Story code: ST-000491
Part 2: Triage and Treachery
The rough asphalt scraped against Mateo’s cheek, sending a hot flare of pain through his paralyzing weakness. He lay slumped against the rear tire of the black SUV, his limbs heavy and useless, as if his veins had been pumped full of lead. The uniformed officer loomed over him, a dark silhouette against the glaring strobe of red and blue police lights.
“Stay down! Keep your hands where I can see them!” the officer bellowed, the raised baton trembling in his grip. The cop’s eyes were wide, swept up in the absolute frenzy of the active shooter lockdown. To him, Mateo was just another frantic, unpredictable variable breaching a secure perimeter.
Mateo’s jaw clamped shut. He tried to force the word “medical” past his lips, but his brain misfired. What emerged was a slurred, breathless groan. His blood sugar had dropped into the critical zone. Without glucose, his brain was actively starving, shutting down non-essential motor functions to preserve basic survival. His left hand twitched violently, scratching uselessly at the pavement as he tried to reach up toward the open driver’s side door.
The white plastic bottle of chalky glucose tablets was sitting right there in the center console. It was no more than four feet away. It might as well have been on the moon.
“I said stop moving!” The officer dropped his weight onto Mateo’s shoulders, driving a heavy knee into his spine.
The sudden pressure forced the air from Mateo’s lungs in a sharp hiss. His vision fractured into a mosaic of gray and black static. He felt the cold, hard plastic of a zip-tie slide around his left wrist, followed swiftly by his right. The ratcheting click of the plastic teeth locking into place sounded deafening in his ears, completely drowning out the wail of approaching sirens.
“He’s combative! I’ve got one restrained at the barricade!” the officer shouted into his shoulder mic.
Mateo wrenched his neck sideways, gasping for air. Through the suffocating tunnel of his fading vision, he saw Chloe. His wealthy passenger had already bypassed the outer ring of patrol cars, marching directly into the staging area where a SWAT commander was hastily unrolling blueprints of Westvale High School on the hood of a cruiser.
“Listen to me!” Chloe shrieked, her voice cutting through the roar of idling engines. She slammed her designer handbag down onto the hood, right on top of the blueprints. “I am Chloe Vance! I just cleared a billion-dollar pharmaceutical merger this morning! My corporate taxes fund this entire county! My son, Alexander, is in the west wing, and you are going to send an extraction team in for him right now!”
The SWAT commander barely looked up. “Ma’am, get behind the yellow tape immediately. We have an active tactical situation-”
“I don’t care about the protocol!” Chloe screamed, her face flushed red with manic entitlement. She waved her glowing smartphone in the commander’s face. “I have the governor’s chief of staff on hold! If my son is not brought out in the next five minutes, I will bury this department in so much litigation you won’t be able to afford the gas in these cars!”
A fire department paramedic, carrying a heavy red trauma bag, sprinted past the command post. He spotted the officer pinning Mateo to the asphalt. “Hey! Do you need medical over there? Is he hit?”
Mateo’s heart hammered a frantic, dying rhythm against his ribs. *Yes,* he prayed silently, his tongue too numb to move. *Sugar. Please. Just a handful of sugar.* He thought of his daughter, Lily, trapped somewhere behind the brick walls of the high school. He needed to be on his feet. He needed to find her.
Before the paramedic could take another step toward the SUV, Chloe lunged sideways, physically blocking the medic’s path. She grabbed the front of his high-visibility jacket.
“No! You stay right here!” Chloe demanded, her eyes wide with frantic selfishness. “When they bring Alexander out, I want you ready. I want a trauma team on standby for my son!”
“Ma’am, let go of me, I need to triage that man-”
“He is just my chauffeur!” Chloe shouted, pointing a manicured finger at Mateo’s restrained body. Her greed and desperation morphed into a vicious, calculated lie to keep the medical resources entirely focused on her. “He is an addict or something! He was swerving all over the highway, sweating and shaking! It’s withdrawal! Ignore him and stay here for my son!”
The officer kneeling on Mateo’s back heard the passenger’s assessment. The tension in the cop’s shoulders visibly relaxed. “Copy that,” the officer called out to the medic. “Suspect is intoxicated and restrained. We’re good here. Focus on the building!”
The paramedic hesitated, but a sudden surge of panicked students bursting from a side exit drew his immediate attention. He bolted toward the fleeing teenagers, leaving Mateo pinned to the ground.
Mateo squeezed his eyes shut as a single tear cut through the cold sweat on his cheek. Chloe’s pharmaceutical wealth and sheer arrogance had just condemned him. The irony tasted like ash in his mouth; a woman whose fortune was built on medicine had just actively denied him the basic first aid that would save his life.
The officer shifted his weight off Mateo, leaving him zip-tied and lying in the gutter. “Don’t move, buddy. You’re going to a holding cell once this is over.”
Mateo stared helplessly at the open door of the SUV. The glucose bottle sat in the cup holder, mocking him. The gray static in his vision grew darker, thicker, swallowing the flashing police lights. The violent tremors in his hands began to slow, a terrifying indicator that his nervous system was finally shutting down. If he slipped into a diabetic coma out here on the pavement, no one would know until it was too late. Lily would be waiting for a father who was never coming.
Then, rising above the shouting crowd and the wailing sirens, a sound froze the blood in Mateo’s veins.
*Pop. Pop-pop-pop.*
Muffled, rapid gunfire echoed from deep inside the high school.
Mateo violently jerked against the plastic zip-ties, ripping the skin from his wrists, but his fading muscles possessed no strength. The darkness rushed in, swallowing the edges of the world as the screams of the terrified crowd intensified around him.