Page 52 of Cross Down
“You’ve talked to her?”
“At length.”
“Care to share?”
Justin smiles. “You’ve been straight with me since becoming chair, General. I’ll tell you this. She thinks you and others are overreacting, that you’re taking a cannon to go after a mosquito. She thinks the terrorist attacks are being conducted by loosely linked militia groups across the country and that a large, unwieldy organization like the committee you’re heading is too clumsy to respond quickly. She also thinks it’s setting a terrible precedent and will turn this nation into a security state.”
“That’s quite an opinion,” Grissom says.
“And what’s your opinion?”
Grissom feels anger rising up inside of him, and he knows what he’s about to say would probably be a career-ender in a normal world.
But the world hasn’t been normal for months. He’s been given a job to do by the president, and by God, he’s going to do it.
The general says, “With all due respect to Secretary Landsdale, she has no idea what she’s talking about. She has no tactical or strategic vision of how to deal with these terrorist attacks, and her theory is dead wrong.”
Justin’s hand moves quickly as he writes this down, then he looks up. “Uh, General, just to make sure I know the rules—this is still all on background, correct?”
Grissom makes another decision. “No. That last part is all on the record. Print it.”
Chapter
62
Bree watches Alex’sface as the doctors and nurses crowd around him, trying to keep him from slipping away.
A nurse looks up at the monitors and says, “Doctor, BP is still dropping, heart rate still increasing.”
The doctor says, “Quiet, everyone.”
Through the crowd standing around her Alex, Bree sees the doctor put a stethoscope on his chest. He shakes his head, removes the earpieces from his ears. “I’m not hearing any breath sounds in his left lung, and his trachea is deviated to the right. Is the chest tube clogged? He’s got another tension pneumo.”
The doctor looks at the monitors, shakes his head again. “We’ll do a needle decompression.”
More quick yet steady movement from the personnel around Alex, and Bree is bumped into a few times, but that doesn’t matter. She’s staying near Alex, where she belongs.
“Okay,” the doctor says when the nurse hands him a large needle. “Here we go.”
Bree watches, frozen, as the doctor swabs the skin below Alex’s left clavicle with an antiseptic solution and then inserts a needle straight into his chest.
There’s a hiss of air, and as one, the small group of medical personnel look up at the monitors.
A nurse says, “BP is increasing, heart rate is dropping, and pulse ox is up to ninety.”
“A close call, eh?” the physician says. “Now let’s get a new chest tube in place.” The nurses assemble the needed apparatus to do the job.
Bree closes her eyes and whispers a prayer, then takes Alex’s hand and squeezes it. She wants to believe that Alex squeezes her hand back, however slightly.
About fifteen minutes later, Bree is in the waiting room with Nana Mama and Ali. One of the ICU physicians, Dr. Tom Smith, comes in. He’s tired but looks pleased.
Bree, Nana Mama, and Ali are sitting in a row holding hands, and Dr. Smith sits in front of them. “What happened is this,” he says. “As we were weaning Alex off sedation to see if we could take him off the ventilator, his heart rate went up and his blood pressure began dropping.”
Nana Mama asks, “What does that mean?”
Dr. Smith says, “In this case, it meant that air was going into his chest cavity, not his lungs, and there was no way for that air to get out, so the pressure built up around his heart and prevented it from pumping. I did what the paramedics did—I inserted a needle to release that air, and once the pressure on his heart was relieved, it was able to pump normally. He’s in stable condition at the moment.”
Bree holds Ali’s and Nana Mama’s hands tight. “Sounds like a setback.”
