Page 59 of Run Wild Omega

“Thirty-two millimeters of mercury,” he says. “The threshold for fasciotomy is thirty. She’s already above it.”

“Has it been rising or holding steady?”

He checks the chart. “Rising. Slowly, but rising. It was twenty-eight an hour ago.”

“Then we don’t have twenty minutes to wait for her parents,” Maggie says. Her voice is flat, clinical, but she’s not being cold—she’s being a nurse. She’s stating the facts.

My chest feels like it’s caving in.

I look at Tess. Her eyes are closed, her face slack. The heart monitor keeps beeping. The transfusion bag hangs above her, the dark red fluid creeping down the line and into her vein.

She would know what to do. She would have an opinion. She would tell us, in that blunt, no-bullshit way of hers, exactly which risk she’d be willing to take.

But she can’t speak for herself right now. And her parents aren’t here.

And we are the ones standing in this room, the ones who carried her down the mountain, the ones who lied to get into this ICU, the ones who have been at her side for every second since she was pulled from that crevice.

“We make the call,” I say.

Dylan looks at me. Miles looks at me.

“I don’t—” Miles starts.

“She would want us to,” I say. “She would want someone to make the call, not stand around waiting for permission.” I turn to Dr. Evans. “What’s your recommendation? Honestly. If she were your sister.”

Dr. Evans holds my gaze for a long moment. I can see the weight of the question behind his eyes—the knowledge that whatever he says will be the thing that tips the scale.

“I’d wait,” he says quietly. “Her vitals are stronger than they were two hours ago. The transfusion is working—her hemoglobin is climbing. If we give the conservative approach another two hours, we might see the swelling peak and begin to recede. If we operate now, with her blood pressure where it is, I’m genuinely concerned about her surviving the procedure.”

Two hours. Two hours of watching the pressure climb. Two hours of not knowing if we’re saving her leg or dooming it.

“And if the pressure keeps rising during those two hours?” Dylan asks.

“Then we go to surgery. But we do it with a patient whose cardiovascular system has had a bit of time to recover from the hemorrhage. Her chances on the table improve significantly.”

“But the leg gets worse,” Miles says.

“Potentially, yes.”

I close my eyes. Behind my eyelids, I see Tess on the mountain. I see her standing on that ridge, wind whipping her hair, the whole valley spread out below her. I see the way she moves—sure-footed, fearless, alive in a way that most people never are.

Her legs are her life. Her freedom. Her identity.

If she wakes up and we’ve let her leg die because we were too cautious…

But if she doesn’t wake up at all because we pushed her into surgery too soon…

“Two hours,” I say. “We wait two hours. Monitor her every fifteen minutes, not thirty. If the pressure hits thirty-five, we don’t wait anymore—we go straight to the OR.”

Dr. Evans nods. “I can agree to that.”

“Maggie, can you—” I start.

“Already on it,” she says, turning to adjust the monitoring equipment. “I’ll set the alarm thresholds and page Dr. Evans the second they’re breached.”

I pull a chair up to the side of the bed. Dylan takes the other side. Miles stands at the foot, arms crossed, his eyes fixed on the pressure readings on the monitor.

We settle in.