Story code: ST-000695
Part 2: The Algorithm
The impact was a blunt, sickening crack that rattled Maya’s teeth, followed instantly by the metallic taste of blood where she bit her own tongue. The linoleum was freezing against her cheek, a shocking contrast to the feverish heat radiating from her skin. For a second, the blinding white light shattered into a million jagged silver shards, leaving her in a thick, murky gray twilight.
“Hey! You can’t just sleep on the floor!” Carter’s voice was muffled and distorted, as if she were submerged in a swimming pool. The absurdity of the statement pierced through the thick fog in Maya’s brain, but she couldn’t form the words to respond. Her jaw felt wired shut.
Heavy footsteps pounded toward her. Hands grabbed her shoulders-gentle but urgent. “Maya! Maya, can you hear me?” It was Dr. Evans. His voice trembled with a frantic edge that terrified her more than the pain. “I need a gurney! Now! And get the crash cart!”
“Whoa, let’s not overreact, Doctor,” Carter said, his expensive leather shoes squeaking closer to her head. “She probably just fainted. Get a wheelchair and put her back in the waiting area. We have a reporter from the local paper doing a piece on ER wait times in the lobby right now, and a code blue is going to ruin the optics.”
“She is severely eclamptic and on the verge of a stroke, Mr. Carter!” Dr. Evans shouted. Maya felt multiple sets of hands sliding beneath her back and legs. “On three. One, two, three!”
The sensation of being lifted made Maya’s stomach heave. She gagged, squeezing her eyes shut against the dizzying spin of the ceiling, but only a dry, rattling gasp escaped her throat. When her back hit the thin mattress of the gurney, a fresh wave of agony washed over her abdomen. The muscles of her uterus locked down in a vice-like, unyielding spasm. It wasn’t a normal contraction; it was a continuous, brutal tightening that forced the breath from her lungs. She reached blindly for her belly, her thick, swollen fingers scrabbling against the fabric of her maternity shirt.
“Baby,” she tried to whisper, but it came out as a breathless croak. There was no flutter. No reassuring kick. Just a terrifying, rock-hard stillness.
The gurney jolted forward. The ceiling tiles zipped past in a dizzying blur of stuttering fluorescent lights. Maya focused all her remaining energy on the rhythmic squeak of the wheels, trying to tether herself to the waking world.
“Trauma Bay Three!” Dr. Evans barked as they careened around a corner into the main emergency department.
“Negative!” Carter’s voice chased them, the administrator moving remarkably fast. He stepped directly in front of the gurney just as they reached the sliding glass doors of the trauma bay. “I told you, Evans. Bay Three is in transition.”
Through her narrowed, tearing eyes, Maya could see into the room. An elderly man was sitting on the edge of the bed, slowly putting on a pair of socks while a transport orderly stood nearby, casually checking messages on a phone.
“Get him a wheelchair and put him in the hall!” Dr. Evans pleaded, trying to physically push the gurney past the administrator. “I have to get her on a monitor and push IV labetalol right now!”
Carter did not budge. He tapped the screen of the tablet he had commandeered. “If you scan her barcode into Bay Three before the transport orderly scans Mr. Henderson out at the exit doors, the bed-turnover algorithm flags it as a dual-occupancy violation. That automatically triggers a safety audit and docks the department’s daily funding allocation. We are already in the red, Evans.”
“I do not care about the algorithm! She is going to seize!”
“You will care when the regional board suspends your privileges for insubordination,” Carter snapped, his face flushing a deep, angry red. “Wait until the system clears the bed. Protocol is protocol.”
Maya felt a nurse grab her arm. “Doctor, I can’t get a vein,” a woman’s voice said, frantic. Maya felt the sharp dig of a needle probing the back of her hand, but her skin was so distended with edema that the flesh felt like dense foam. “Her arms are too swollen. I need the ultrasound guide for a deep line.”
“Go get it from Bay One!” Dr. Evans yelled.
“Bay One is locked for hazardous cleaning! The scanner is inside!”
Maya tried to turn her head toward the nurse, but her neck muscles were trembling uncontrollably. A strange, metallic buzzing sound filled her ears, entirely different from the earlier ringing. It felt as though a live electrical wire had been dropped directly into her spinal cord. Her fingers began to twitch in her lap. First just the index finger, then her whole right hand, vibrating with rapid, rhythmic spasms she could not stop.
The pain in her head spiked to an impossible crescendo. The silver spots in her vision morphed into deep, creeping shadows that rapidly swallowed the edges of the hallway. The faces of the staff, the bright lights, the walls-everything was disappearing into a terrifying black tunnel.
“Her hand!” the nurse shrieked. “She’s showing hyperreflexia! She’s starting to seize!”
Carter stepped forward, blocking the view of the bay entirely. He held out his phone to Dr. Evans. “It’s the Chief of Medical Operations. He is watching the lobby camera feed. He wants to know why you’re holding up the triage queue to argue with me. Take the phone, Doctor.”
“I am treating a dying patient!”
“Take the phone, or you are fired, effective immediately, and security will escort you from this building before you can touch her,” Carter said, his voice dropping to a deadly, quiet threat.
Maya gasped for air that wouldn’t come. Dr. Evans hesitated. Through the narrowing tunnel of her vision, Maya saw the sheer agony on the young doctor’s face-the brief, horrific pause as he looked from her violently twitching hand to the glowing screen of the phone.
As Dr. Evans slowly reached for the receiver, the remaining sliver of light in Maya’s vision winked out entirely, and the violent shuddering seized her entire body.