Chapter 117

• Charlotte hurried through the hospital corridors, her footsteps echoing sharply against the sterile tiles as dread coiled in her chest. Outside the emergency ward, she spotted Gabriela slumped against the wall, tears streaming down her face in silent devastation. Without a word, Charlotte pushed through the doors into the chaos within.
• Ruby lay motionless on the gurney, her tiny chest still under the harsh glare of overhead lights, skin ashen and mottled from poor perfusion. The pediatric team swarmed around her—Dr. Robert and Dr. Harper, the attending cardiologists, barked orders amid the shrill beeps of monitors showing asystole. "ECMO flow dropping—no output, she's in refractory arrest," Dr. Harper snapped, hands flying over the console as alarms wailed. Nurses delivered chest compressions with mechanical precision while epinephrine dripped steadily, but Ruby's ventricular septal defect had worsened into fulminant cardiogenic shock; the extracorporeal membrane oxygenation circuit, meant to bridge her failing heart, was clotting off, unable to maintain circulation..
• Charlotte stepped forward, her voice cutting through the tension. "Status?"