Chapter 26

Artemis

January 17

It's not like I didn't know what to do. Zeus had been wounded before, had been unconscious before, in circumstances where I had been the only person to rescue him, before. So I wasn't worried about him dying – not really.

I was worried about where the wound was. Something had hit him in the head. Right on the titanium plate, where he'd been wounded before. And that 'something' had somehow chased Martinez out of Zeus' brain. That had happened before, too. Okay, maybe not in the same way. Back in Florida, Martinez had escaped from Zeus' unconscious brain, and had, briefly, found itself in mine, where it had sent me a dream about rescuing Martinez. So maybe that had happened again, and I'd feel his presence when I was asleep. But that was Martinez leaving voluntarily ... this was not necessarily that case.

But right now, I couldn't afford to go to sleep to find the Master Chief. Right now, I had to organize an escape for all six of us.

I noticed that the female Dr. Fa (who I'll call by her name, Li-shen) was examining Zeus' head, while the male Dr. Fa (Lau-sung) was keeping the child (Mae-shen) away. I looked around. Zhengfu was still working on the attachment of the torpedo-propulsion thing.

"He wounded before, yes?" said Li. These were the first words in English I'd heard her say, and I was nonplussed for a moment. "Metal plate, yes?"

"Yes, right. It's titanium. He was wounded in Afghanistan, I believe. In the Army," I explained. Well, Zeus would have pitched a fit at me saying he was in the Army, but this was simpler than getting into the SEAL-thing. I didn't know how much English she had.

"I am child surgeon. Pediatric, yes? Not neurological surgeon. He need to have pressure on brain removed," she said. "The metal plate [she said a Chinese word to Zhengfu]..."

"Depressed or deeper." Zhengfu supplied the translation.

"Yes," Li continued. "Plate is depressed. One millimeter here..." she brought my hand to one side of the plate in Zeus' head. I could feel that it was lower than the regular skull. "Perhaps two here. Pressure on brain is bad thing. Must take away pressure. I not brain surgery, but I try if you have medical equipment."

"Okay," I said, and looked at the backpacks.

But Zhengfu was already there. "Here is our medical kit," she said. "Hurry please, we need to get into the boat – or we'll all be dead." Then she said something in Chinese and all the Fa's took heed.

I took a quick look out through the mouth of the tunnel. It was all dark. You couldn't even make out the edges of the river.

I refocused on Li. She was holding a scalpel, and getting out some gauze and some antiseptic powder. I tried to hold a light stick. She was muttering to herself in Chinese. "You hold head still, I try to cut." This was crazy ... she could barely see what she was doing.

I had no idea if she had clue one about what she was going to do. It seemed like the right thing, though. I mean ... on the TV shows they were always drilling into somebody's skull to relieve the pressure. But I didn't hold out much hope for a scalpel vs a titanium plate.

I grabbed Zeus' head anyway. "It's metal," I said. "Scalpel not strong enough to cut titanium." Why do Americans always devolve to pigeon-English when dealing with someone who's grasp of English is not complete?

"I know, but..." She broke out into Chinese, which she aimed at Zhengfu.

"She's correct," Io said in my ear. Obviously her translation facilities were online. "I don't know if it will work, but it's the only thing we can do here."

Zhengfu translated for us 'English only bio-units.' "Dr. Fa will try to cut the scalp only around the edges of the plate. She says it may leave a scar, and hopes that will not dismay you unduly. She does not know if cutting the scalp will allow the normal pressure inside the skull to pop out the plate a little, but she doesn't have any tools to do more."

"Don't worry about the scar," I said, giving her a confident look. "I'm sure you will do what you can."

"There will be many bleeding," she said. I just nodded.

So, a pediatric surgeon began cutting into the head of the man who was probably going to be the father of the child I was carrying. No, he was the father. I said 'probably' because I wasn't sure he was going to survive. But I'd worry about him not surviving, if we got that far. Meaning if we all got the hell out of China. I guess that Zeus didn't have a monopoly on the ability to compartmentalize.

Fingers clamped on his head, I vented a little to Io. "Remind me to have a stern word with the person who planned this mission," I said barely audibly, mostly for Io's benefit. I wasn't real pleased right now.

"There wasn't supposed to be a second explosion," Io said in my ear. "I didn't think it was necessary, but Zeus did. That was why he insisted on taking extra explosives..." There was a pause at the end of her statement, and I knew she wanted to say something else. " ... I love him also, Arti."