Bilal kicked the doors of the hospital open. Astrid was already running toward him with clean linen. Bilal laid Elin on the wooden table.
"I've got you, little bird. I've got you," Bilal hyperventilated, his hands covered in her blood.
Astrid worked frantically, pulling the arrow through and packing the wound with honey and garlic.
For an hour, it looked like they had won. Elin's bleeding stopped. She looked up at Bilal, gave a weak, pale smile, and squeezed his giant finger.
And then, her eyes rolled back into her head. Her body went limp.
"Her heart stopped!" Astrid screamed. "Giant, her heart stopped!"
This was it. This was the moment his modern knowledge was supposed to save the day. Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation. CPR.
But Bilal was not a doctor in a sterile 2026 hospital. He was a father watching his child die.
The adrenaline, the trauma of seeing thirty of his men slaughtered, the deafening guilt of his arrogant speech—it completely short-circuited his brain.
The modern man vanished. The terrified animal took over.
"Elin! Wake up!" Bilal panicked, shaking her shoulders. "Astrid, give me the willow bark! Give her water!"
"She is not breathing!" Astrid cried, pounding on Elin's chest wildly.
Bilal's mind went blank. He tried old Viking methods. He rubbed her hands. He shouted her name. He blew on her face.
He did everything a desperate, ignorant man from the 11th century would do.
Ten minutes passed. Her skin turned blue.
Elin was dead.
Bilal backed away from the table, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. He slid down the cold stone wall until he hit the floor, pulling his knees to his chest.
Six hours later.
Bilal was sitting in the exact same spot in the dark. The city was weeping.
Suddenly, like a lightning bolt striking his skull, the memory unlocked.
Thirty compressions. Two breaths. Push hard and fast in the center of the chest. Keep the blood circulating to the brain.
He remembered the CPR poster from his university hallway.
The realization hit him with a physical force that made him vomit onto the stone floor.
He could have saved her. He had the knowledge locked inside his brain, but his own panic had buried it. He had let her die because he lost his mind to fear.
"I am stupid," Bilal whispered into the dark, his voice breaking into a guttural, ugly sob. "I am the worst of them. I wish the arrow hit me. Oh Allah, why didn't it hit me?"