This was a commissioned work! If you want to commission me, please dm!
>>CONTENT NOTICE: male-on-male, D/s dynamic, dark cardiophilia, sexual cardiophilia, non-consent, resuscitation kink<<
It was dark and overcast when Miles rolled into the bus depot—threatening to rain, with the occasional spattering of mist on the window. The young man tried to stifle an ugly, wet-sounding cough as he threw his earbuds and now-dead laptop into his duffel bag.
This was his stop. He was only one of two passengers that appeared to be disembarking here, but that suited him fine. In his limited experience, sleepy towns tended to be either the most friendly or the most weird—after the last experience he had, he hoped these people would be the former.
WELCOME TO PORT LATHESIER, a worn, wooden sign tried its best to offer a warm welcome. A portrait of a horizon over the sea had once made the sign more appealing, but it was washed out and covered in bird shit now.
Miles frowned at it as he went inside the bus depot to use their wifi and charge his phone. It was profoundly dead inside—a sleepy stoner kid manned the ticket desk, and the remnants of a convenience store of some kind lurked in the other corner.
He crouched between the two washrooms and plugged his phone into the outlet there, unbothered by the building’s only other occupant. When he was comfortable against the wall, he let out another series of hacking coughs that left him a little breathless, and he groaned in embarrassment and frustration afterward.
I really should get this looked at, he thought as he brought up the local map to search for a clinic. He continued softly under his breath when it only brought up one result, which was over an hour away on foot. “Fuck.”
After a short but fruitless search, he stood up and awkwardly waved to the clerk. “Hey, uh… do you know where I could see a doctor in this town?”
“There’s a clinic across the street from the hospital,” he answered without looking up from his phone. “Everyone goes there.”
“Okay, thanks,” Miles pulled his wallet from his jeans. His lips shrunk into a tight line when he thumbed over a paltry thirty dollars in five dollar bills—a taxi was out of the question.
After lingering just long enough to charge a decent battery on his phone, he went into the bathroom to relieve himself and roll a joint or two. He brought up a broader google search of medical services in the area when he noticed the depot’s shitty wifi reached just outside the building’s front door, and he made a note of a yet-unmentioned walk-in clinic in a list of other services.
“That’s doable,” he mumbled under his breath between drags. Punching the address into the map revealed that the clinic was still there—and just a fifteen minute walk away, as opposed to over an hour. He took a screenshot of the directions and began walking north as advised—along the industrial outskirts of town.
Miles was anxious as he walked and toked and coughed. He’d had a rough go, escaping his father’s drunken rage, flitting about from town-to-town, looking for a new place in the world—and now he was broke, sick, and nearly out of weed, in this strange port that he’d never heard of before.
He noted the lack of traffic and how quiet it was in general as he continued along, and he was doubting that the clinic was even still around when he saw it—the only place of business in an otherwise defunct strip mall.
MEDICAL CENTRE, the sterile black-on-white sign read.
Miles chuffed at how generic it was and took a deep drag of the second joint, then butted out the rest beneath his shoe when he began to hack uncontrollably on exhale.
“Uuagh—god damn,” he wrinkled his nose at the dark green phlegm he spat onto the concrete. He tried to ground himself as he approached the doors—he didn’t particularly like going to the doctor, but not for the same reasons that most other people did.
There was an old bell that gave a chime as he entered, and the first thing he noticed was how empty it was. There were files in the cabinets and various boxes stacked about, but a lack of patients or staff.
“Hello?” a man’s voice called out from somewhere further inside.
“Uh… hi?” Miles nervously called back. “Is this still a walk-in clinic?”
The man appeared through a door that led to the backend of the clinic. Miles was taken aback by how handsome and youthful he looked—his tan complexion was marked by two bright, amber-hued eyes and effortlessly unkempt curly black hair, and what was very clearly a well-exercised body was concealed beneath well-fitting black slacks, a teal button-down shirt, and a white coat with a stethoscope curled up in one of its pockets.
“Yes, it is,” the attractive doctor replied after a beat. There was something just a bit sultry in the way he answered, and he seemed pleased when Miles looked relieved. “I’m Dr. Bennett, and this is my practice. We’re in a bit of a state of flux at the moment, so you’ll have to excuse the… lack of organization around here right now.”
“That’s okay,” Miles timidly cast his eyes downward and shuffled his duffel bag off of his shoulder—the pressure on his chest was starting to hurt, and he let out another bunch of rapid-fire coughs that barely allowed him time to catch his breath. “I just—I just need—something for this cough. I have my health number here…”
“Irene?!” Dr. Bennett called loudly through the door to the back. “Can you come take this patient’s health info for me?”
There was a beat, a shuffle of papers, and then a distant door clicked open. “Be right there!”
“My receptionist will punch in your information real quick,” Dr. Bennett explained as he scanned the worn provincial health card for a hometown and birthday. “You’re a long way from home, eh?”
“Yeah,” Miles sighed. “My dad’s—he’s kind of a piece of shit.”
“Ah,” Dr. Bennett leaned through the doorway to hand Irene the card. “Well, I’ll go get the exam room prepped, and then we’ll get that nasty-sounding cough checked out, alright? Have a seat.”
Miles flushed and nodded as the doctor disappeared behind the door again. He knew what the words implied—he was, at the very least, going to listen to his chest, and he found himself squirming with vulnerability in the dimly-lit frontend as he waited to be called to the examination room.
This is what he didn’t like about going to the doctor: the fact that he couldn’t actively, outwardly enjoy it as it was happening. He would play off any physiological reactions as anxiety, and health professionals tended not to question it—but it didn’t stop him from feeling nervous about it every time.
“Dr. Bennett is ready,” a much younger, much prettier attendant than Irene appeared in the doorway. “Come with me.”
Miles swallowed hard and stifled another coughing fit as he stood up, duffel bag in hand. The backend of the clinic was even more empty and off-putting than the front and the exterior—the wallpaper was frayed at its edges, most of the lights only barely worked, and the doors to other exam rooms were pointedly left closed and presumably locked. Miles easily dismissed how disheveled and liminal the clinic was in his altered state, and he believed what Dr. Bennett had said about it being in a state of flux.
Of course, he thought naïvely. They’re probably getting ready to renovate.
The room he was brought to was equally as strange, in just how nice it was in comparison to the rest of the building. The medical equipment looked brand new, the lights were bright, and the laptop that sat closed on the desk was so new, the clear protective film was still on the logo.
“He’ll be right in, okay? Sit tight.”
Miles had barely sat down in the chair next to the desk when Dr. Bennett entered again. He had changed out of his office attire, and was now adorned in deep teal scrubs that hugged the curves and angles of his muscular frame just so.
“Thanks for waiting,” he said pleasantly while he adjusted the exam table to sit at a forty-five degree angle. “Take off your shirt and hop up on the table, please.”
Miles cleared his throat nervously and did as asked, and he answered the doctor’s queries about the duration and severity of his symptoms as well as he could. He was distracted, watching his every move to know what would come next, and he was right—after washing his hands and snapping on a pair of white nitrile gloves, he took the black stethoscope from around his neck and put it in his ears.
“Sit up straight, open your mouth,” he placed the bell just above Miles’ right clavicle before he continued, “and take a deep breath.”
Miles felt his heart rate increase right away when he said the words, and he tried to fight off his excitement, but he couldn’t help but enjoy it as the stethoscope was tenderly placed just above his left clavicle.
“Again,” Dr. Bennett instructed softly as he stared down at the patient’s smooth, hairless chest. Miles wouldn’t know it right away—but the doctor was enjoying this in the same fashion that he was. He could hear his heart working harder than usual to combat what ailed him, and he could also hear loud, distinct crackling and bubbling sounds as he breathed in and out with each repositioning of the bell. “I’m surprised you waited this long before stopping to get it checked. I’m going to listen through your back now, alright?”
“Okay,” Miles mumbled and blushed again as he inched the stethoscope around his back. He began to cough near the end of the examination when asked to breathe deeply, and the doctor listened intently as he did.
“You’ve been traveling a lot, right?” Dr. Bennett asked when he was done.
“Yeah… for the past three months or so,” he replied shyly.
“Hm,” he nodded thoughtfully. “It sounds like you have pneumonia. Do you mind if I take your vital signs?”
Yes, Miles privately thought. Dr. Bennett was almost too attractive—he found it harder than usual to stifle himself in his presence, but he held his tongue. “No—of course not.”
Dr. Bennett turned on a wheeled monitor near the table and clipped the pulse oximeter on his index finger, then proceeded to wrap a blood pressure cuff around his arm and set it to go off.
“Are you feeling short of breath or tight in the chest?” he asked as the blood oxygen number blinked to life and revealed a less-than-optimal level.
“Honestly… yeah, a little,” Miles admitted. It was more than a little, but he didn’t want to let on.
“I want to get Kim to draw some blood,” Dr. Bennett explained. “Then I’ll know what to give you, but for now, I’m going to give you some oxygen, okay? Lay back, and I’ll be right back.”
There’s something weird about all this, Miles thought distantly. He laid back as he had been told and watched the monitor next to him—his pulse hovered around a hundred beats per minute, and his oxygen level was in the low nineties. But… maybe I’m just fucking baked. And sick. And a bit delirious. I dunno.
Dr. Bennett returned promptly with a small tank of gas with a tube and an intimidating opaque black mask on the end of it. He set it in a holster on the floor near the head of the examination table, then set the table to lie flat.
“What’s—what’s wrong…?” Miles managed to say between strained breaths.
“Your blood pressure is a little low,” he replied promptly as he opened the valve on the tank. “And I just want to get your oxygen back up, okay? It’s dropped a little bit even in the short time I was gone.” Dr Bennett paused to gently place the mask over Miles’ mouth and nose. “Just breathe, and you’ll start to feel better right away.”
He was right, of course. There was an instant relief as he breathed in the slightly sweet but sterile-tasting gas—and then that relief kept escalating, until he was dissociating and intoxicated. Miles finally clued in that there was something very wrong with the situation he found himself in.
“Don’t worry…” Dr. Bennett held the mask in a firmer grip against his face when he tried to struggle. It was too late, however—he’d already inhaled too much of the nitrous oxide to put up much of a fight. “I’m going to take great care of you, alright?”
Dr. Bennett raised his eyebrows in surprise. Miles was smiling beneath the mask as the anesthesia finally overtook him, and when his eyes trailed downward, he saw the beginnings of a peak in his jeans. His patients had definitely had some interesting things to say as they were put under, but none had ever reacted with such obvious arousal before, and he wondered if Miles was actually into this, too.
“Kim? You out there?” Dr. Bennett called out. He continued to hold the mask against his face to ensure he was truly unconscious before he proceeded.
“Right here,” the young woman adorned in neon pink scrubs called back cheerfully as she opened the door and pushed a gurney through.
“Thank you,” Dr. Bennett nodded when she locked it in position beside the table. He finally took the mask away and pressed into the patient’s carotid pulse briefly to ensure its strength. “Poor guy really does have pneumonia, though.”
Kim snorted playfully as they prepared to lift him onto the gurney. “Since when do you pity your victims?”
“When they’re pretty and stupid like this,” the disgraced doctor tutted. “Such a shame.”
Kim couldn’t help but giggle that time. “Isn’t that all of them?”
“Oh, stop it,” he shot her a grin. “Ready?”
The pair transferred the unconscious patient to the gurney, and he remained attached to the wheeled monitor that displayed his heart rate and oxygen level for the duration of his short transit. They wheeled him around a few corners and into a much, much larger procedure room that had been converted into something that would have resembled a surgical suite, in someone’s nightmares.
“Shall I leave you to it, then?” Kim asked after the patient had been moved to the operating table.
“Yes, thank you,” Dr. Bennett followed her to the door. “If I need you, I’ll page the front.”
He took a key from his scrub pocket and locked the double-sided deadbolt before he continued—he’d learned you could never be too careful in these situations. There’d been some close calls in the past.
“God, it really is such a fucking shame,” Dr. Bennett traced a finger along his barely-there treasure trail and up his chest. “Oh well.”
He pressed into Miles’ femoral pulse for a ten second measurement, and he was pleased with its continued strength as of yet. Then he took each of his wrists and fastened them in place on the armrests above his head with soft hospital restraints, and did the same with his ankles after he cut away and removed his jeans.
The monitor suddenly beeped at him that Miles’ oxygen level had dropped to eighty-nine percent, and he was reminded that he really did need to remedy that sooner rather than later if he were to prolong the fun as much as he could.
“Alright, here you go,” he muttered impatiently as he fastened a high-flow oxygen mask to his face. “Now, be good.”
He took his time in rigging him up just how he wanted him to be. He tenderly pressed in place the electrodes for a twelve lead ECG, then smoothed over the sternal pad of the defibrillator on his right pectoral before moving him onto his side so he could place the other behind his heart. He then switched the monitoring implements of the wheeled monitor he’d brought in to the more central one that currently traced his slightly-overworked heartbeat and slow, sedated respirations.
There was one last thing he needed to do before he allowed Miles to wake up again, but before he did, he took a moment to make sure his vital signs were relatively stable. His heart rate was still elevated, around 120 BPM, and his blood pressure was still a bit low at 105/76, but that suited him well enough. He so rarely got to play with a sick heart.
When the intravenous port on Miles’ forearm was taped securely in place and ready for use, he excitedly moved over to the defibrillator he was connected to and activated ‘sync’ mode so the R-wave of his heartbeat cycle was highlighted on the monitor. Then he dialed in the settings to pace him—at first a little slower than his current heart rate at 100 BPM, and he manually turned up the joules until the current captured Miles’ heart.
He watched the monitor for a few seconds as it successfully brought his pulse down, and then he turned his attention to the patient’s twitching chest. He was still unconscious as of yet, but he thought to change that. He increased the intensity of the pacing drastically—now, he would be shocked at 75J, at a rate of 150 BPM.
Miles’ heart began to struggle immediately, and he gasped for air even despite the mask as his consciousness returned to him. His eyes darted around the room in a panic, but he was too breathless to cry out.
“Your little pump doesn’t seem to like this very much,” Dr. Bennett uttered in a voice that was both threatening and a touch sweet at once.
Miles continued to gasp for air even as the shocks steadily ebbed off and then stopped. The oxygen in the mask helped, but now his chest was markedly sorer than before, and he was still dizzyingly intoxicated from the earlier dose of nitrous.
“But you like it, don’t you, Miles?”
The patient was taken aback by the on-the-nose taunt. He didn’t remember what had happened just before he lost consciousness. “I… what—?”
“Don’t be coy with me,” Dr. Bennett approached him with his stethoscope in his ears. “I saw how you reacted when I listened to your chest. You weren’t just nervous—you know how I know?”
Miles was speechless. He meekly shook his head no.
“Because I love hearts too,” Dr. Bennett declared with a sinister grin. “Well, that, and you got a little stiff as I put you under.”
“Uh—“ Miles moaned and writhed when the doctor delicately tapped his twitching dick while he listened to his heart. “What—what are you—going to do—with me?”
“I guess you’ll just have to find out, won’t you?” He looked pleased as he finished his brief but thorough auscultation. “You may as well enjoy it.”
Dr. Bennett chuckled softly when Miles struggled weakly against his restraints. “You can put up a fight if you want to. It’s cute.”
Before he could realize what was happening, Dr. Bennett had eased a dose of propofol into the port on his arm, and he was even more helpless to resist his captor. He relaxed into its sedating, dissociative effects, unsure of what else to do but lay there and let this happen.
“There’s a good boy,” Dr. Bennett rumbled while he fiddled with the settings of the defibrillator. He smirked when Miles’ respiratory rate spiked with the sound of it charging to 200J, and he wanted to tease him about it, but he waited to see how he’d react first.
He pressed the discharge button silently and watched intensely as Miles’ chest jerked with the unsynchronized cardioversion. He grunted loudly and his heart stopped for a moment, but then it kept going—a bit slower than it had been before around 100 BPM.
“… Fuck,” Miles swore beneath the mask. The shock had hurt, a lot, to be sure—but was invigorating and undeniably arousing, even despite the circumstance.
“You have a thing for defibrillation, don’t you?” The doctor taunted him and slipped his gloved fingers beneath the waistband of his boxers to ease them down his thighs.
“I…” His voice died in his throat when he began to rub his dick.
“You don’t have to say it,” Dr. Bennett beamed at him. “All the evidence is right here—and there, too.”
Miles let his head roll to the side to look at the monitor when the doctor glanced at it to punctuate his point, but he found himself so sedated that he couldn’t bring his head upright again afterward.
“Ready?” Dr. Bennett adjusted the defibrillator to charge to 300J this time, but he didn’t stop jerking his patient off—the nitrile of his thick surgical gloves would insulate him. “Clear.”
“Huuh—“ Miles moaned and gasped. The intensity of three-hundred joules surging through his heart left him breathless, and it took him longer to recover than the first time. He felt his heart flipping around in his chest, and the monitor let out a few irregular beeps before it resumed tracing sinus rhythm.
“You really like that, huh?” He teased him again. “Would another one make you come?”
He didn’t know how to respond, or if he even could respond—his lips felt numb under anesthesia, and he let the doctor continue without a fight. It did feel good—so fucking good—but he feared getting out of here alive afterward.
“Shocking at three-sixty joules,” Dr. Bennett pointedly announced. “Clear!”
There was a soft, electronic click as the current passed between the two pads and rocked Miles’ body, and then the patient let out a soft gasp when he was helplessly brought to a climax. His heart had stopped, the doctor’s touch was just right, and all of this was just way too sexy—
“Perfect,” he purred when Miles slipped into full arrest on his table. “Absolutely perfect.”
He took his time feeling for both femoral pulses before he started the resuscitation effort, but there was nothing to palpate on either side. Satisfied, he leaned over the table, locked his elbows, and began to pump the arrested heart beneath his hands with measured fervour.
After roughly forty compressions, the monitor displayed a small, irregular wavy line that denoted fine ventricular fibrillation. Dr. Bennett smirked.
“That’s it—don’t give up just yet,” he uttered. It didn’t sound comforting, but it did sound sincere—he wanted to keep toying with him for the time being.
He firmly rubbed his knuckles along Miles’ reddened sternum, and then struck him hard with a closed fist. The arrhythmia stopped for a fraction of a second, then continued, so the doctor struck him again, harder this time.
Miles’ body jolted with the impact, and he began to cough into the mask that continued to supply him with oxygen as his heart restarted. His breathing came in short, strained gasps afterward.
“You awake?” Dr. Bennett teased a circle around his nipple as he spoke. “Miles?”
The patient’s eyelids fluttered before they opened completely, but his expression was hazy, like he wasn’t quite all there.
“You’re doing great,” he assured him as he took his stethoscope and inched it around on his chest in a quick examination of both his heart and lungs. “I’m going to give you something to dilate your air passages, okay?”
Miles was too sedated to really process what was happening. All he understood was that it was really hard to breathe right now, even despite the heavy flow of oxygen, and that his attendant was going to remedy that.
Dr. Bennett appeared over him again with a different mask and chamber attached. He eased the current one off his face and replaced it, then filled the chamber with a medicated aerosol.
“Take a deep breath—as deep as you can manage,” he instructed. Miles was just conscious enough to oblige, and while his respirations did sound markedly easier afterward, he loaded another dose into the chamber. “And one more time…”
The doctor set the mask aside and pressed the bell of his stethoscope onto his chest on either side. “Sounding much better. I’m still going to put you on oxygen again for the time being…”
Miles wasn’t sure why, exactly, but every time he explained what was about to happen, his intoxicated arousal only grew. He was surprised when Dr. Bennett secured a smaller mask that fit snugly over just his nose, and he absently wondered what purpose that served. He recognized the taste of oxygen by now and was further relieved when he breathed it in, but he had a permeating and intense sense of unease that he couldn’t shake.
Dr. Bennett took a few long moments to study the patient’s vital signs and let him stabilize further. His oxygen level was on the rise at 95%, the trace read sinus rhythm in the low-to-mid nineties, and his breathing was coming regularly.
He set the blood pressure cuff on his arm to go off again as he went off to a counter to prepare a different kind of inhalant. He took the bronchodilator off of the chamber’s applicator and replaced it with a different type of cartridge.
“You’re going to need to take this through your nose,” he explained matter-of-factly as he disconnected the hose to the oxygen supply and replaced it with the aerosol applicator. “Ready?”
Fuck it, Miles thought in a dreamy haze. He closed his mouth and inhaled as sharply as he could manage when Dr. Bennett let loose the amyl nitrate into the nasal mask.
“Hold it,” he commanded while gently placing his hand over his mouth. He looked up at the monitor when the helpless patient did as he was told, and his heart rapidly sped up while he continued to hold his breath. “Good.”
Miles’ heart let out a pair of premature ventricular contractions when he exhaled. He took a few deep, wheezy sounding breaths to steady his pounding head, and he only barely registered it when the doctor pushed into his neck pulse for a few seconds.
“You’re no stranger to this, are you?” Dr. Bennett cracked a wicked smile. He gripped the chamber attached to the mask with one hand, and covered Miles’ mouth with the other. “Let’s try again. Deep breath…”
He discharged a lot more into the mask this time around, and he took it off his face so he could plug his nose when the patient threatened to blow it out right away. “Hold it. Hold it—“
Dr. Bennett enjoyed how Miles struggled and hiccupped beneath his firm grip, and he looked up to the monitor when it began to beep at very quick and irregular intervals. It didn’t take long for his heart to give out after that—the alarm for ventricular tachycardia began to sound off, and the doctor was truly delighted to have something to shock.
He silently brought two-hundred joules to a charge, and defibrillated Miles as soon as it was ready. He spasmed sharply against his restraints, but then continued to lie still. His heart continued to quiver uselessly in his chest, and the doctor promptly adjusted to 300J and shocked him once more.
Dr. Bennett couldn’t help but bite his lip as the handsome patient jerked before him again. The trace went flat for a moment too long, and he propped his leg up beside him to thrust into his chest when the line blared flat once more.
“I really, really hope you’re enjoying this as much as I am,” he growled when thirty compressions passed without a response. He took a step to the side, reached for an ambu bag sitting nearby, then connected it to the oxygen supply before using it to ventilate him. “You’re so pretty when you’re coding.”
He watched intensely as his chest rose and fell with the squeezing of the bag valve, and then he resumed beating into his already-bruising sternum at a perfect and unwavering one-hundred beats per minute. His stomach ballooned dramatically with each deep push, and the doctor wondered if it was worth trying to give him some epinephrine as the second cycle came to an end.
“Don’t worry—I know what you need.”
After pushing the epinephrine through the port, he felt for a femoral pulse on either side of his abdomen. There wasn’t one, but as he was holding his fingers against him, the trace began to move—he was fibrillating again.
Dr. Bennett wasted no time. He charged the defibrillator to 360J, and he stared at his bruised, electrode-ridden chest as it contracted with the shock. The highly irregular rhythm ceased, but his heart didn’t restart.
“Come on—“ he rubbed his knuckles over his heart again. “Is that all you got?”
There was a loud smak when he slammed down on his sternum with a closed fist. The monotone asystole alarm broke for a fraction of a second, then stubbornly continued on.
Dr. Bennett urgently moved away to a dark corner of the room and returned with a LUCAS thumper. He expertly undid the restraints on Miles’ arms so he could properly strap them onto the CPR device, and then he let it do its thing in his stead while he prepared to intubate. The monitor began to beep out each compression of the LUCAS, and Dr. Bennett swiftly returned with an appropriate laryngoscope and eased it down his throat.
“I guess I’ll put you on the ventilator…” Dr. Bennett said sardonically, “since you’re not really putting up much of a fight yourself.”
After setting the ventilator to deliver oxygen as needed to Miles’ battered body, he simply stood at his side and enjoyed how the machines sustained him. He then took his stethoscope and placed it just so on the left side of his torso—there was something so intensely sexy about the sound his heart made as it was forcefully crushed.
“Alright,” the doctor whined yieldingly, as though the patient could hear him. “One more round of epi for you—but that’s it…”
He drew up another millilitre and took his time doing it. It didn’t really matter at this point if he reacted to it or not—he was just toying with him for his own pleasure now, not necessarily to bring him back.
There was an agonal rhythm on the trace just as the dose was administered, and then another soon followed. With the continued compressions from the CPR device, another shockable rhythm soon appeared.
“Not quite done yet?” Dr. Bennett questioned while he charged the defibrillator to 360J. “Prove it.”
Miles’ body jerked beneath the LUCAS, and he continued to lie limp and lifeless afterward. The trace displayed the same ventricular fibrillation as before, and the doctor immediately primed another shock.
He inhaled sharply when the shock rippled through Miles’ body, and he hoped it might restore sinus rhythm, if only to continue the fun—but the monitor warned of asystole once more.
Dr. Bennett tutted disappointedly. He debated whether to continue the resuscitation effort, and he quickly decided that if he didn’t respond to one more round of manual CPR, he would call it.
He was tender as he removed Miles’ wrists from their fastenings, and he didn’t bother restraining him again after he’d lifted the CPR device off of him. He felt for a femoral pulse, didn’t find one, and locked his hands in place over the patient’s broken chest.
He allowed himself to truly revel in what he expected to be the last round of compressions—how his head bobbed with each thrust, the gentle hiss of the ventilator breathing for him—an expression of sheer, euphoric peace spread across Dr. Bennett’s face as he fully took in the scene.
He looked satisfied and pleased; dopey and giddy all at once when the last CPR cycle came to an end. Disconnecting the victim and disposing of them properly was also something the twisted doctor took delight in, and he caressed Miles’ body while he removed the various electrodes and cannula connected to him.
“It really is such a shame,” he mused at Miles’ pale, lifeless body; made even more washed out by the bright white light above him. “But you enjoyed it, didn’t you? Just as much as I did.”