Story code: ST-001186
Part 2: Non-Viable
“Dispatch, Medic Forty-Two,” Miller said. The voice echoing through the small compartment was maddeningly even, devoid of the frantic energy that had defined their arrival at the apartment. He spoke into the black plastic microphone mounted on his shoulder with the bored, flat cadence of a warehouse inventory clerk. “Start PD to our current location. Code Three. I have a highly agitated rider in the patient compartment. Be advised, patient is non-viable. Terminating transport. We are pulling over.”
*Non-viable.*
The words hit Marcus with the force of a swinging crowbar. He looked from the veteran paramedic to Leo’s motionless form on the stretcher. Leo wasn’t non-viable. He was right there. His skin was cold and carrying a terrible gray sheen beneath the brutal fluorescent lights, but he was still a person. He was still Marcus’s oldest friend, the guy who had pulled him out of three separate evictions and spotted him rent when the world went dark. He just needed one more push to restart his lungs.
The ambulance driver must have heard the radio transmission through his headset. The heavy vehicle lurched violently to the right. The tires hissed against the rain-slicked asphalt before the driver slammed on the brakes, bringing the rig to a sudden, shuddering halt. The sudden deceleration threw Marcus against the side of the vinyl bench, his shoulder bouncing hard off the mounting bracket of a heavy green oxygen tank. Up front, the wailing siren abruptly cut out.
The sudden silence inside the box was terrifying. It was filled only by the drumming of heavy rain on the aluminum roof and the sluggish, agonizingly slow chirp of the cardiac monitor.
“What are you doing?” Marcus gasped, scrambling to right himself on the slippery bench. “Why are we stopping? We aren’t at the hospital! The clinic is still twenty blocks away!”
Miller completely ignored the question. He unbuckled his safety harness with a loud metallic clack and stood up in the narrow aisle. He did not step toward the stretcher to check Leo’s airway. Instead, he took a tactical step backward, bracing his boots against the floor grating, positioning himself between Marcus and the sliding heavy plastic doors of the supply cabinets.
“Sit back down on the bench, sir,” Miller ordered. His tone had dropped into a firm, authoritative register, the kind used by riot cops and bouncers. “The medication did not work. His heart is no longer responding. There is nothing else I can do for him. I need you to stay in your seat and keep your hands visible until the police arrive.”
“You didn’t even try the third one!” Marcus screamed, pointing a trembling finger at the medic’s chest. The neon yellow cap of the glass vial seemed to mock him, glowing brightly against the dark navy fabric of the uniform. “It’s the exact same stuff! He’s just deeply under! It was a bad batch, man, eight milligrams isn’t enough to push it off his receptors! You have another one right there!”
Miller shifted his weight. His right hand dropped to cover the leather radio strap and the glass vial tucked into its elastic loop. It was a purely defensive gesture-a man protecting company property from a grieving addict.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Miller said coldly. “It’s over.”
That was the breaking point. The sheer, suffocating bureaucracy of the paramedic’s posture snapped the last frayed tether of Marcus’s sanity. He didn’t want to hurt the EMT. He didn’t want to fight. He just wanted the clear liquid trapped inside that little glass tube.
Marcus launched himself across the narrow aisle.
Miller shouted in surprise, bringing his forearms up to block, but Marcus didn’t throw a punch. He blindly clawed at the center of the paramedic’s chest. His fingers caught the thick, heavy leather of the radio strap. Miller cursed and drove his elbow forward, catching Marcus hard in the collarbone and shoving him backward against the metal wall. But Marcus had already hooked his fingers under the elastic loop.
As Marcus was thrown backward, the strap twisted violently. The glass vial popped free of its holster and sailed through the air.
Time seemed to fracture into jagged, agonizingly slow seconds. Marcus hit the wall and slid down to the diamond-plate floor. He heard the sharp, distinct clatter of heavy glass hitting the aluminum grating. He scrambled onto his hands and knees, ignoring the searing pain in his shoulder. Beneath the stretcher, rolling in a smear of dirty rainwater and tracked-in mud, was the yellow-capped cylinder.
Miller lunged for him, his heavy black boots stomping down onto the floorboard, but Marcus was smaller and closer to the ground. He dove forward, his fingers closing around the cold, smooth glass just as the paramedic’s hand clamped down on the back of his hooded sweatshirt.
Marcus curled into a tight ball, clutching the vial to his chest as Miller yanked hard on his hood, choking him.
“I’ve got it!” Marcus choked out, twisting his body to look at Leo. “I’ll do it myself!”
He brought the vial up to his face, his thumb frantically pressing against the bright yellow cap, expecting it to pop off and reveal a nasal spray nozzle like the ones from the clinic.
It didn’t move.
Marcus wiped the rain and sweat from his eyes, staring at the prize in his hands. Panic, cold and absolute, flooded his veins. It wasn’t a spray. It wasn’t even a syringe. It was just a raw glass tube with a solid rubber stopper at one end and a sealed metal and plastic cap at the other. There was no needle. There was no plunger. It was a cartridge designed to be screwed into a specialized plastic injector barrel-a tool Marcus did not have.
He clawed at the yellow cap with his fingernails, tearing them backward until they bled. He brought it to his mouth and bit down on the metal rim, trying to pry it off like a bottle cap, uncaring as the hard edge chipped his front tooth and filled his mouth with the sharp, metallic taste of his own blood.
Above him, the jagged green line on the cardiac monitor finally stopped its lazy, rolling wave. It flattened out into a perfectly straight, unbroken line.
The continuous, piercing shriek of the cardiac monitor drowned out the approaching sirens as the heavy rear doors were wrenched open from the outside.