Episode 12: Mr. Body Beautiful
Part 4
Red’s hand trembled as she pulled back the plunger, filling the syringe with the solution she had prepared. She tapped it with her finger, making sure there were no air bubbles before she carried it back to K’s bedside.
Leo, Lancy, and Archie stood around the bed, awaiting her instructions. Archie twiddled his thumbs nervously while Lancy studied his reflection in the shiny surface of a stainless steel tray, carefully readjusting the nurse’s cap over his frosted hair. Leo looked uncharacteristically nauseous, like he could vomit at any second.
Red could relate. Clearing her throat, she said, “Okay… let’s go over the plan again. As Jay’s team approaches the right side of K’s heart, they’ll use Pearl’s grappling hook to anchor themselves to the wall of the superior vena cava, the vein that carries deoxygenated blood into the heart.”
She was momentarily distracted by the sound of Nick singing softly in the background: “The words to say, the road to take, to find a way back to K’s heart…” Half the time, she couldn’t tell if he was singing real songs or making up lyrics on the spot, but he always sounded good doing it. She shook her head, forcing herself to tune him out and focus on relaying the plan to the rest of the team.
“Then, using diving gear and a guide line, one of them will scout out the location of the bomb. Based on K’s symptoms earlier, we’ve surmised that the bomb is implanted near the sinoatrial node, which is at the entrance to the right atrium. Once we have a visual on it, I will inject K with this solution–” She held up her syringe. “–which contains enough potassium to induce cardiac arrest.”
Archie let out a low moan. “I knew I should have stayed home today,” Red heard him mutter. She ignored him.
“Once K’s heart has stopped, the team will follow Pearl’s instructions to disarm the bomb. They’ll have only four minutes to get the job done before we begin CPR to get K’s blood circulating again.”
“Ooh, I’ll give him mouth-to-mouth!” Lancy offered with an impish little giggle.
Red gave him a look of disgust. “We don’t do that in clinical settings. One of us will use an Ambu bag to administer oxygen,” she said, grabbing the bag valve mask off the red crash cart Archie had brought in earlier. “Which one of you would like to bag him?”
Leo and Archie looked at each other while Lancy just looked disappointed. No one volunteered.
“I’m gonna need all hands on deck here, guys,” Red pleaded, her previous doubts returning. “One of us will also have to perform chest compressions while another person pushes meds to counteract the potassium and stimulate K’s heart to beat on its own again.”
Leo blanched. “I’ll bag him.”
She flashed him a grateful smile. “Thank you,” she said, showing him how to hold the mask flush over K’s face and squeeze the bag every five seconds. “And Archie, since you at least have some medical training, I think you and I should take turns doing compressions while the other one handles the drugs.”
“Then what am I going to do?” Lancy asked huffily.
Red looked over at him. “You can keep time for us. That’s a very important job.”
The secretary seemed to perk up at her suggestion. “Ooh, okay! I’ve got this, girlfriend!” he chirped, gleefully flinging out his hand to show her the shimmery pink Rolex strapped around his wrist.
“Great. Do you have any questions?” she asked, glancing around at her team again.
“I’ve got one.” Hearing Nick’s voice, Red turned her attention to the video screen. The blond agent’s expression was unusually serious. “What if you can’t get K’s heart started again?”
She swallowed hard, fighting back the same fear she saw reflected on his face. “He’s young and healthy — both factors that will work in our favor. His heart is strong, and since there’s nothing structurally wrong with it, it should respond well to resuscitation. Once we reverse the potassium overdose and restore blood flow through the heart, there’s no reason it shouldn’t start to beat on its own again.” She tried to infuse her voice with confidence, feeling her plan would work, but deep down, she knew there were no guarantees. They could do everything “right,” and something might still go wrong. The mission might fail. K could die.
But like Leo had said earlier, it was a risk worth taking to save their leader and all of HimTak.
“Get ready,” Jay said suddenly. “I can hear the heart again. We must be close.”
A tense silence filled the room. Red held her breath, her hand wrapped tightly around the syringe, and listened. Through the screen, she heard what Jay’s team was hearing: the thundering sound of K’s heartbeat. It was faint at first, like a faraway storm, but each beat that followed got a little louder. It was strange hearing it so clearly without the help of her stethoscope.
“You remember which button to push to shoot the grappling hook, right?” said Pearl.
“The one that looks like a cigarette lighter.” Jay rolled his eyes and sighed. “Like I could forget. I’m gonna go smoke the rest of my pack as soon as we get out of here.”
“I wonder what your lungs look like,” said Nick, laughing.
“Shut up. I think I see the entrance to the heart up ahead.”
Everyone fell silent again, watching and waiting, praying the first part of the plan would work.
“Ready…” said Jay, his jaw set with determination. “Aim… FIRE!”
Red couldn’t see where the grappling hook went, but all of a sudden, she heard Nick cheer. “Boo-yah! We got it, baby!” She saw darkened red blood cells flying by the Bug, but it seemed to have slowed down, held back by the hook as it burrowed into the side of K’s vena cava.
“Yes!” Pearl cheered. “Nice work. Now to locate the bomb.”
***
Inside the Bugmarine, Jay and Nick shared a quick glance as their excitement dissipated. Even with the whizzing red blood cells, locating and defusing the bomb would be the easy part. Stopping and restarting K’s heart… now, that would be difficult. Thankfully, they had the right team for that job. And this job…
“I’ll do it!” Nick shouted, piercing the silence that had settled between them. “I’m a licensed scuba diver!”
“What.” Styx stuck his head between the two front seats and stared at Nick incredulously.
“I used to resign in Florida. Plus, you gotta do something when you’re not saving the world.” Nick shrugged.
Jay and Styx each raised an eyebrow, quickly glancing between Nick and each other. When Styx opened his mouth to speak, Jay shook his head, making his thoughts loud and clear: Don’t say anything.
“What? At your old job, they didn’t let you have hobbies?” Nick smirked. “Some old job.”
With a sigh, Jay ran his hand over his face. “Dude, now’s definitely not the time. Plus, I swore to K that I wouldn’t let you anywhere near the bomb.”
“But–”
“His body, his rules, man.”
Nick crossed his arms broodingly as he avoided looking at Jay, clearly stung by the comment.
Jay couldn’t help but feel a little guilty. Of course Nick could follow Pearl’s instructions and defuse a bomb. Of course Nick also wanted to help K. Of course Nick was a capable agent. But he’d sworn to follow K’s wishes. And as he repeated that in his mind, his fingers numbed as the realization dawned on him. At that moment, he regretted leaving his cigarettes in Pearl’s lab. “Damn, that means I’m defusing the bomb.”
“The trunk detaches into a submersible pod. Go ahead and pop it open,” Pearl’s voice rang out across the car.
“Of course it does.” Jay laughed as he stared at the slew of buttons across the dash. “And… which button controls that?”
“The one that looks like a car trunk popping up, of course. I’m not a monster, Jay.” Pearl grinned. “Just push the button up.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Jay pushed up the button that did exactly what it should do. Only the trunk didn’t open. Instead, a small, circular doorway opened near Nick’s feet, just above the floorboard.
“This way, you can get into the submersible without any fluids getting into the car.” While Pearl’s tone was too chipper to be smug, she was clearly pleased with her adjustments to the Beetle.
“See! Even the car wants me to defuse the bomb!” Nick gestured at the small opening emphatically.
“Dude, the car definitely doesn’t want you to defuse the bomb,” Jay retorted.
At the same time, Pearl simply said, “The car wants you to stay buckled.”
“Okay. What do I need to do to help?” Even though he sighed exasperatedly and stared out the window rather than looking at either of them, it seemed as though Nick accepted their arguments.
Pearl flashed him a half-hearted smile before beginning her instructions. “Jay, you’re going to get into the submersible. Inside, you’ll find one of our exosuits. I didn’t add much to it since the last time you were in one, but we’ll talk about the differences once you’re in the submersible.” When Jay nodded, she continued. “Nick, once Jay is inside the submersible, push the trunk button down to close the door. After he gives you the signal, push the trunk button in to release the submersible.”
“Sounds pretty boring,” Nick grumbled.
“You have a really important job. The car will automatically grab the submersible once it’s detached, but you’ll need to grab Jay. Just press the button that looks like a box with lines coming out of it to release a guide wire. Once it’s out, you can control it with the stick shift’s manual mode.”
“Isn’t that the defroster, Pearl?” Jay smirked.
“Well sure, originally.” Pearl shrugged. “But why would I need a defroster in the desert? You know I won’t drive in the snow.”
Jay chuckled. Pearl always had a point.
“One last thing.” Pearl leaned toward her screen and grimaced. “Since you’ll probably have to leave quickly…”
“You’ll definitely have to leave quickly.” Red filled Pearl’s pause, her tone gravely serious.
“Since you’ll definitely have to leave quickly…” Pearl groaned and held her head in her hand. “Nick, you’ll have to drive on the way back.”
“You mean it, Pearly?” Nick batted his eyelashes, holding his cheeks as a sickeningly sweet grin covered his face; Jay couldn’t help but laugh in response.
“If you crash it, you’re dead to me.” Her brief smirk afterward undeniably confirmed that Pearl had something up her sleeve.
The car probably does something else crazy, Jay thought to himself as he shrugged, then unbuckled. “Let’s do this. As I always say, wasted time is a lazy man’s crime!”
“Dude, you literally never say that.” Nick rolled his eyes and unbuckled as well. “You feelin’ okay? Weird shirts and weird sayings are pretty eccentric, even for you.”
“Just feels right for this mission.” Jay clapped. “Alright, let’s switch seats.”
Though Nick cocked an eyebrow, he didn’t say anything. More than Jay’s shirt and sayings, that was the most unusual thing about this mission.
Is Nick feelin’ okay? Jay asked himself as he climbed over the gear shift and swung his foot over Nick’s leg, gripping the headrest for support. Their faces were inches from each other during the switch.
Nick cringed and turned his head as he scooted away. “Dude, I don’t wanna go breakin’ your heart or anything, but there’s not room for you or Lancy in Carter’s Angels.”
“Is it just me, or is this pulsating?” Lancy’s excited voice filled the car.
“Lan-cy!” Leo groaned.
“Oh! I made a Nick pun!” Lancy giggled at his own joke.
“My jokes are way better than that.” Nick rolled his eyes as he flopped into the driver’s seat. As Jay slid to the floorboard, he couldn’t help but notice the faintest pout on Nick’s lips.
“At my old job–” Styx started.
“Alright, I’m going in!” Jay exclaimed as he slipped through the opening into the trunk. Once inside, he tossed his delightfully printed shirt on to the empty passenger seat to keep it dry. “Shirt’s safe! Close it up once I’m through!”
“At my old job, no one interrupted me,” Styx mumbled.
“If you love your old job so much, why don’t you go back and work there?” Nick’s retort was the last thing Jay heard as the opening closed, plunging him into darkness.
For a brief moment, the eerie dark silence of the submersible seemed almost soothing — like a pitch-black cocoon jostling with the movement of K’s heart. But within seconds, it whirred to life, filling with light and sound. The headlights served as the submersible’s two small windows into his surroundings. The pale yellow liquid rushed past, pushing the blood cells by with each beat and slowly rocking the car. Though they had a fixed path through the heart, the vein they’d anchored themselves to felt endless.
“Can you hear me?” Pearl’s voice filled the pod.
“Loud and clear.” Jay blinked as his eyes adjusted to the light, finally spotting the exosuit inside the trunk. He quickly removed his flippers and began shimmying into the bulky, metallic suit from the opening in the neck. “Talk to me about what’s new.”
“I upgraded the video feed and sound feed so I can see and hear you better while you work, and you could see me too if you needed it. Finger dexterity is the same, so you’ll be able to defuse the bomb even in the suit.”
“That would have been a nightmare in the old ones with the tong hands.” Jay laughed.
“Yeah, exactly. The life support system has fifty hours worth now… Not that you’ll need that much.”
“Still good to know!” Jay pulled his arms through the bulbous arms of the exosuit.
“And I added four 1.6-horsepower thrusters that your feet control, so you have full power over where you’re going. I guess you don’t really need Nick and the guide wire…” Pearl paused. “…But, you know I like having backup plans.”
Jay knew that all too well. He swallowed as he grabbed the round, metallic helmet with the teardrop-shaped viewpoint window. “And Nick hates sitting around on missions anyway. He gets fidgety. Hopefully you didn’t leave any machine gun bras in your car.”
Pearl laughed, breaking the tension in her voice. “I would never.”
As he put on the enormous helmet, Jay grinned, grateful that her laughter had eased his own nerves.
Once he was inside the helmet, it performed a quick eye scan, then sprang to life as it chirped robotically, “Welcome Agent 003.” With a blink of his eyes, the video screen inside the suit turned on, filling a fraction of his window with Pearl’s face.
“Neat, huh?” Pearl’s grin grew wider.
“I’m forever grateful that you’re on our side, Pearl.” Jay chuckled.
“Me too,” Brian’s stunned voice spoke up.
“Save your gratitude for when Opal and I solve this encryption problem.” Though she tried, Pearl couldn’t hide the telltale flush creeping across her cheeks. “There’s a belt near the suit that has all the tools you need and the necessary containment receptacles for the pieces of the bomb.”
Jay cleared his throat as he fastened the heavy belt around his waist. “What’s the signal to Nick?”
“Whatever you want.” Pearl shrugged. “I’ll link you up to him.”
Two more video feeds buzzed to life across Jay’s window: the inside of Pearl’s bug and the inside of Red’s surgical room.
“Everything working okay?” Nick asked with a slightly off-putting serious tone. The gravity of K’s situation hung heavy in all of their hearts.
And while Jay was fully aware of Nick’s more serious sides, in this mission Jay needed him to be less serious to calm his own nerves. Luckily, he knew just the signal that would do that and began to sing. “Jump up and down… and move it all around! Shake your head to the sound, put your hand on the ground!”
“Jay, no.” Nick groaned.
Pearl’s gleeful gasp followed shortly afterward, then she started laughing.
“Take one step left… and one step right… one to the front and one to the side–”
“If you clap your hands even once, Jay, K’s heartbeat isn’t the only beat you’ll feel.” Nick glanced over his shoulder. “I don’t wanna hear about how much less singing there was at your old job, Styx!”
Though Jay saw Styx starting to speak, Nick slammed his fist on the trunk button at that exact moment, detaching the trunk from the car; the cavorting jostling of the submersible drowned out whatever Styx may have said. Jay bounced around as the trunk tumbled toward the floor of K’s vena cava, metal scraping on metal as he hit the walls and ceiling. Thankfully, a metal arm gripped the submersible seconds later, tethering it to the Bugmarine.
“Alright, Pearl.” Jay groaned, hoping the residual jostling of his stomach would stop. “How do I get out?”
“Just press the button near the escape hatch you crawled in through.”
After glancing around the overturned trunk and realizing that he now sat on the hatch in question, Jay did as instructed. The metal door spun open, sending him plummeting toward K’s vein.
As Jay said his prayers — hoping he wouldn’t give K a heart attack — he felt the churn of metal slamming against his spine. With a blink of his eyes, Jay cycled through the camera views on the exosuit while floating to the ground. The view from above: blood cells whizzing past. The view from below: the endless road of the vena cava. The view from his right and left sides: about the same as above. And, finally, behind: the Bugmarine and the guide wire nestled into a slot in his back. Nick held a finger in the air; since the plasma obscured the picture quality, Jay chose to assume it was a thumbs up.
After blinking away the video feeds, Jay began walking through the tunnel-like vein. He ducked each blood cell that shot past, careful to keep his disturbance on K’s heart at a minimum; Nick being inside his body probably put enough stress on his heart already. After walking for what felt like an eternity, Jay cycled through the video feeds again. This time, the view at his back resembled all the others except for the endless guide wire that trailed behind him. Hoping the voices of the others would drown out the pounding of K’s heart, Jay brought back the feeds of their faces.
“What does everyone think the bomb looks like anyway?”
“Something stupid. $100 bucks says it’s purple with a ferret.” Nick snorted, his outstretched hand clenched tightly around the gear shift as he pushed it forward in manual mode.
Jay chuckled, remembering the ferret emblazoned pirate flag in Bermuda. Unfortunately, at that moment, the rest of the encounter in Bermuda filled his mind. The seething stare of Howie’s untwitching brown eye. The clang of metal striking metal. The furious words whipping between them. Howie wasn’t the type of monster that would put a bomb in someone’s body as a bargaining tactic. But Dr. Rough was. And as long as Howie was buried beneath Dr. Rough, Jay couldn’t forgive a monster like that.
A quiet ticking interrupted the steady symphony of K’s heart, bringing Jay back to the present. Lub-dub lub-dub lub-dub. Tick tick tick tick tick. As Jay walked through the tunnel, the familiar beat of K’s heart kept a steady volume, but the ticking became louder.
A sudden gust of fluid hurtled against Jay, leaving him momentarily breathless. Caught up in his memories, he’d forgotten he walked through K’s continuously beating heart. Quickly thinking on his feet, Jay activated the thrusters in the footpads, allowing him to navigate toward the wall of K’s vein with comparative ease. The nimble but powerful hand pressed against it, allowing Jay some stability in the growing turbulence as he neared the opening into K’s right atrium. For those personally perilous moments in the eternity through K’s superior vena cava, he forgot about the bomb in favor of his personal safety. Until he neared the exit.
“God damn it.” Jay swore under his breath, jostling with K’s thunderous heartbeat again.
There, lodged haphazardly in the yellow banana-shaped crescent cluster that was almost certainly the sinoatrial node, was the literal ticking time bomb in K’s heart. And in a show of Dr. Rough’s madness, it was shaped like a cartoon heart. Jay felt his ears growing hot at this display of mockery. Worse than that, Nick had been right: it was a sickening purple color with a silver ferret inside an equally cartoonish heart etched on it.
“God damn it. Found it.”
***
Secretly, Red had been dreading those words.
“God damn it. Found it.”
The words that served as her signal to stop K’s heart. And while she had already tried to find all the other possible solutions, this one would work. This one was consistently used in open-heart surgeries. Of course, in those instances, the heart already wasn’t working and anything could help. But other than the bomb implanted inside him, K’s heart worked fine.
Red swallowed. The bomb in K’s heart made this necessary. Mustering the calmest bedside manner she could, she cupped K’s hand and spoke in a low voice. “K, you probably already heard, so I’m going to walk you through everything. I’m putting a potassium injection into your IV. It’s going to stop your heart.” Her own heart wrenched as K’s hand twitched, but she continued. “But Jay can see the bomb now, so he’ll be able to follow Pearl’s instructions and disarm it safely when your heart is still.”
K remained still. Even in his sedative-induced lethargy, he likely realized that the alternatives were worse: giving up Jay or the bomb detonating in ten hours anyway. If even a chance of avoiding those existed, they should take it.
“We did ask Brian for medical consent on your behalf.” Red held his hand tighter, calming her own nerves with his steady hand. “And we’re all doing everything we can to ensure you wake up. When the bomb is no longer a threat, Archie and I will restart your heart with chest compressions, sodium bicarbonate, and epinephrine. We’ll use a defibrillator if necessary. Leo will ensure you have oxygen. Lancy is keeping time. Nick will make sure Jay is safe.” She hoped the detailed descriptions of everyone’s roles gave K comfort. After inhaling deeply, she raised the syringe toward the IV line. “I’ll see you when you wake up.”
Keeping careful watch on the heart monitor’s methodical beeping, Red slowly injected the potassium through the IV line in K’s arm.
As expected, the peaks of the EKG waves grew, then the waves beside them widened and flattened before the EKG peaks widened. The heart rate slowed. A sine wave formed, gradually shrinking the peaks and valleys until K flatlined.
Eyes still fixed on the loudly ringing monitor, Red spoke in a quiet voice. “You have four minutes.”
***
Though it hadn’t been Red’s intention, Jay also found comfort in her explanation to K. They each had a job to do that would make sure they saw K when he woke up. He focused on those words and their meaning, hoping they would provide stability as K’s heartbeat boomed around him.
First, the cavernous shaking grew, thrashing Jay about on the guide wire. In that moment, he was most grateful for the flexible material Pearl had made it out of, which made him bounce around the cushion of blood cells rather than slamming him into any walls. The second thing that made him grateful was that Nick had stopped adding slack to the line once Jay said he found the bomb. Next, the beating became erratic but continued to toss Jay around the vein. Then, the erratic beating began slowing, decreasing in intensity, length, and amount until it stopped altogether.
“You have four minutes.”
The urge to sink to his knees nearly overcame Jay, but he felt the guide wire slack behind him — a clear indicator that Red’s words had made Nick feel equally overwhelmed.
“Got it.” While Jay’s voice remained stoically calm, inside his body, his stomach did somersaults and his own heart clenched in his chest. Jay exited the superior vena cava, walking around the banana-shaped sinoatrial node until he stared straight at the purple monstrosity quietly ticking away. “Is the visual okay, Pearl?”
“It’s clear, yes.”
“I’m gonna start by cutting the wires from the battery to the timer. Look over the rest of it and let me know what to do next.” Jay unfastened the belt from his waist and pulled the scissors from the tool holster. After gingerly snipping the wires, the bomb partially split, revealing the mechanisms inside and giving Jay access to the pieces. He set the scissors down and wiped his brow with the bulbous arm. “We only have four minutes; what’s next?”
“Get one of the containment receptacles from the belt. You’re looking for the neutron trigger. It’s going to be a small disc or ball. It’s really radioactive, so be careful.” As Pearl spoke, Nick hummed something quietly in the background.
“What about K?”
“That small, he’s probably okay for now. Red can screen him afterward, just in case. But you’re small, too, so be careful. Also, the bomb can still detonate once it’s out, but it won’t be as cataclysmic.”
“Gee, that’s comforting.” Jay swallowed as he grabbed one of the lead-lined containers, which he’d momentarily forgotten were so heavy, and placed it beside the bomb. He began reaching for the small disc inside when Nick’s humming grew louder. “Nick, if you have something to say, just say it!” When Nick’s humming stopped, Jay began reaching for the disc again. Unlike K’s now silent heartbeat, his own heartbeat thundered in his ears. Four minutes and then K’s heart could restart. Only four minutes.
“Time is waiting…” Pearl’s voice crackled in his ear as Jay realized that Nick had started humming again while he’d been concentrating.
“We only got four minutes to save the world!” Nick sang loudly, replacing the annoying but quiet humming.
“No hesitating… Grab a boy…”
“And grab a girl!”
“Time is wai–”
“What are you doing?” Jay shouted as he pulled his hand back moments before touching the disc.
“Singing that Madonna song with that one guy from that boyband,” Nick answered nonchalantly.
“I know that! Why are you singing at a time like this?!”
“It’s just so catchy!” Pearl groaned.
“It helps me focus.” Nick shrugged as irritatingly nonchalantly as he spoke.
“Well, it’s distracting me, so shut the hell up!” Jay shouted.
When the silence returned, Jay carefully grabbed the disc and placed it in the containment receptacle. After he closed the lid, another sound pricked at his ears.
“Tick tock tick tock tick tock.”
“Red! Four minutes!” Jay shouted.
“Sorry, I wasn’t trying to distract you.” Red had been caught red-handed and hid her face from the camera. “It’s about two minutes now.”
“We only got two minutes to save the world!” Nick started singing again.
“I swear to God, Nick, I will throw this bomb at your face if you can’t be quiet for two minutes!” Jay shouted. After puffing out a large breath, he focused on the bomb again. “Everyone done singing?” Thankfully, silence answered him. “Pearl, what’s next?”
“Remove the conventional explosive and put it in another container. That’s the part that explodes, so it will be much safer once it’s gone.”
Jay followed Pearl’s instructions in blissful silence, enjoying the click of the box lid closing.
“Last part, separate the U-235 masses. They should be small but heavy chunks of metal. Don’t let them get too close, or K’s heart will flood with radiation. Once they’re in their own boxes, they’ll be fine.”
Each chunk was heavier than the box he placed them in, but this was the last step to keep the bomb from exploding catastrophically in K’s heart. He closed the last lid, then began reaching toward the bomb remnants as they unclenched from K’s sinoatrial node.
“Time’s up. We have to restart K’s heart.” Red’s words jolted Jay’s heart.
“Yeah… uh… I only got four minutes… to save the world.” Styx crackled through the sound feed as Jay dropped the bomb remnants. “S-sorry… they got it stuck in my head.”
Even with the bomb dismantled, it would take more than those last four minutes to restart K’s heart. Jay hurriedly grabbed the bomb remnants and began shoving them in the last containment receptacle.
***
As Styx’s singing crackled away, Red stared fleetingly at Jay hurriedly packing the bomb remnants into his last containment receptacle. After clearing her throat, she switched into critical care mode and began barking out orders. “Leo, bag K. Archie, start chest compressions. Lancy, time starts when Archie starts.”
The infirmary was a flurry of motion. Leo thrust the Ambu bag’s face mask over K’s nose and mouth, pressing the flexibly firm plastic against K’s skin. Archie began chest compressions. Lancy timed on his shimmery pink Rolex, pacing around the bed. The chaotic symphony surrounded them: the crinkling plastic of the Ambu bag, the crunch of the chest compressions, Lancy’s shoes tapping against the ground.
Surrounded by this symphony, Red administered the necessary antidotal injections into K’s IV line: calcium gluconate, sodium bicarbonate, glucose, and insulin.
As Leo squeezed the bag, he watched Red injecting K with the various medicines; his face turned a sickening shade of pale green.
“What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do?!” Lancy fretted as he watched Leo’s increasing nausea, his pinafore sashaying wildly as he walked.
Thankfully, Archie had also shifted into crisis mode and focused on the chest compressions without complaint.
“Just focus on keeping time,” Red answered Lancy calmly. Though she nervously snuck a glance at her own watch as she timed the injections.
“That’s two minutes,” Lancy croaked.
“Time to switch, Archie. Leo, keep the oxygen flowing.” Red seamlessly took over chest compressions as Leo continued squeezing the bag in queasy five-second intervals. Archie took over the injection line just as seamlessly.
For his part, Lancy’s fretting became more frenetic; the rhythm of his shoes against the floor doubled its pace.
As Red performed the chest compressions, she kept her eye on the flashing light and alarm of K’s heart monitor. The possibility that K could go into ventricular fibrillation crept into her mind. A possibility she couldn’t keep to herself. For a moment, she glanced back at the monitors, watching Nick keeping tabs on Jay’s whereabouts inside K’s superior vena cava. As important as reviving K was, the agents inside his body needed to stay safe during the procedure.
***
“Ventricular fibrillation may be a possibility.” Red’s eerily calm voice drifted through the car. “You should get out before that happens.”
“Ventric-you-whata-what?” Nick stammered.
“Ventricular fibrillation. K’s heart will seem like it’s beating, but there won’t be any blood flow. The movement is more like an erratic twitch than a true heartbeat. We’d have to use a defibrillator to shock him and hopefully correct it.”
“How long do we have if that happens?” Nick swallowed as he clenched the gear shift, forcing away the panic constricting in his chest.
“Only a couple of minutes at most. You’ll need to hurry. The shock could kill you.”
“Actually, the car and Jay’s exosuit are lined with rubber; they should be perfectly safe from electrocution,” Pearl chimed in.
“So we just… wait and see what happens?” Styx’s voice shook, reflecting Nick’s own panic.
“Hell no! We’re getting the fuck out of here!” Nick leaned closer to the video feeds on the dashboard. “Jay, I can’t tell — do you have all the pieces of the bomb?”
“Yeah, I’m coming back toward you now.”
“Meet you there!” Nick slammed his fist on the cigarette lighter, dislodging the Bugmarine from the wall of K’s vena cava. He pulled the gear shift back as far as he could, retracting the guide wire like a fishing line. On the video feed, Jay shot backward abruptly. With confirmation that Jay hurtled toward them, Nick switched the gear shift back to automatic mode and floored the gas pedal, hoping acceleration still worked like a regular car.
As the vehicle barreled across the vein, knocking Styx back against his seat, Nick focused on Red’s camera feed in the infirmary. Hang in there, K, he prayed silently. “Where do we go now, Red? Don’t worry about us, just give me directions.”
“You’ll take the tricuspid valve from the right atrium to the right ventricle. Once you’re in the right ventricle, you’ll enter the pulmonary artery through the pulmonary valve. Take the artery back to the lung.”
“What does that tricuspid valve look like?”
“A hole with three flaps that open and close.”
“Got it! Pearl, can Jay come back in the car if he’s radioactive?”
“He’s probably fine, but–” Pearl started.
“Hear that, Jay? Buckle up in the trunk!” Nick slammed open the trunk’s door as they passed Jay, tossing him inside as the guide wire retracted back into the Bugmarine. Once the trunk closed, the mechanical arm reattached the trunk to the front of the car, then disappeared back inside.
On the video feed, a stunned look remained on Jay’s face as the trunk belted him to its wall. “A little warning would have been nice, Carter!”
“I told you I was meeting you! Got the bomb still?”
“Yeah, I’ve got it.”
“Alright, let’s kick this fantastic voyage up a notch!” Nick floored the gas pedal again, careening the Bug past the weird banana-like sinoatrial node and into the right atrium.
Straight ahead, the grayish-white flaps remained motionless and open, so the Bug squeezed through without issue. Past the tricuspid valve, a stringy webbing filled K’s heart.
“The fuck are these?” Nick muttered under his breath.
“Chordae tendinae. They attach the valve to the heart muscle.” Red’s answer remained eerily calm. That possible shock was probably inevitable.
“So, you’re saying that us working together is so touching that we’re literally tugging on K’s heartstrings?” Nick grinned.
“Car-ter!” Everyone groaned. Secretly, Nick relished in it. If they focused on his terrible jokes, they’d worry less about K’s condition.
The grin widened on his face. Maybe they needed a song, too. He started humming to himself, a calming melodic tune that would hopefully work wonders on their nerves. The calm humming became a soft song. “If you don’t know by now that you’re my only one… Take a look inside me and watch my heartstrings come undone…”
“You really can’t go one mission without singing?” Jay groaned from inside the trunk.
“My rescue mission, my rules.” Nick smirked as he adjusted the rearview mirror. The smirk instantly fell as he scrutinized the object within it. Behind them, a large, white, spikey ball rose from the depths of K’s heartstrings like a kraken from the deep. “The fuck is this… this… blowfish from your shirt, Jay?!”
“Dude, why would a blowfish be in K’s heart?” Jay’s voice sounded like he was frowning, but it was impossible to tell between the video feed and his diving helmet.
“That’s what I said! Why would you wear a shirt with inner tubes and blowfish on it?!”
“Uh… buddy… those are red blood cells and white blood cells…”
“White blood cells? No, they’ve all been red. What’s a white blood cell do?”
“They’re one of the body’s defenses against disease,” Red answered quietly.
“Meaning… what exactly?”
“It thinks you’re a virus!” Pearl groaned. “Just hurry up and get out!”
“Did everyone hear that?” Nick beamed. “Pearly told me to drive her car as fast as I can!”
“Yeah, I also said you’re making K feel sick. So don’t make me regret it, Blondie.”
After a quick glance back at the white blowfish cell, Nick floored the gas pedal again, shooting straight for the gray-white doors of what must have been the pulmonary valve Red had mentioned. Unfortunately, unlike the tricuspid valve, these flaps rhythmically opened and closed.
At first, Nick considered asking Red why they were different. However, he shrugged it off just as quickly. This mini-golf obstacle seemed like the perfect way to narrowly escape a weaponized blowfish. He just had to time their entry just right. He tapped the brake, slowing the Bug as he counted the seconds between the valve opening and closing. Once he had a handle on the beat, he released the brake, then slammed the gas pedal to the floor. The yellow Beetle shot forward, squeezing through the opening with a plop and trapping the white blood cell on the other side of the valve. For a moment, they had a head start.
Around them, the pulmonary artery twitched chaotically, a sharp contrast to the previous rhythmic pulsing.
“What’s going on?!” Nick gripped the steering wheel tightly.
“He’s in ventricular fibrillation. We’ll have to shock him.”
“How long do we have?”
“Now or never!” Pearl shouted. “Once you’re through the capillary, turn on the windshield wipers and open the sunroof to put the car in helicopter mode!”
“Why didn’t we just fly in?!” Styx shouted.
“Because Pearl forgot to tell us this damn thing does everything but teleport!” Jay grumbled.
“H-helicopter mode?” Nick gulped as the Bugmarine pushed through the thin walls of the capillary back into K’s lung. The only thing worse than flying was flying in a helicopter. And the only thing worse than that was flying in a microscopic helicopter inside K’s body while it tried to kill them with blowfish.
Pearl grinned. “Not into driving fast now, Blondie?”
“N-no, it’s cool. Now or never, right? Thank god it rarely rains in the desert.” Nick swallowed the lump in his throat hard as he flipped up the windshield wiper lever and pushed open the sunroof.
Once again, the Bugmarine transformed. The periscope tucked away in the ceiling as two whirling helicopter blades emerged from the roof. The fins disappeared, returning the smooth sides of the yellow Beetle. Instead of wheels, two landing skids popped out of the bottom. The propellers stretched, becoming the tail boom and rotor of the transformed Bugicopter.
The return trip from the capillary to an alveolus to a bronchial tube and out the trachea probably wouldn’t involve any free-falling, but Nick started singing anyway to calm his nerves from flying out of there.
“Straight through my heart, a single bullet got me, I can’t stop the bleeding, oh oh…” Nick frowned. Too depressing.
He picked another song. “I’ll never break your heart… I’ll never make you cry… I’d rather die–” Nope!
Why was he having such a hard time thinking of peppy songs about hearts? “Sometimes I wish I could turn back time, impossible as it may seem… But I wish I could… so bad… baby… You better quit playin’ games with my heart…” K would clearly not love that one.
Peppier? “I’m here with my confession… Got nothin’ to hide no more… I don’t know where to start… But to shoooow yoooouuuu the shape of my hearttt…”
Jay’s snigger interrupted him. “Okay, human jukebox, not sure if you’re planning to sing K awake, but he’d definitely wake up just to kill you for trying.”
Nick chose to ignore Jay’s joke and gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles instead. “Isn’t there any faster way out, Red?” he groaned.
“Get to the trachea. Once you’re there, Leo will stop bagging K, and I’ll finish my compressions before we shock him. You should shoot right out.”
The thought of “shooting right out” made Nick feel extra queasy. Straight through K’s heart for sure — or his lung, at least. But straight through K’s lung didn’t sound like a very catchy song, and the joke wasn’t helping him feel any calmer.
“Y-yeah” was all Nick managed to answer as he tried swallowing away his nerves. The wind resistance from Leo pressing the bag pushed against the Bugicopter as it whirred through one of K’s narrow bronchial tubes. “Okay, we’re going to that big straw tube.”
“Leo, stop the bag.” Red’s voice crackled through the car speakers again.
A quick gust of air brushed down the tube, knocking them backward. This was the end! Di-Crapio was trying to kill them! But the end Nick braced for never came. Instead, with a quick push, the Bugicopter forced its way up the bronchial tube toward the trachea, hurtling them into their inevitable death.
***
The Adventures of Nicky Pocket