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Mark stepped forward into her space, reaching up to take her face in his hands. “Take a breath for me.” She did. “You’re going to try. And if you find it, it’s amazing. If you don’t, it is not your fault.”
“You know that’s not true.”
His face hardened. “That’s not something we’ll argue about now. Tell me what you need.”
“Nurses,” she said. “I’m going to create samples based on the data I have, and they’re going to need to administer the compounds and report back with Brett’s reaction. I need people going back and forth so I don’t have to leave the lab—it’ll be hit or miss for a number of hours until he reacts and I get us going in the right direction.”
Leaning in, he kissed her briefly. “You got it. Now put everything else out of your mind. What you can do is all you can do.”
What she could do was all she could do.
Jenna connected Brett’s heart rate to her computer, and she watched it get weaker as the hours bled into the night and the combinations she could think of to combat the tail dwindled.
Multiple nurses came in for instructions and to provide results. They were quick and efficient.
And useless. Because Jenna couldn’t figure out the tail.
Maybe if someone took her out into the wilderness and tied her to a tree for a few hours, she’d work better—that had certainly been effective the first time.
“Here, I’ll take the next one.”
Something landed on her shoulder, and Jenna reacted, spinning and hitting the object with fast and brutal force. The gasp made her vision clear, and she saw the nurse in front of her, cradling her arm to her chest like she’d been bitten.
“Oh my God.” Jenna choked on the words. “I’m so sorry. Did I hurt you? I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”
Terror laced the pit of Jenna’s stomach as the nurse rubbed her arm, scooting away from her.
“I’ll live. But cut down to decaf before you take someone out, okay?”
Jenna handed her the latest syringe and couldn’t help but notice the sideways glance the nurse gave her as she left. Jenna deserved that, almost breaking the poor woman’s arm for touching her on the shoulder.
Some things didn’t change.
Mark passed the nurse on the way in, looking at Jenna with raised brows. He had a brown paper bag in his hand and another cup of coffee. “Everything okay?”
“Fine.”
“You don’t look fine. That nurse didn’t look fine.”
“She startled me, and I hurt her arm.”
Mark was silent for a long moment, obviously running scenarios in his head.
“You need to eat,” he finally said. “You’ve been working nonstop all day. Coffee can only take you so far.”
Jenna swallowed. “I don’t have time to eat.” The last couple of batches had produced a slight response. She was going to build from there, but it would take time. Probably another two hours before she had anything that would definitively start helping Brett.
She turned away from the food and Mark and went back to work, not mentioning what had happened with the nurse. She didn’t have time to explain to him yet another way she was broken.
Her eyes flicked to Brett’s heart rate monitor in the corner of her screen, and she watched it flicker, then plummet. “No.”
Before she even realized, she was sprinting out of the lab and into the stairwell—the elevator would be too slow. Up three floors and down the hall to Brett’s room. She heard Mark running behind her, but she didn’t stop.
The chaos could be heard from down the hall—yelled commands and the shrill, insistent sound of a flatline.
No. No, no, no.
She skidded to a stop outside Brett’s room, watching as a doctor and the nurses she’d been handing syringes to all day worked over Brett’s body. Even the nurse with the hurt arm was helping, pushing the injury aside.
