Chapter 2 - The Crash Of Midnight
The cabin lights were dimmed to a bruised indigo, the kind of artificial night airlines use to trick the body into rest. Most passengers were asleep, their heads tilted at awkward angles, snoring softly against windowpanes and neck pillows. Simona was half-dreaming of Rome, of the cobblestone courtyard outside her sister’s apartment, of Marco running toward her with sticky chocolate hands, when the sound started. It wasn't a gasp. It was a wet, heavy hitch of air, like someone trying to drag oxygen through wet cement. Simona’s eyes flew open. Her medical training didn't require waking up; it was simply there, instantaneous and sharp, kicking her heart into a frantic rhythm. She turned in her seat. Gabriel was slumped sideways against the bulkhead wall. His head was thrown back, exposing the strong, corded column of his throat. His face had gone the color of skim milk, drained of every drop of natural warmth, and a thick, dark sheen of cold sweat plastered his hair to his temples. His right hand was jammed so hard against his left lower ribs that his knuckles were stark white. "Gabriel?" she whispered, leaning over the armrest. No response. His eyes were half-open, rolling back toward the gray expanse of his eyelids. "Gabriel, look at me." She shook his shoulder, her fingers gripping the fine wool of his coat. Beneath the fabric, she could feel the violent, irregular tremor of his body. He wasn't just in pain. He was crashing. The internal hemorrhage — whatever old or new wound he had dismissed — had finally breached. "Is there a doctor on board?" Simona’s voice cut through the hum of the jet engines with a sudden, authoritative sharpness that startled the passenger across the aisle. "I am a physician. I need assistance. Now!" Within seconds, a flight attendant hurried down the aisle, her face pale under the makeup. "What's happening? Is he—" "Internal bleeding," Simona barked, unbuckling her seatbelt and sliding out into the narrow aisle to block Gabriel’s slumped form from view. "Or a massive cardiac event secondary to trauma. I need the emergency medical kit from the galley, oxygen, and an IV setup if you carry one. Move!" The flight attendant nodded frantically and bolted toward the front. Gabriel let out another shallow, rattling breath. A thin line of crimson began to trickle from the corner of his mouth. Internal trauma. A lacerated spleen or a compromised hepatic artery. At 35,000 feet, without surgical intervention, he had twenty minutes before his organs began to shut down permanently. "Simona..." The word was a dry scrape of sandpaper. He had forced his eyes open, though they were unfocused, swimming with the gray fog of impending shock. His fingers found her wrist, gripping her with a desperate, crushing strength that belied his failing pulse. "Don't..." "Shut up and save your breath," she ordered, pressing two fingers against the carotid artery in his neck. The pulse was racing, thready, and dangerously weak. "You're going into hemorrhagic shock. If you don't stay conscious, I swear to God I will drag you back from the dead myself." A faint, tragic ghost of a smile touched his bloodless lips. "You... talk like... a general." "I talk like someone who refuses to let a seatmate die on her watch." The flight attendant returned, dropping a heavy metal emergency case onto the empty seat. Simona ripped it open, her hands moving with practiced, robotic precision. She tore open an alcohol swab, wiped down his inner arm, and located a vein with clinical perfection, sliding the catheter home with a smooth push. Blood flashed back into the tube. "Hang the saline," she commanded the flight attendant, who was trembling too hard to hold the bag steady. "Wide open. Now!" For the next three hours, Simona didn't sit down. She crouched in the cramped aisle of the business class cabin, ignoring the whispered murmurs of awakening passengers, monitoring his blood pressure as it hovered near freefall. She kept one hand on his chest, feeling the erratic drumbeat of his heart beneath her palm, whispering instructions, curses, and quiet medical demands into the rushing wind of the jet. Gabriel drifted in and out of consciousness, his fingers occasionally tightening around hers like a drowning man clutching a floating spar. By the time the captain’s voice crackled over the intercom announcing their immediate descent into Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport, Gabriel’s breathing had stabilized into something deep, slow, and agonizingly human. He was alive. But as the landing gear locked into place with a heavy metallic thud beneath their feet, Simona looked down at her hands—stained dark with the blood of a stranger—and realized the nightmare had only just begun.
