Tomorrow We Die by Shawn Grady Page A

straightened the map pages. She lived in a gated subdivision in the hills off McCarran Boulevard. The street names on the page diminished into branching swirls. I leaned close to the book, my eyes tracing a descending orbit of streets with all too similar names.
    Babbling Brook Circle. Babbling Brook Court. Brookside Drive branched off of Brookview Way, not Brookview Road. I checked my pager to confirm the address. Bones banked around another turn. My head spun. I put a hand on the dash.
    Bones flipped off the siren and slowed by the keypad for the community gate. He punched in the numbers given to us by dispatch and watched it swing slowly inward. We passed through and swerved through a series of downhill streets until stopping in front of a two-story house that overlooked the city.
    An older woman wearing a tennis outfit and visor met us in front. “She’s inside. It’s her heart again.”
    We carried the bags up a wide staircase. Ivory-colored spindles supported an oak banister. A white-haired woman lay in the master bedroom on top of a perfectly made bed, her face pale and diaphoretic. She breathed in rapid, shallow respirations.
    It took only two seconds for me to know she was in bad shape. Bones knew it too and went to work. He placed her on an oxygen mask while I hooked up the cardiac monitor. He was already pulling out the IV kit by the time I took my first look at her heart rhythm.
    Rapid, narrow. Really rapid. A hundred and ninety beats per minute. I felt her wrist. No radials. I felt her neck. She had a weak carotid tapping at that sewing-machine pace.
    That heart rhythm wouldn’t sustain life for long.
    I tried not to think about our extended response time. It wasn’t our fault.
    I spiked an IV bag with tubing.
    We’d left as soon as we were toned out and hauled across the valley to even get there in the time we did.
    I pushed it out of my mind and went to my line of questioning.
    Her name was Marie Straversky. She was allergic to penicillin. She’d felt this way a couple times before, but only briefly and not as bad. She’d felt nauseated and weak since she woke up an hour ago.
    Bones deflated the blood pressure cuff. “Seventy by palpation.”
    Too low.
    That gave us two definitive options. Administer a medication to try to reboot her heart or go straight to an electrical counter–shock.
    I was weighing the second option when Bones said, “Edison medicine?”
    I looked at her, still conscious, eyes implicitly trusting whatever we chose to do.
    “Do what you need to, boys. I just want to feel better.”
    I shook my head. “No. Let’s go with adenosine IV.”
    Bones taped down the IV he’d started. “One custom-crafted fourteen gauge at the AC.”
    “Thank you.” I turned to our patient. “Mrs. Straversky, I want you to try something for me.” I handed her a syringe and asked her to try to blow the plunger out of it for ten seconds. The act of bearing down could stimulate a nerve that slows the heart. She pursed her lips and dropped her heart rate from one-ninety to one-eighty-five.
    Nowhere near good enough.
    Bones handed me two syringes. “Six milligrams adenosine and ten CCs normal saline.”
    “Thanks.” I hooked them both up to ports on the IV line. The adenosine lasted only seconds in the bloodstream, so it needed to be pushed rapidly.
    The monitor continued its accelerated beeping. I glanced at Bones. “Ready?”
    He nodded and pushed the printout button. The paper recording reeled out of the machine.
    I made eye contact with Mrs. Straversky. “You may feel a sudden pressure in your chest.” I drove the plungers into the syringes.
    One. And two.
    The beeping persisted.
    No change.
    “Did you feel anything with that?”
    Her eyebrows tented. “No.”
    Bones handed me two more syringes, this time with double the dose.
    I leaned aside. “If this isn’t effective, we’ll do the synchronized countershock.”
    He nodded.
    The monitor beeped in time, drawing a long bed of needles.
    I