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Back The Last Guests
Chapters (54)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. PROLOGUE
  5. PART ONE
  6. ONE
  7. TWO
  8. THREE
  9. FOUR
  10. DEADLY SAS RAID IN AFGHANISTAN UNDER SCRUTINY
  11. FIVE
  12. SIX
  13. SEVEN
  14. EIGHT
  15. NINE
  16. TEN
  17. ELEVEN
  18. TWELVE
  19. THIRTEEN
  20. FOURTEEN
  21. FIFTEEN
  22. SIXTEEN
  23. SEVENTEEN
  24. EIGHTEEN
  25. NINETEEN
  26. TWENTY
  27. PART TWO
  28. TWENTY-ONE
  29. TWENTY-TWO
  30. TWENTY-THREE
  31. TWENTY-FOUR
  32. TWENTY-FIVE
  33. TWENTY-SIX
  34. TWENTY-SEVEN
  35. TWENTY-EIGHT
  36. TWENTY-NINE
  37. DANIEL MOORE: ‘A SINGLE BLOKE, HAPPY-GO-LUCKY, A BIT OF A DUNCE BUT WITH A GOOD HEART,’ BEST FRIEND SAYS.
  38. THIRTY
  39. THIRTY-ONE
  40. THIRTY-TWO
  41. THIRTY-THREE
  42. THIRTY-FOUR
  43. THIRTY-FIVE
  44. BREAKING: POLICE CONFIRM DANIEL MOORE ACTED ALONE
  45. THIRTY-SIX
  46. THIRTY-SEVEN
  47. THIRTY-EIGHT
  48. THIRTY-NINE
  49. SECOND ARREST MADE IN WESTAY HIDDEN CAMERAS CASE
  50. EPILOGUE
  51. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  52. Discover More
  53. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  54. Also by J. P. Pomare

The observations suggest a stroke, the fact the left half of his body is frozen supports this. He’s conscious but can’t move. One half of his face is screwed up as if in agony and the other hangs, frozen and melted. But why did he reach for his heart?

‘Definite stroke,’ Scotty announces. ‘Let’s load him up.’ He’s not even finished checking his vitals.

I turn back to the man. ‘He grabbed his chest?’

‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Right before it happened.’

‘Scotty, what was the blood pressure?’

‘Eighty-five over ninety-seven. Not too bad.’

‘Check again,’ I say, the urgency in my voice springing tears from the daughter, who can’t be older than seven. The mother moves to the children, her hands gripping their shoulders. I turn back to Scotty.

‘That doesn’t make sense,’ he says as the reading comes up, his eyes slowly rise to mine. ‘Eighty over seventy.’

‘Heart rate?’

‘Ninety-two, I think.’ A tiny shake of the head.

‘Get the stretcher, I’ll take over.’

‘What?’ he says.

Scotty’s still not right, I saw it at that woman’s house. A slowness about him, a silly smile he almost never wears. He’s missed the signs here. ‘I’m taking the lead. I’ve seen a case like this before.’

I remember it from medical school before Grandpa died and I dropped out. The patient’s blood pressure is falling because he’s bleeding somewhere. If I’m right then this isn’t a stroke at all. I lower my ear to his mouth, he’s hardly breathing. Triple A. Abdominal aortic aneurysm. It comes to me like an elbow to the throat. His right subclavian artery is torn, it feeds blood to the left side of the brain which is why he’s frozen down that side as if from a stroke. We’ve got minutes at most to get him to surgery.

I turn to the wife. ‘Get the kids out, now.’ The hospital is close. I radio, brief them for our arrival. Scotty is running the stretcher back. I’ve got to get the patient breathing again by releasing the blood that’s filling his chest, pressing down on his lungs, before the pressure impedes his heart.

‘Ventilate him, Scotty,’ I say. Then again to the mother. ‘Get them out now.’ Finally she pulls the children away. They don’t need to see this.