Chapter 10
Leo took a deep, steadying breath, his fingers hovering over the keyboard. He glanced through the glass at Eleanor and Richard, then back to the pale, motionless face of the girl inside the hyperbaric chamber. He pressed the enter key.
A soft hiss echoed through the chamber as the automated infusion pump engaged, delivering the amber-colored reversal enzyme directly into Clara’s central venous line. The biometric monitors hummed, the slow, erratic beeps steadying slightly as the compound began circulating through her bloodstream, neutralizing the plant alkaloids that had held her nervous system hostage.
For thirty agonizing seconds, nothing happened. The monitors flatlined in tempo, the heartbeat indicator holding at a stubborn three beats per minute. Leo felt a cold sweat break out across the back of his neck. He looked at Dr. Hayes, whose expression tightened into a grim mask of concern.
"Is it working?" Richard's voice crackled over the intercom speaker from the observation room, thick with panic. "Why isn't she moving?"
"Give it time," Leo whispered, though his own heart was hammering against his ribs like a sledgehammer. "The cellular absorption rate takes time to reverse the metabolic block."
Suddenly, the green line on the EEG monitor spiked, producing a sharp, jagged wave of electrical activity across the screen. The heart monitor’s rhythm accelerated from three beats per minute to thirty, then forty, climbing steadily toward sixty.
Clara’s fingers twitched inside the chamber. Her eyelids fluttered violently, a faint gasp escaping her parted lips as her chest heaved upward in a massive, involuntary inhalation of oxygenated air.
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"She's conscious!" Dr. Hayes shouted, immediately stepping forward to adjust the oxygen flow valves. "Prepare the reversal sedatives and check her pupillary reflex!"
Eleanor let out a sharp cry of pure joy through the intercom, dropping to her knees in the observation room with her hands pressed against the glass. Richard stared at the monitor, tears finally breaking free from his stern eyes, carving clean tracks through the dust and rain clinging to his tired face.
