Lake Sinclair

Lake Sinclair A Breathtaking Psychological Thriller Brian Hartman Doodle Media, LLC Copyright © 2023 by Brian Hartman All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual events or persons is purely coincidental. To the self-published authors who are running this journey beside me, and the readers who make it all worthwhile. “The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life.” Richard Bach Contents Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Epilogue Acknowledgments About the Author Also by Brian Hartman Chapter One “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” “There’s a woman slumped over in a car. I think she might have overdosed. It’s at the corner of 7th and Penn. Black Mercedes.” “Can you tell if she’s breathing?” “Yes, I think so. I tried the door, but it’s locked. She looks bad. You need to get here quickly.” “Are you able to break a window to open the door?” “No way, man, I already left. That’s not a good section of town. Do you have someone close?” “I have an officer about a minute away. Sir, can I get your name?” The operator paused, waiting for a reply that never came. “Caller? Hello?” The operator tapped a button to patch into the dispatch line and continued, “Be advised, the caller did not attempt to gain entry and had already left the scene. He even hung up without identifying himself.” “Copy that. We’re approaching now. How far out are the medics?” “Two minutes,” she said. “Copy that. I’ll gain entry and try Narcan. Standby.” “Aleesha, what you got?” The operator turned to see her cubicle neighbor leaning back in her chair and peeking past the wall. She’d removed her headset and held it in her hand. “Sounds like an overdose. Found in a car. Cops are there now.” “Ooh, girl, you get all the good ones. My last one was someone who needed a bandage changed on their foot.” Aleesha held her finger up while adjusting the headset with her other hand. “Say again?” She listened intently for a few moments before replying. “Copy that, dispatch out.” She turned back toward her coworker. “Narcan didn’t work. They’re going to transport her to the ER.” * * * Medics pushed open the doors leading to the resuscitation bays at St. Mark’s emergency department and found the team full of nervous energy waiting for them. “What’d you bring us?” asked a nurse. “This is Amanda, found unresponsive in her car. A nice older model Mercedes, actually. Some Good Samaritan called it in. Police were first on scene and tried intranasal Narcan without success. When we got there, she was nearly apneic but still breathing a few times a minute. Two milligrams of IV Narcan did nothing, so we bagged her and brought her to you. Glucose of 135. Police said her oxygen saturation was in the eighties when they got to her. We have no history, but hopefully, you’ll have something on her.” The medics slid their patient onto the ER cot and transitioned care to the hospital team. Now the ER was in charge, and the medics took on the role of color commentators as they cleaned their stretcher in preparation for the next run. Dr. Sabrina McAllister stood at the head of the bed and directed the team’s activities. “Let’s try another two milligrams of Narcan while we prepare to intubate her. This seems like an overdose, but we need to get her to CT and make sure there’s no badness upstairs.” A nurse attached EKG leads to the patient’s chest using the back of her hand to lift a generous breast out of the way. “Doc, this one is a bit strange. The patient had a pulse-ox on her finger when we got there.” The team stopped moving and looked at the medic who had given the unusual history. “Oh, I didn’t know the police carried those. Is that a new program?” “No, they don’t carry them. It was on when they got there, too.” Sabrina looked up at the medic with a wry smile. “So she just drives around with a pulse-ox on? That’s worse than driving with a mask when you’re alone in your car.” The nurse laughed and snapped back to her current task, releasing the breast she didn’t realize she was still holding. “Don’t ask me. We just brought her in. After everything we’ve seen out there, I just take it all in stride. You know how weird people are.” Sabrina nodded but focused on passing a breathing tube into the patient’s trachea and hooking her up to a ventilator. She ordered testing and helped expedite the patient’s trip to the CT scanner to exclude an intracranial bleed as the cause of altered mental status. The tests all came back negative except for the drug screen, which was positive for benzodiazepines. After double-checking the results, Sabrina placed a call to the ICU team for admission. “Hey, this is McAllister in the ER. I have a fifty-year-old woman for you on a vent. She was found unresponsive in her car, and I can’t find anything wrong with her, other than a