We’d come all this way to find nothing.

But I wasn’t ready to give up. A last hope flickered as I charged forward and raked aside the privacy curtain.

Behind it a dozen oxygen tanks, gloriously lined up like missiles.

Nearly three times as large as Patrick’s portable tank, they were labeled “H,” marked as containing 6,900 liters of oxygen. Each one would buy him a day and a half.

I went weak with relief.

Grabbing his arm, I jerked him around the bed and through the curtain. Lifting his tank, I checked the dial. The needle was practically touching the “empty” peg.

“Take a breath,” I said. “A deep, deep breath. And hold it.”

“Chance.” He reached behind himself and leaned weakly on the bed. “I can’t think so straight.”

“Then listen to me. Take a deep breath now. Just listen to me, Patrick.”

He sucked in a deep breath. I tore the tube off the portable tank just as the dial clicked to empty.

Holding the end of the transparent tube, I spun to face the nearest H tank. I ripped off the white plastic ring serving as the protective seal, exposing the oxygen outlet.

I stared in disbelief at the barbed nozzle.

It was the wrong size for the tubing attached to Patrick’s mask.

Entry 26

ENTRY 26

Patrick’s face turned a deeper shade of red. He gestured emphatically with his hands. I unstuck my body, which had gone into a panicked lockdown, and started yanking drawers open, looking for who knows what. Bag valves, syringes, tubes filled with weird solutions.

Patrick’s hand clamped down on my shoulder. The butt of the shotgun slid past my cheek. He was trying to give me the shotgun.

To kill him.

I ignored him, ripping open a cabinet door.

Inside, a stack of oxygen masks. More heavy-duty than the one he wore now, with wider straps, like something a fighter pilot might wear. I fumbled the nearest one off the shelf, a coil of tube spiraling open below it. It was wider—a match for the nozzle.

I nearly cried out in triumph.

Whirling toward the H tank, I knocked aside the shotgun, tossing Patrick the mask.

I rammed the thicker tube onto the barbed nozzle and opened the valve. Oxygen hissed up the line and out the mask, clearing out the old air. “Now!” I shouted.

With his cheeks ballooned, Patrick looked like he might explode. But he tore off his mask, flipping it aside, and secured the new one over his head.

“Breathe out, hard,” I said.

Patrick blew out so hard that flecks of spit dotted the inside of the mask. He panted, sucking in oxygen as I adjusted the airflow.

He was fine. We’d done it.