The IV lines already in her arm for the surgery on the cyst were now being used again, this time to assist in the cryo preparation process. That much Mildred recognized from the procedure she had carried out on others personally. An assortment of medications were being dumped into her bloodstream: first heparin to prevent blood clots; potassium chloride or phenobarbital of some kind; other chemicals to depress the brain metabolism so that the cells could stay alive in a less active state; something to keep the acidity level of the pH proper; calcium channel blockers to prevent calcium from traveling into the cells and starting a number of chemical reactions that typically do a lot of brain damage.
“God Almighty,” Mildred thought, reeling, her heart pounding in terror as she recognized the procedure she was beginning to endure. Why was she still awake?
When the scalpel fell on her leg, the pain was excruciating. The clinical part of her doctor’s mind noted her friends were doing a femoral bypass, opening up the femoral artery and vein in the leg and hooking up a pump to flush her entire vascular system. Victoria Blue was still with her, but new cast members were being added to the operating stage, one by one. First, a thoracic surgeon came in, leading a team of twelve with carts of instruments and med gear. The surgeon looked down and without any warning shoved a scalpel into her chest.
Bach was playing on the sound system in the room as he proceeded to do a textbook example of open-heart surgery while the paralyzed and helpless Mildred Wyeth watched herself be sliced open.
She knew why. The point was to get tight control of the circulation. This was to make sure if any clots developed around her heart, there was still control to get the fluid to the brain. She also knew what was coming next, as all of the water in her body was replaced with a glycerol-based mix of fluids to prevent damage from occurring during the freezing process.
For obviously, in cryo storage, any water or moisture turned to ice.
After the perfusion with glycerol was complete Mildred was lifted and placed in a chilled bath of silicone oil. The oil was pumped through dry ice, and once she was secure they left her, returning after her body had dropped to the temperature of the ice. She was placed in a special tank wrapped in a sleeping bag and in an aluminum pod for protection. Liquid nitrogen was sprayed in, and she dropped to minus 196 degrees C.
Then she was tucked away in a stainless-steel tank, vacuum insulated, and held in limbo, her mind still screaming, suspended at that temperature until science caught up someday.
But the subjects weren’t supposed to be conscious, more alive than dead, seeing yet not dreaming. A single tear crept from her left eye and froze a shining trail on her cheek. If Mildred had been able to see her face, she knew the color of the tear would be blue.
DEAN WAS DREAMING. He was back in the bucking hold of a boat, caught in the center of a violent storm. He could look at the bulkheads, and he knew he’d been there before and something triple-bad was going to happen, but there wasn’t a thing he could do about it except sit, wait and watch, hoping the events wouldn’t follow their earlier pattern; that above, his father and J.B. would be able to steer clear of the danger, the coming danger that Krysty was now warning.
The redhead could feel it coming, she was saying, just like she’d said the first time.
“Something’s wrong, something’s bad wrong. Got to warn Ryan. There’s danger.”
Loud crashes of thunder kept drowning out Krysty’s voice, but Dean could still read her lips, and he knew already what she was telling them.
Then came a final crash of thunder, and everyone in the crowded section was thrown back, and then heaved forward as the yacht yawed from the impact. And this time when the explosion went off and the front half of the nose of The Patch was nigh high- vaporized, bringing in a crushing flood of blue-black seawater, he didn’t manage to scramble his way to the upper deck and safety.