The Water Keeper(63)
Staring at the oddity before me, I heard the thud again. A second time. But this time it sounded thinner. More metallic.
Handing Summer my phone, I walked into the steam and through the waterfall and car wash of a dozen or more showerheads shooting cold, pressurized water toward the floor. Hot steam and cold water didn’t make sense. Kneeling, I crawled across the floor of the shower, which drained via four drain holes. Reaching the fourth drain on my hands and knees and unable to see six inches in front of me, I reached toward the wall. But my hand didn’t touch the wall.
I moved my hand slightly, “reading” the surface. The texture was smooth, then coarse, then stringy, then soft.
Then it moved.
I crawled closer and found the bare foot of what looked to be a woman. Unable to make sense of anything given the barrage of water and steam, I moved my hand to her wrist but couldn’t find a pulse, so I traveled up her torso to her neck and carotid artery. The pulse was faint. I sank my arms below her legs and her head. Standing, I lifted her limp body and returned through the fog. When I appeared carrying a naked and limp female frame, both Summer and Ellie sucked in a breath of air and covered their mouths. I glanced quickly at the girl in my arms. Late teens, dark hair, dark circles beneath her eyes, a splattering of tattoos, needle holes at the crease of her elbow, skinny, deathly white, with a trail of vomit caked to her mouth and neck.
Then I looked at her face.
It was not Angel. But it was one of the girls we’d seen on video.
I turned to Summer and spoke as we descended the stairs. “Dial 911 now. Put them on speakerphone.”
Summer dialed.
They answered as we reached the fourth floor. “911. What’s your emergency?”
The only way this girl would make it was if they landed LifeFlight on the lawn outside and airlifted her to a hospital. Absent that, she was dead. The lady on the other end of the phone received dozens if not hundreds of calls a day. Each claiming the end of the world. To take the burden of decision off of her, the authority to call in a helicopter had been left to first responders once they’d assessed the situation. Although there were situations where the operator, based on his or her knowledge and experience, could override that protocol given what he or she was hearing from the caller.
Knowing all this, I threw everything at her I could think of that might be even remotely true to register on the trauma scale, which I hoped would trigger a LifeFlight takeoff. “This is Murphy Shepherd. I work for the US government. I’ve got a white female, possibly late teens, limited pulse, shows signs of near drowning with possible hypoxia or altered mental status. Also possible overdose with hemodynamic or neurologic instability, currently exhibiting uncontrolled seizures with possible respiratory failure requiring ventilation. I need LifeFlight on the lawn of this house like five minutes ago or this girl won’t make it.”
She was quiet for two seconds while I heard typing. “Sir, can you give me an exact location?” the operator asked calmly.
I responded with the longitude and latitude GPS coordinates I’d taken off the video signatures we’d stolen from the boat.
She paused. I knew first responders were en route, but I also knew she was deliberating sending LifeFlight. I spoke softly. “Ma’am, I know your protocol. And I know you don’t know me. This girl will die if you don’t send the bird. If you want to save her life, send it.”
I heard fingers on a keyboard typing at the speed of hummingbird wings. “Is it possible to move her to an open area, maybe the backyard, driveway, or someplace out of interference from overheard wires?”
“Not necessary. There’s a helipad atop the dock house.”
“LifeFlight is on the way. ETA four minutes.”
This girl didn’t have four minutes. I turned to Ellie and nodded at Gone Fiction. “Inside the head, that red bag you were using for a pillow. Get it.”
Ellie ran to the boat and returned with my medic bag. I rifled through the medicines, finding two that I needed. One nasal spray. One injection. Both were naloxone HCL. An opioid inhibitor. I sprayed each nostril, then injected her. The bad news was that I couldn’t find a pulse, so I ripped open the AED, turned it on, attached the pads to her chest, told Summer and Ellie to stand clear, and shocked her. After her body convulsed, rising nearly a foot off the ground, I administered CPR. Compressions. Breaths. Compressions. Breaths. When she didn’t respond, I shocked her again. Alternating CPR. Then again. After the third shock, her eyes flittered. She sucked in part of a breath and a pulse registered in her carotid.
I laid the girl in the grass. Her body was vomiting again. I say “her body” because she wasn’t conscious enough to know it. I turned her head sideways and attempted to clear her airway so she wouldn’t aspirate the contents of her stomach. In the distance I heard sirens. Then I heard the signature whop-whop of a helicopter. This girl was suffering drug and alcohol poisoning on a level I’d seldom if ever seen. It was possible she’d already suffered brain damage, and I had no idea if she’d ever open her eyes again. Given the limited open ground, I turned to Summer and Ellie and said, “You two should get inside.”
As the helicopter hovered and then began to descend to the pad, churning up pieces of debris like a whirlwind, they ran inside. The helicopter touched down, and before the paramedics had time to exit and assess her, I carried her up the dock house steps and to the rear-opening door of the bird and slid her onto the stretcher, which they were in the process of removing. Observing the girl’s condition, one paramedic listened to me while the second, a woman, climbed back inside and began working on her. In the fifteen seconds it took to inform the paramedic, the woman had inserted an IV, shot something directly into the girl’s heart, and intubated her, giving her oxygen.