle into her chest cavity.
A sharp hiss of trapped air escaped, and Sarah gasped violently, her chest expanding as the pressure on her heart was suddenly relieved. Her eyes shot open, terrified and in pain, but she was breathing. Deep, ragged breaths.
"Got you. I got you," Nathan sobbed, pressing a dressing to her temple to stop the bleeding. The deafening roar of the medevac helicopter drowned out the storm, whipping snow into a frenzy as it touched down in the center of the lumberyard. Paramedics rushed out with a stretcher.
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As they loaded Sarah into the helicopter, she weakly reached out, her bloody, freezing fingers wrapping around Nathan’s warm hand. She didn't let go.
"I'm coming with you," Nathan promised, climbing into the chopper beside her. As they lifted off into the night sky, Nathan looked down at the shrinking lumberyard. Marcus Kane was being dragged away in handcuffs, his reign of terror permanently ended. The nightmare was over.
