Chapter 6 - A Life on the Wire
By day three of the blizzard, the temperature in northern Wisconsin dropped to fifteen degrees below zero.
Inside the remote cabin, the wood stove creaked as the iron expanded under the intense heat. Nora stood over Leo’s travel incubator, her heart hammering against her ribs.
Leo’s breath was coming in short, shallow gasps. His tiny chest was retracting inward beneath his ribs—a classic, terrifying sign of respiratory distress in premature infants. The pulse oximeter chimed a sharp, alarming beep: 88%.
"No, no, no," Nora whimpered, adjusting the oxygen flow valve on the cylinder.
The cylinder was empty. The gauge read zero.
Nora’s blood turned to ice. She quickly checked the backup tank. The valve had rusted; it had leaked its contents out into the freezing air of the barn overnight.
Mia began to cry in her basket—a high-pitched, distressed sound that echoed through the small cabin. Leo’s skin was turning a faint, bluish grey around his lips.
"Marcus!" Nora screamed, running into the kitchen.
Marcus ran inside from the wood shed, dropping his armful of logs. "What’s wrong?!"
"Leo’s suffocating!" Nora cried, tears finally spilling over her cheeks. "The backup tank leaked! He needs a hospital! He needs an incubator with pediatric ventilation right now!"
Marcus looked out the window. The roads were buried under three feet of snow drifts. "The nearest hospital with a neonatal ICU is in Green Bay—forty miles south. The highways are closed!"
"I don't care!" Nora sobbed, lifting Leo’s tiny body and wrapping him inside her wool sweater against her warm skin. "If we stay here, he dies in two hours! Get the Subaru!"
"Nora, listen to me," Marcus said, taking her by the shoulders. "If we take him to St. Vincent’s Hospital in Green Bay, the moment they admit a premature twin with respiratory distress, the medical alert goes into the regional database. Victor’s tracking network will flag it within ten minutes!"
Nora looked down at her son’s pale face, his tiny fingers clutching weakly at her sweater.
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"Let him find us," Nora whispered, her voice steadying with absolute, fierce maternal resolve. "I don't care if he brings an army. Save my son."
Ten minutes later, the gray Subaru plowed through the heavy snowbanks of the forest road, its tires spinning wildly as it headed south toward Green Bay.
