Sin of Silence (Sinner's Empire #1) - Nikita Slater Page 0,2

was now frizzing around her head. Her eyes were red-rimmed from fatigue. She’d only been in the camp for a few weeks, but she would get used to the long brutal hours. Shaun was on her fourth month.

Shaun straightened her shoulders, shaking off her exhaustion and putting on her professional face. “What do you need?”

“Asthma attack in emergency, bed four. 10-year-old male presenting with shallow breathing, coughing and wheezing. He’s not getting enough oxygen. He’s starting to turn blue.”

Shaun strode out of the room, Janet running to keep up with her.

“How long has the attack been going on for?” Shaun asked.

“It started about an hour before he arrived, according to his mother. It’s been 20 minutes since he was first examined.”

“Where is Doctor Zelensky?” One of the local doctors was supposed to be covering emergency.

Janet shrugged and pressed her arm against a door, flipping it open so they could walk through. “Yolanda thinks he went to do a house call. Someone who can’t be moved.”

“Okay,” Shaun said. “I’ll have a quick look, but we may have to intubate. Is the mother calm?”

“No.” Janet shook her head. “Almost as hysterical as I felt when I couldn’t find you.”

Shaun smiled grimly. “I’ll need you to get her out of the exam room and have someone join me for the procedure. Danilo is on desk, so send him in. The patient may need to be held, depending on his level of alertness.”

It turned out the child was no longer responsive when they arrived. Janet rushed the mother out of the room and Danilo, one of the local nurses, stayed to help. Shaun carefully intubated the boy and then gradually filled his lungs with air, essentially breathing for him through a plastic tube.

“Pulse returning to normal,” Danilo said from where he stood across from her.

She nodded and began to relax. The boy would live. His mother should move him out of the city. Too much dust and debris floating in the air from the bombings. This wasn’t the only case of acute and severe asthma Shaun had seen. In fact, it was becoming more and more common for people to wander in complaining of breathing problems, whether they were asthmatic or not.

“Please get a box of the Prednisone,” she told Danilo. “I’ll watch him for a few minutes, then we can invite his mom to come back in and show her how to administer the steroid.”

He nodded and left while Shaun turned back to the table. Scared blue eyes looked up at her, surprisingly sharp considering the ordeal he'd gone through. He must be utterly exhausted. She smiled big for him, forcing her lips to stretch into a grin. Even if she wasn’t feeling it on the inside, she would pretend for his sake. He deserved a smile until he could see his mom again.

“You’re doing great… kiddo,” she said in stumbling Ukrainian, realizing she had no idea what his name was. Usually the nurse told her when giving her a rundown of the symptoms. They'd forgotten in their rush to get him breathing again.

The boy blinked up at her.

She continued to smile and dropped her hand to squeeze his shoulder.

Then his eyes moved past her to settle on something behind her.

Shaun turned her head slowly, intuition lifting the hairs on her neck, telling her to drop to the ground, to run, to scream. Something in the child’s expression told Shaun that there was a threat standing right behind her.

Sure enough, when she turned her head, she found herself staring down the barrel of a gun. A loud gasp flew from her lips. Her eyes followed the length of the gun to the gloved hand holding it. A man’s hand, a leather glove. Pale skin, tattoos between the edge of his glove and the cuff of his leather jacket. They reappeared from beneath the collar of his shirt and wound their way up his neck. They were both barbaric and beautiful, completely out of place in the hospital.

The man had dark hair, cut close to his scalp. He wore sunglasses so she couldn’t see his eyes, but the set of his face told her everything. Prominent cheekbones, sharp wide jawline, and thin, cruel lips with a scar slashing right through the middle, as though someone had tried to cut his mouth.

She was going to die.

She closed her eyes, deciding to take a moment to come to peace with her destiny. She was okay with dying, even expected it to some extent, given the places