To her credit, Sloan’s face was calm and her movements efficient. She came and felt for a pulse herself. “It’s fluttered to a stop. Shoot!”
She climbed on the bed and knelt beside the young man to start chest compressions. She placed the heel of her right hand in the middle of Alik’s chest then her left hand on top of her right and intertwined her fingers. She used her whole little girl’s body weight to press down and began counting, “One-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand…”
“What can I do?” Farrow asked over Sloan’s counting.
“Breathe for him when I tell you,” She said without missing a compression.
Farrow’s sharp ears heard painful sounding pops and cracks as Sloan’s forceful pushes invariably injured some ribs, but it was no matter.
This is normal and necessary to get his heart beating and him breathing again, Farrow told herself though she cringed at every crunch. Sloan may look small and powerless, but she was a metahuman and was much stronger than she appeared.
“…Twenty-nine one-thousand, thirty one-thousand.” Sloan stopped compressions and looked up expectantly at Farrow.
Remembering her training, Farrow had already taken the pillow out from under Alik and tipped his head back. Now she pinched his nose leaned over him, wrapped her lips around his feverish ones and pushed a powerfully deep breath into him. She stopped and watched his chest rise then fall.
“Again,” Sloan ordered.
Farrow complied, repeating the breathing process, trying desperately to keep panic at bay and focus on what she could do to help Alik instead.
Sloan resumed the compressions and counting.
“Come on, Alik!” Farrow begged.
“Stay with us. We need you. Take a breath! You can do it! Wake up and say something annoying! Please wake up!” Farrow didn’t even notice the warm tears slipping down her face and splashing onto the sheet beside Alik’s unresponsive face. “I need you, Alik Winter. Please don’t leave me when I just found you. I can’t do this without you! What would be the point, Alik?”
“Breathe,” Sloan ordered again.
Again Farrow took Alik’s lips with hers and pushed her breath deep inside him, watched his chest rise and fall with her efforts then repeated the process. Her tears fell on his closed eyes making him look as though he were crying, too.
This time, instead of starting compressions right away, Sloan used her pointy knuckles and ground them into Alik’s sternum, rubbing back and forth, up and down, trying to rouse him.
“Wake up Alik Winter. You have a lot of work left to do! And if I have learned anything about your sister, she’s going to come kick your butt for lying down on the job! Then she’s going to come after me all martial arts crazy for not pulling you back. WAKE UP!”
Just as Sloan was breathing a sigh of frustration, about to resume compressions, Farrow saw Alik’s eyelid twitch. “I just saw him move!” she called out.
Sloan stopped grinding her knuckles into his sternum and watched for his chest to rise and fall on its own. It was faint, but yes, there was definitely movement. Sloan hopped off the bed and felt his throat for a pulse.
“We got him back,” she nodded reassuringly for Farrow’s sake.
“Alik! Open your eyes!” Sloan ordered. “Do it now!”
Instead, Alik groaned softly.
“That’s right. Wake up Alik. You’ve slept long enough and definitely scared the heck out of us just now.”
Alik’s eyes fluttered opened a little before he blinked a few times. Each time he could open his eyes a little further until he was looking at Farrow through very bright-blue eyes.
Farrow watched them with a little confusion. His eyes were sky-blue before, I’m sure of it.
They looked so different. They were mesmerizing. Bright violet-blue eyes, framed with his familiar long dark lashes stared back at her.
“Alik, you stopped breathing. Farrow and I had to perform CPR on you just now to bring you back. I’m going to get you a fresh bag of intravenous fluids and work on stabilizing your system. Farrow’s going to stay right here with you,” Sloan nodded at the metasoldier, the only person in the room as far as Alik was concerned.
“Farrow, if he closes his eyes, rub his chest as you saw me do—it’s painful to him, but it’ll wake him until I get back, and we can make sure he’s stabilized. Okay? Give me one minute to get what we need?”
“One minute, okay,” Farrow’s voice sounded distant. She didn’t look away from Alik’s gaze to see Sloan hurry out of the room.
“Sloooaaann!” Farrow heard Cole call for his personal physician.
“Suck it up, Cole Andrews!” Sloan yelled back.