The Penniless Romeo

The Scalpel and the Threshold of Death

​The heavy steel doors of the emergency trauma room were deadbolted from the inside, sealing off the chaos of the corridor. Outside, a deadly war of attrition raged between Deva and Chairman Singhania’s heavily armed corporate mercenaries. But the silence inside the sterile suite was infinitely more terrifying than the gunfire echoing beyond the walls.

​Lying unconscious on the surgical table in the center of the room was Rishi Malhotra. His chest had been violently torn open, the sutures from his recent open-heart surgery completely ruptured by the blast wave and the synthetic neurotoxin. Dark, arterial blood pulsed continuously from the gaping wound, rapidly turning the pristine white surgical drapes into a horrifying crimson map. The rhythmic beep... beep... of the portable ventilator and the EKG monitor had grown agonizingly slow, irregular, and faint.

​Prachi stood paralyzed beside the operating table. Her breathing was ragged, her chest heaving as violent tremors racked her entire body.

​Slowly, she lowered her gaze to her right hand. The hand that the medical world revered as an instrument of the divine was gone. In its place was a grotesque, charred lump of blackened flesh and exposed, weeping muscle. The skin of her fingers had melted and fused under the searing heat of the car lighter. She possessed zero motor function in it; she didn't have the strength to lift a single cotton swab, let alone wield a surgical scalpel with the micro-millimeter precision required to repair a human heart.

​"I can do this... I have to do this," Prachi whispered to herself, her voice trembling violently. Hot tears spilled from her eyes, soaking into the blue surgical mask she had hastily pulled over her face.

​To perform an open-heart surgery, a cardiothoracic surgeon absolutely requires the flawless coordination of both hands. One hand to wield the scalpel, guide the needle, and suture the delicate tissue; the other to aggressively clamp the spurting arteries, operate the suction tube, and keep the surgical field clear of blood.

​Driven by pure, unadulterated desperation, Prachi made a horrifying, unthinkable decision.

​She reached for a thick wad of sterile surgical gauze and clamped it firmly between her teeth to muffle her screams. Then, using her good left hand, she snatched a large syringe and drew up a massive, highly concentrated dose of local liquid anesthesia. Without a second of hesitation, she drove the thick needle directly into the charred, ruined flesh of her right wrist, plunging the anesthetic straight into her median nerve!

​Mmmffff!!!

​A muffled, agonizing shriek tore from Prachi’s throat. Her jaw clamped down so hard on the surgical gauze that the white fabric instantly soaked through with the metallic taste of her own blood.

​She knew the medical consequences of what she was doing. Injecting such a massive dose of localized anesthetics directly into severely compromised, third-degree burn tissue could cause irreversible nerve death, permanently paralyzing her arm for the rest of her life. But right now, she didn't care about the future. She needed to kill the blinding, paralyzing pain immediately, just so she could use her deadened right arm as a heavy, blunt instrument—a makeshift surgical weight to hold Rishi’s chest cavity open.

​Within seconds, the excruciating fire radiating from her right hand vanished, replaced by a heavy, cold, leaden numbness. All sensation was eradicated, along with any remaining motor control.

​Prachi took a long, shuddering breath. She spat the b****y gauze onto the floor. With her non-dominant left hand, she reached out and picked up the cold steel surgical scalpel. This was the hand she used only to hold a coffee cup or sign paperwork. Today, it was going to slice open the chest of the man she loved more than life itself.

​"Forgive me, Rishi... if my hand slips, please forgive me," Prachi sobbed. She positioned the razor-sharp blade directly over the torn, jagged skin of his chest.

​Slash!

​She made the incision. Because she was using her left hand, the blade trembled slightly against the flesh, but the sheer, obsessive desperation to save Rishi’s life hijacked her nervous system, granting her a strange, robotic stability. She forced the chest cavity wide open.

​The sight inside was an absolute nightmare. The concussive shockwave from the slaughterhouse explosion, combined with the hyper-metabolic state induced by the neurotoxin, had violently ruptured the primary suture line near Rishi’s aorta. As she opened the chest, a massive geyser of dark red arterial blood erupted upward, splattering directly across Prachi’s face and surgical goggles.

​"Oh my God... the hemorrhaging is too severe!" Prachi panicked. Using the elbow and the dead weight of her numb right arm, she aggressively pressed down, physically pinning Rishi’s ribcage open. With her left hand, she grabbed the plastic surgical suction tube and desperately began vacuuming the pooling blood from his chest cavity, searching blindly for the source of the bleed.

​On the other side of the heavy steel doors, the VIP corridor had devolved into a blood-soaked warzone.

​"Tear that damn door down!" Chairman Singhania roared, slamming his mahogany cane against the marble floor.

​Five of his heaviest, most heavily armored mercenaries hoisted a massive, industrial-grade steel oxygen cylinder onto their shoulders. Using it as a makeshift battering ram, they charged the trauma room doors.

​SLAM! SLAM! The deafening impacts echoed down the hall. The heavy steel hinges of the door groaned, the metal beginning to buckle and warp under the immense kinetic force.

​"Back the hell away from that door!" Deva roared, stepping out from behind a marble pillar with his assault rifle raised. But Singhania’s men instantly laid down a wall of blind, suppressive automatic fire.

​A hailstorm of bullets shredded the corridor. Glass windows exploded into thousands of glittering shards, fluorescent tube lights shattered, and expensive medical equipment was torn to pieces. Deva and his remaining five commandos fiercely returned fire, dropping three of the mercenaries in seconds.

​However, because Singhania’s men were still holding the elite surgeons hostage in the adjacent operating room, Deva couldn't utilize fragmentation grenades or heavy explosives. He was severely handicapped, forced into brutal, close-quarter combat.

​Realizing his rifle was useless in the tight crossfire, Deva slung it over his back. With a feral roar, he drew two razor-sharp, serrated commando daggers from his tactical vest and charged directly into the mob of men trying to breach the door.

​His blades moved like liquid lightning. He slashed through tendons, buried steel into shoulders, and drove a dagger deep into a mercenary's thigh. Blood sprayed across the pristine white walls. Deva fought with the ferocity of a wounded, cornered lion protecting its pride.

​But then, a deafening c***k rang out over the chaos. A high-caliber bullet tore straight through Deva’s left shoulder, shattering his collarbone.

​"Aargh!" Deva grunted in agony, dropping one of his daggers and stumbling backward, hitting the floor hard.

​Singhania threw his head back and laughed—a dry, s******c rasp. "Your Boss is bleeding out like a slaughtered pig inside, Deva! And today, you die like a dog on the floor outside!"

​Singhania’s men hoisted the heavy oxygen cylinder once more and drove it into the door with maximum velocity.

​CRASSSSH! The primary deadbolt snapped in half. The metal frame bent inward. Death was now only inches away.

​Inside the trauma room, the violent, rhythmic impacts against the door were shaking dust and plaster from the ceiling tiles directly onto the operating table.

​Prachi’s left hand was severely cramping, the muscles screaming in protest. But through the sea of blood, she had finally located the ruptured tear in the aortic wall. She now had to thread a curved surgical needle and suture the tear shut.

​Threading a micro-surgical needle and performing vascular sutures with one non-dominant hand is considered a physical impossibility in the realm of medical science.

​Refusing to accept defeat, Prachi clamped the needle tightly in the surgical forceps. She then pulled the end of the sterile suture thread up and clamped it securely between her own teeth! Jerking her head backward, she used the tension of her jaw to pull the thread taut, while her left hand miraculously drove the curved needle cleanly through the torn walls of Rishi’s aorta.

​One stitch... pull with the teeth... second stitch... pull... third stitch...

​The terrifying geyser of arterial blood finally began to slow to a manageable trickle. A fleeting, desperate glimmer of relief washed over Prachi’s sweat-drenched face.

​But destiny, it seemed, was not yet finished torturing them.

​Suddenly, a high-pitched, horrifying alarm began to shriek from the EKG monitor! TEEEEEEEEEEP...

​Prachi’s head snapped up. Rishi’s heart rate had suddenly lost all rhythm. The green lines on the digital display were no longer forming peaks and valleys; they were vibrating rapidly, erratically, like a chaotic scribble across the screen.

​"V-Fib! Ventricular Fibrillation!" Prachi screamed, sheer panic seizing her chest.

​Rishi’s traumatized heart had become so utterly exhausted that it was no longer pumping blood; the cardiac muscle was merely quivering, spasming uncontrollably in the chest cavity. If a normal, synchronized rhythm wasn't restored in the next thirty seconds, total, irreversible cardiac arrest was a medical certainty.

​Prachi instantly dropped the suturing tools and lunged for the heavy defibrillator paddles. Because her right arm was a useless, dead weight, she aggressively wedged the right paddle against Rishi’s chest using the point of her elbow and her body weight, while gripping the left paddle tightly in her left hand.

​"Charging to 200 Joules! CLEAR!"

​THUD! The massive electrical current shot through Rishi’s body. His massive frame violently vaulted off the steel table, his back arching, before slamming back down lifelessly.

​Prachi stared at the monitor. The green line was still quivering chaotically.

​"Charging to 300 Joules! CLEAR!"

​THUD! Rishi’s body seized again. But this time... nothing happened.

​Suddenly, the chaotic, quivering green scribble on the monitor flattened out entirely. It became a perfectly straight, unbroken, horizontal line.

​BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP...

​A flatline.

​Total cardiac failure. Rishi’s heart had completely stopped. His breathing ceased entirely. The digital heart rate display flashed a terrifying, absolute '0'.

​"No... no... you cannot leave me! You promised me!" Prachi shrieked, a sound of such raw, unadulterated devastation that it seemed to c***k the very walls of the room. She dropped the heavy paddles, collapsing over his chest. Her hot tears mixed with the dark blood smeared across his pale, lifeless face. The machines had failed. Science had failed.

​Outside, the mercenaries delivered the final, devastating blow to the door.

​BOOOOOOOM!

​The heavy steel door was completely ripped from its warped hinges, crashing violently onto the sterile tiles of the trauma room.

​Chairman Singhania stepped over the wreckage, flanked by five heavily armed mercenaries. Outside in the corridor, Deva lay in a pool of his own blood, pinned to the floor with four assault rifles aimed directly at his skull.

​Singhania stepped into the room. His cold eyes took in the scene: the lifeless body of the billionaire on the table, the continuous, shrill shriek of the flatline monitor announcing absolute death, and the broken, weeping surgeon collapsed over his chest. A sinister, triumphant smile stretched across the old man's face.

​"Game over, Doctor," Singhania announced smoothly, tapping the silver tip of his cane against the floor. His voice was dripping with arrogance. "Your Penniless Romeo lost the war. I told you... on my land, even Death requires my permission."

​Singhania slowly reached inside his tailored suit jacket, pulled out a custom, gold-plated pistol, and aimed it directly at the back of Prachi’s head.

​"The Romeo is dead... now it is Juliet's turn," Singhania sneered, his finger tightening on the trigger. "The punishment for crippling my daughter is execution."

​Prachi heard the metallic click of the g*n c*****g right behind her head. But she did not flinch. She did not raise her hands in surrender. She wasn't afraid of the g*n. Her tear-filled eyes remained locked entirely on Rishi’s open chest cavity, staring down at his frozen, petrified heart.

​"True love never loses a war, Singhania..." Prachi whispered, her voice breaking through her sobs.

​Suddenly...

​Prachi raised her blood-soaked, trembling left hand, and violently thrust it directly inside Rishi’s open chest cavity!

​Singhania’s eyes blew wide open in sheer disbelief. "What the hell is this psychotic woman doing?!"

​Ignoring the billionaire, Prachi buried her fingers deep into the slick, warm tissue of Rishi’s chest. She wrapped her fingers tightly around his stopped, lifeless heart, gripping the cardiac muscle securely in her fist.

​And with every ounce of physical strength and emotional desperation she possessed, she began to aggressively squeeze the heart from the inside.

​Squeeze... Release... Squeeze... Release...

​She was performing a manual, open-chest internal cardiac massage. Since the machines couldn't shock the heart into beating, she was going to physically force the blood to pump through his veins using the sheer strength of her own hand. She had literally become the beating heart of Rishi Malhotra.

​"Beat for me, my Romeo... beat for me!" Prachi threw her head back, her face smeared with blood and tears, and unleashed a harrowing, soul-tearing scream toward the heavens.

​Singhania recovered from his initial shock. He scoffed, viewing the desperate act as the pathetic theatrics of a grieving, insane woman. He clicked the safety off his golden pistol. "You cannot bring the dead back to life, witch! Now die!"

​Singhania curled his finger, applying the final pounds of pressure to the trigger.

​But then...

​Slicing through the suffocating tension and the continuous, droning beeeeeep of the flatline monitor...

​A faint, singular, electronic sound echoed through the room.

​Beep...

​Singhania’s finger froze on the trigger. The blood drained from his face.

​Beep... Beep...

​Inside Rishi’s chest cavity, Prachi’s left hand felt a sudden, violent jolt. Rishi’s heart suddenly fluttered violently against her palm... and then, entirely on its own, the thick cardiac muscle aggressively contracted and expanded!

​THUMP!

​On the digital monitor, the perfectly straight green flatline suddenly spiked upward, forming a massive, healthy, jagged wave!

​Beep... Beep... Beep... (Heart Rate: 40... 55... 72...)

​Rishi’s pale eyelids fluttered wildly, and his chest violently heaved upward as he sucked in a massive, ragged, coughing breath of air! The EKG monitor stabilized, transitioning into a steady, rhythmic, healthy cadence. Rishi Malhotra’s heart was beating on its own once again!

​The nation’s greatest surgeon had just physically wrestled her lover back from the clutches of Death, using only her non-dominant hand.

​Chairman Singhania stumbled backward, his face turning the color of ash. "This... this is impossible... is that man a human or a demon?!"

​But Singhania quickly recovered his ruthless composure. He gritted his teeth, his eyes burning with renewed fury. "It doesn't matter... if God brought him back to life, I will just put him in the grave a second time! And I’ll start by putting a bullet in your brain!"

​Singhania leveled the golden pistol at Prachi’s head and prepared to fire.

​But before he could pull the trigger...

​BAAAMMMMM!!!

​The massive, reinforced glass window of the trauma room—which overlooked the street several stories below—shattered inward with a catastrophic, deafening explosion.

​Amidst a hurricane of raining glass shards, two cylindrical smoke grenades bounced across the sterile tiles.

​Within mere seconds, the entire trauma suite was engulfed in a thick, blinding, suffocating cloud of white tactical smoke. Singhania and his mercenaries instantly began coughing violently, completely blinded in the haze.

​Through the swirling smoke, thick, black tactical ropes dropped down from the shattered window frame... and sliding down those ropes, plunging into the trauma room like phantoms of death, were twelve heavily armed, highly advanced tactical commandos. They were clad in pitch-black combat armor, their faces entirely concealed behind terrifying, high-tech gas masks.

​This was not Deva’s Alpha Team.

​This was an entirely unknown, lethal force.

​From the thick curtain of smoke, a barrage of impeccably accurate, suppressed gunfire erupted. Pfft! Pfft! Pfft! The execution was so silent, swift, and surgically precise that Singhania’s mercenaries didn't even have the chance to scream. One by one, the twenty heavily armed men dropped to the floor, instantly neutralized, their blood pooling on the tiles.

​Singhania stumbled backward in absolute terror. The golden pistol slipped from his trembling, aged fingers, clattering to the floor. Suddenly, a massive, towering silhouette emerged from the thick white smoke. An arm the size of a tree trunk shot out, gripping Singhania by the throat with the crushing force of an iron vice, lifting the billionaire effortlessly off his feet.

​Crouched over the operating table, Prachi threw her body protectively over Rishi, shielding his vulnerable chest from the chaos.

​The towering, terrifying phantom holding Singhania suspended in the air slowly reached up with his free hand and pulled off his tactical gas mask.

​Prachi’s eyes widened in sheer, absolute disbelief.

​"Deva... that isn't Deva..." Prachi murmured, her voice trembling as she stared at the stranger.

​Standing before them was a terrifyingly imposing man. A deep, jagged scar ran violently down the side of his face, and his eyes held a strange, aristocratic, yet utterly ruthless authority. Tightening his crushing grip on Singhania’s throat, the scarred man spoke, his deep, baritone voice cutting through the smoke like a blade:

​"Rishi Malhotra may be the God of this city, Singhania... but by laying your filthy hands on his family today... you have formally invited the wrath of 'The Syndicate'."