Chapter 2 - The Emergency Room Discovery
The ambulance ride was a blur of fluorescent sirens, the rhythmic thrum of tires against asphalt, and the sharp, antiseptic smell of sterile saline. Greer never let go of my right wrist. With her other hand, she held a cold, continuous stream of sterile water pouring over my face from an IV bag, angling my head so the runoff wouldn’t drip down my neck or into my other eye.
"Keep your right eye shut, Sloan," Greer ordered, her voice trembling despite her corporate composure. "Don’t let it pool. Let it drain."
The paramedic, an exhausted-looking woman named Alvarez, was rapidly scrubbing my cheek with neutral saline pads. Every touch sent lightning through my nervous system. It wasn't just heat; it was an unnatural, gnawing friction, as if microscopic needles were sewing themselves into my dermis.
"What was in that glass?" Alvarez asked for the fourth time, checking my vitals on the monitor. "You said punch? Wine?"
"She said punch," Greer snapped furiously. "Pink punch. But wine doesn’t smell like an electrical fire, and champagne doesn't liquefy silk."
I looked down at the collar of my cream silk dress. The pale fabric around my collarbone wasn’t merely stained; the weave had literally dissolved in spots, curling into brittle, blackened threads where the liquid had splashed heaviest.
When the ambulance bay doors slammed open at Northwell Trauma Center, a team was already waiting. Word travels fast when paramedics call in an unidentified caustic agent.
Within minutes, I was transferred onto a stainless-steel trauma bed under blinding overhead surgical lamps. Two nurses held my shoulders while a trauma physician, Dr. Patricia Vance, leaned over me with protective goggles and heavy blue nitrile gloves.
"Irrigation station right now," Dr. Vance commanded. "Morgan, get the Morgan lenses in. We need six liters of Ringer’s lactate straight into both eyes. Now!"
The Morgan lens—a hard plastic apparatus shaped like an oversized contact lens hooked to an IV line—was forced under my eyelids. As fluid flooded over my corneas, blinding me in a cold, rushing deluge, Dr. Vance used a pair of sterile forceps to take a cotton swab of the residue pooling in the hollow beneath my cheekbone.
She pressed the swab against a strip of indicator paper.
I heard the sharp intake of her breath over the rush of the water.
"pH is under 2.0," Dr. Vance said, her voice dropping into a deadly, chilled register. "This isn't kitchen punch. It’s a concentrated acid solution. Call the toxicology lab stat. And someone get the precinct on the horn. This is a deliberate chemical assault."
"Assault?" Greer stepped closer, her phone buzzing incessantly in her purse. "Doctor, what is it?"
"We’re running a mass spectrometer analysis right now," Dr. Vance replied, never pausing as she gently debrided the blistered layer forming over my cheek. "Whoever mixed this masked it with cranberry concentrate and artificial sweeteners, but the base isn't food-grade. It's an industrial cosmetic acid—likely medical-grade trichloroacetic acid, around seventy percent concentration, combined with an adhesive vehicle to make it stick to the epidermis."
A chill far colder than the irrigation water ran down my spine.
Seventy percent TCA is used for deep clinical resurfacing. In dermatological settings, it is applied with micro-applicators, measured in drops, and neutralized within seconds under medical supervision. Thrown raw into an open face, it destroys human tissue within forty seconds.
"If she hadn't turned her head when she flinched," Dr. Vance said quietly to Greer, "she would have lost her left eye permanently. As it is, we have second-degree chemical burns across her cheek, jawline, and collarbone, and partial corneal epithelial erosion."
My phone buzzed in my bag across the room. Then Greer’s phone rang again. She pulled it out, glanced at the display, and hit speakerphone.
"Greer?" My mother’s voice pierced the sterile air, crisp and exasperated. "Where did you take her? Evan’s director is furious. We have a shot list to finish before midnight, and Fallon is in the bridal suite crying her eyes out because Sloan made a scene over a spilled mocktail."
"Sybil," Greer whispered, her tone so icy it could have frozen steel. "Shut your mouth."
"Excuse me? You don't speak to me like—"
"Your daughter is lying in a trauma bay with chemical burns across her face," Greer said, enunciating every syllable. "And the NYPD has just been dispatched to your daughter's reception."
There was a three-second silence on the other end.
Then Sybil muttered, "Don't be ridiculous. It was just a prop."
May you like
The line went dead.
***
