Chapter 17 – Over

Dr. Travis Martin had seen a lot of strange things during his life. Having been a doctor for eighteen years at the Haven Regional Hospital, it was impossible to have remained in the realm of normality for long. A lot of the shock factor had worn off by now, to the point where he didn't blink when a young boy came in with gills on his neck or a woman came in breathing ice. Things had only gotten crazier when he'd switched from the Emergency Room to the Intensive Care Unit. He had learned that the best way to remain efficient – and sane – was to simply treat all of the unusual things that happened in Haven, Maine as if they were normal medical cases.

Of course every once in a while something came along that completely threw him for a loop, and today was just one of those days.

He was making his mid-afternoon rounds of the ICU, casually checking on each of his patients. It was a humbling experience every day, seeing the work he'd done and how it was helping people to recover, and then in the very next room seeing someone who he had done everything he could for but was still losing the battle. He paused in a doorway to check on one of the newest admittances. Marcus Cates, only seventeen years old and looking very much like he wouldn't live to become eighteen. That was another one of those cases where he had done everything he could think of to no avail. It looked like Haven's Troubles might claim another win over science.

With a heavy sigh, he turned to walk away from the room and then froze at the distant sound of a flat line. Seconds later his pager beeped on his waistband and he jumped into the rush that was heading for the room number on the page. He grimaced, because he knew exactly who was in that room.

Pushing his way between two nurses to take charge of the room, Travis felt his stomach lurch at the sight of the man in the hospital bed, a man that had only come in a few hours prior. He knew Nathan Wournos from outside the hospital. Everyone who had lived in Haven for a few years at least knew of him, and Travis had only been a few years older than him when they'd been in school so he clearly remembered the playyard stories that had gone around about the strange boy who felt nothing. He had struck up a tentative friendship with him in their early adulthood, when both had just come back to Haven after college and while they hardly talked anymore, he still respected the man.

He also breathed out silent thanks that the Chief had left a while ago. He didn't think he could do his job right with that hawk of a man scowling at him, and he didn't want to imagine his own fate if a screw-up killed the Chief's son.

"He's got edema," Travis shouted to the room in general, removing his stethoscope from Wournos' slightly seizing chest. "There's definitely build-up in his lungs, we've got to clear it." As the nurses on either side of him set to work on that, he turned his attention to the scans from the other machines. His blood pressure had fallen drastically and Travis knew what that meant. "The clot is growing, we've got to relieve the pressure," he barked.

"Trav, it's in the stem," a younger resident said with wide eyes. "That could kill him."

"And if we don't do it then it definitely will," Travis replied sharply. The younger doctor blanched but nodded and started assembling the tools. Travis' attention was pulled back when one of the nurses gasped. He turned to check on them and realized immediately what had startled her. They had forced a breathing tube into Wournos' throat, and as the exhale pumped back out of his body it brought with it a cloud of gritty material. "What on earth–?"

He momentarily detached the breathing tube to run his finger over the inside and when he pulled it back the gritty material clung to his glove. It was damp and clumped, but he was almost ninety-nine percent sure that it was sand. "Just keep going," Travis ordered the nurses. "Whatever this is in his lungs, it's still not air and that's what we need to make sure is getting there."

The other doctor had returned with the proper tools and Travis readied for what he needed to do. He had others help to move Wournos onto his side, so he could get access to the back of his skull. With a narrow incision tool he pressed the tip to the base of the skull and took a steadying breath. Of all the dangerous things he'd been forced to do to save lives in his career, this one was possibly one of the worst. Cutting in millimetres from a person's brain stem... Travis took another deep breath and then gritted his teeth. No time to waste.

The tool broke through the flesh and tissues almost frightfully easily. It momentarily tapped against the bone at the base of the skull, but he shifted his angle to avoid any serious areas and pressed on. The moment he pulled the blade back out, a steady trickling of rust-coloured dust began falling from the incision and everyone around the bed took a hasty step backwards in alarm.

"What the hell?" the resident gasped out, pale and terrified. "Is that – dirt?"

Travis recovered a half second later and shook himself out of his shock. "It's putting pressure on his brain and we need to get it out of him," he said and then reached for the suction tube. Without a moment to second-guess his thoughts, he pushed the tube into the incision and turned it on. The machine made a horrible chugging noise as it started up and then the grainy flow began whirling down the tube.

"He's still not stabilizing," the older of the two nurses said in clipped tones, still dutifully sustaining the breathing compressions. Travis looked up at the heart monitor and grimaced. His heart beat was still erratic and too shallow to hold up for long. If he didn't stabilize in the next minute they'd have to use the defibrillator.

"And Trav, this, uh, well it's getting thicker back here," the resident said uncertainly and Travis looked down at the tube. The sand was coming out heavier and faster, and the reddish tint was darker. He had no idea what that meant exactly, but he could only hope that it was a good thing.

"Just keep up what we're doing," Travis said, trying to sound confident in what he was saying, at least confident enough to make the others believe that he knew what they were up against. "Let's ball for a perfect game, huh? I don't want to lose a man today."

One of the nurses hastily crossed herself, and for a moment Travis was tempted to copy her. He wasn't a religious man, but sometimes when facing the Troubles, it helped to have faith in something. For many people it seemed to have become that woman, the FBI agent that was hanging around town who the older people all said had powers beyond anything in Haven. Inwardly, as Travis adjusted the suction tube in the back of Wournos' head, he wondered if she could do something to make this better.

. . . . .

"No." Audrey squeezed her eyes shut, trying to regulate her breathing and compartmentalize. There was a searing pain in her left collarbone but she could deal with that later. For now she had to focus on the more important things.

"Audrey?" She prised her eyes open in time to see a long body untangle itself from the heap on the floor beneath the shelves, and a moment later Duke's face had filled her vision. "Jesus, Audrey, you're bleeding bad."

"So are you," Audrey replied. The entire right side of Duke's face was striped with blood, and she could see several scattered gashes peppering his skin, some deeper than others. She grimaced as she straightened up, forcing herself into a better sitting position and sending spears of pain through her shoulder and neck. "The sandglass, it broke."

Duke looked over his shoulder at the mess of shattered glass that covered the floor and cringed. "Nathan's?" he asked, even as his eyes fell on the red stain in the carpet and he let out a whispered curse.

There was a low groan and Calvin Demarcio shifted. He was gasping and wheezing as he pulled himself into a sitting position. Audrey stared at his face in awe. Even though his cheeks were flushed in anger and exertion, the rest of his face had blanched to a sickly grayish-white colour and the lines rested more heavily in it than they had before. He looked as though he'd aged years in a matter of minutes.

"Look what you've done," Calvin growled in a raspy voice, staring around in horror at the broken sandglasses that littered the floor. "You've ruined them. All of that time, wasted."

Audrey's eyes widened in comprehension. That was why he still had all of the sandglasses that had stopped; he was still holding onto what little time they'd given him. "Duke," she hissed quietly, her voice nearly drowned out as Calvin continued to rant angrily at them. "We need to break the other sandglasses."

"What?" Duke asked incredulously. Audrey didn't answer, concentrating on sliding herself up the wall slowly so as not to send the pain spasming through her shoulder again. Then, gritting her teeth, she lurched toward the shelves. With her good arm, she grabbed the nearest sandglass and lifted it over her head.

Calvin's eyes bulged out of their sockets. "No, what are you doing?" he half-shrieked. Grimacing tightly, Audrey hurled the sandglass across the room. It exploded against the far wall, spraying them all in splintered wood and shards of glass, and as the fine white sand rained down over them Calvin let out a hysterical scream. Audrey and Duke watched as the lines in his face deepened even further and the last of the colour faded from his skin.

"No, stop!" Calvin choked out. He had sunk back, leaning on one arm with support while the other clutched at his chest. His breathing was coming in shaky, shallow gasps and there was a look of agony on his blanched face. "Stop please."

"You're time is over," Audrey said darkly and, with one sweeping motion, brushed an entire shelf clean. The sound was high-pitched as dozens of sandglasses simultaneously exploded. A second backhanded swipe cleared the shelf below it and when she finally turned to face Calvin again she froze. There was nothing but a withered corpse curled on the carpet.

"Audrey." Duke crossed the room, glass crunching beneath his shoes, and he placed a hand tentatively on her shoulder.

"Nathan," she said, the panic that had sank beneath the adrenaline pooling to the surface again. She glanced down at the floor and could see the stains where red liquid had seeped into the faded carpet. She didn't need years of federal training to know that it was blood. But if Nathan's blood was here, then what was inside of him? "Duke, we've got to get back to the hospital. Now."

"Yeah, okay," Duke said, not bothering to argue. He eyed the rotting corpse in the middle of the room and felt his stomach churn in an entirely unmanly sort of way, and he wanted to get out before he made a complete fool of himself. "Just one thing first." He reached onto the lowest row of shelves again and grabbed the little cherry wood sandglass. With a look of determination, he flipped it back over. The sand whirled inside, and then began trickling back through the funnel.

Duke straightened up and met Audrey's inquiring gaze. "Had to be worth a shot," he said with a small shrug. "C'mon, let's get you to the hospital." When she looked unsteady on her feet, he looped an arm around her waist supportively and they hurried back out to the truck.

. . . . .

The Intensive Care ward had been split in chaos. While Dr. Travis Martin and his team had been working on keeping Nathan Wournos alive, a second page had come through that the teenage boy down the hall was also crashing. They were short-staffed and half of his team had been forced to leave to tend to the boy. With the one nurse left at Travis' aide, they were struggling to stabilize the detective.

"His heart rate is steadying," the nurse announced suddenly, her surprise evident in her breathless voice. Almost not daring to believe it, Travis looked up at the machine registering his heart beat. It was still weak, but it had become less erratic, taking up something similar to a natural pace. That was the first step.

"He's gonna pull out of this," Travis said, trying to convince himself of it. It was a slim chance; there were still a long list of things that could go wrong, not to mention the handful they'd added during resuscitation. But it was a chance, and he had to cling to that hope.

Two more minutes passed with Travis checking his watch every ten seconds in between monitoring the waves of crimson sand and damp dust that were being filtered out of Wournos' body. The strength of the heart rate hadn't improved, and Travis was started to get concerned again. He exchanged an anxious glance with the nurse over the bed. This low steadiness would keep him alive for now, but it wasn't the sort of thing that would help him heal. If he didn't improve soon, there was a good chance of becoming brain dead and spending the rest of his numbered days in a vegetative state.

Suddenly Wournos' body convulsed beneath the doctor's grip. As smoothly as he could, Travis pulled the suction tube from the back of his neck before it could crush against his brain stem and then turned his attention to what was happening. Wournos' body was seizing and Travis' ears caught onto a wheezing sound that made his eyes widened.

"The breathing tube," he said hastily, gesturing at the nurse who was clutching it. "Get it out. Out!" The nurse looked alarmed but she nodded and eased the tube from Wournos' throat. The moment it was out of him, Nathan Wournos began letting out great, hacking coughs. His entire body shook with the effort as he coughed into the bed's sheets, sprinkling them with dark gritty debris. After a long minute of this, he retched, expelling even more of the coarse sand and bile. And then he slumped back into the bed, still coughing but more lightly now and breathing steadily in between fits.

"I don't believe it," Travis breathed in awe. Wournos was lying on the pillow, his half-open eyes unfocused and gazing up at the ceiling. Above his head, the heart monitor had miraculously returned to a regulated pace. Travis had no idea what had been done or what had changed, but Nathan Wournos was somehow, inexplicably, alive. "Let's get this all cleaned up. I imagine Agent Parker will be here any moment and I don't want to be the one that gets in between these two."

"Trav," the nurse said, and when he looked across at her, she was staring down at the pool of sick on the floor. "Should we set up a biological containment on this? In case it can spread this epidemic or something?"

Travis shook his head resolutely. "No, I can assure you Mary, this madness is passed now," he said. She was even older than him, old enough to have lived through the hard times of Haven, and she easily understood the truth beneath his cryptic response.

This Trouble was over.