Chapter 6 - The Innocent Defender
Dr. Miller looked between Grant and Dr. Chen, his hands trembling. "A court injunction? If I release this patient without proper discharge protocols and she dies in transit, my medical license is gone. Security! Call hospital security to the fourth floor!"
"Listen to me, Doctor," Grant said, his voice dropping into a register of terrifying calm. "If you do not allow my team to hook Elena Ramirez to that synthetic oxygenator within ninety seconds, she will suffer irreversible brain death. If she dies, I will spend fifty million dollars prosecuting every single medical professional in this county who hesitated. If you let me take her, I will sign a total liability waiver, write a ten-million-dollar endowment check to your emergency ward, and save a mother’s life. Decide now."
Miller swallowed hard, looking at the agonizing flutter on the monitor, then at Sky, who was still clutching her mother’s hand, praying aloud in broken Spanish.
"Transfer her," Miller whispered to his team. "Now. Before security gets up the elevators."
"Move! Hook up the arterial line!" Dr. Chen barked.
The room exploded into high-speed precision. The Hawthorne team worked like a Formula One pit crew, sliding Elena’s frail frame into the sealed transport pod, connecting the crimson-filled cannula tubes to the external oxygenator, and stabilizing her neck.
"Vitals stabilized at seventy-two percent on full ECMO," Chen reported, his eyes wide. "We have a window. But we have to move her to the clean room at Hawthorne Central immediately. The peptide infusion must be administered under sterile laminar flow."
They wheeled the heavy pod out into the hallway, Nova and Sky running beside it, with Grant leading the way.
As the heavy freight elevator doors slid open on the ground floor, they were met with a wall of flashing camera bulbs and four armed private security officers flanking Julian Vance.
"Stop right there!" Julian shouted, holding up a sheaf of white legal documents. Several hospital security guards stood behind him, looking bewildered. "Grant Hawthorne, you are in direct violation of a temporary restraining order issued thirty minutes ago by the county superior court! You are misappropriating Hawthorne Biotech proprietary clinical technology for an unauthorized third party! Officers, seize that equipment!"
The security guards stepped forward, their hands resting nervously on their utility belts.
"Dad," Nova whispered from her chair.
Grant raised his hand, preparing to step forward and physically level the first guard who approached the pod.
But before he could move, Nova disengaged the brake on her chair.
She propelled herself forward into the open space between the Hawthorne medical team and the row of security guards. She sat straight, her small shoulders square, her jaw set with an iron resolve that silenced the corridor.
"Stop it," Nova said.
Her voice wasn't loud, but it had the crystal-clear clarity of an innocent child speaking absolute truth.
Julian Vance sneered down at her. "Nova, sweetheart, this is adult business. Your father is sick, and he’s making decisions that will destroy everything he built for you."
"My name is not sweetheart," Nova said, staring Julian dead in the eye. "My mother built this medicine before she died. She built it for me, and she built it for Elena. You didn't come to my party because you don't like my wheels. You think because my legs don't work, my family is weak."
Julian’s face flinched as the news cameras shifted their lenses away from Grant and focused entirely on the small girl in the wheelchair.
"You told everyone not to come to my birthday so you could hurt my dad," Nova continued, her voice trembling with emotion, but never wavering. "Sky was the only person in this whole city who cared if I was lonely today. She gave me the stars she made with her own hands. And you want to let her mother die because of a piece of paper?"
She looked at the two hospital security guards who had stepped forward.
"Are you going to help him kill her?" Nova asked them.
The two guards looked at each other. One of them, a burly man with a wedding ring and a photo of his own daughter tucked into his badge clip, slowly took a step backward and let his hands fall to his sides.
"This is an emergency medical transfer," the guard said, avoiding Julian’s frantic gaze. "We don't interfere with patient transfers."
"What?!" Julian yelled, his voice cracking into a high pitch. "I pay your company’s security contract!"
"Out of the way, Julian," Grant said, stepping up beside Nova’s chair, resting a hand proudly on his daughter's shoulder.
Marcus and the Hawthorne security team surged forward, forming an impenetrable human wedge that shoved Julian and his attorneys against the corridor wall. The gurney rolled past them into the pouring rain, toward the waiting mobile surgical unit.
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"This isn't over, Grant!" Julian screamed after them, straightening his ruined tie as the cameras flashed relentlessly in his face. "The board meets tomorrow morning! You won't have a company left to run by noon!"
***
