Count to Ten by James Patterson & Ashwin Sanghi

Author:James Patterson & Ashwin Sanghi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, Private Investigators, Thrillers, Suspense, Crime
ISBN: 9781538759622
Google: FoXLAQAACAAJ
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2017-11-14T15:50:02.930422+00:00

Chapter 64

SANTOSH OPENED HIS eyes. He blinked a few times, struggling to see, but his world remained dark. What’s happened to me? Have I gone blind? Or am I dead?

His body was wracked with an involuntary tremor. He realized he was shivering. It was freezing cold. He tried moving his arms but his body seemed to be confined within a tightly restricted place.

He tried to wiggle his feet. He was able to but just for a few inches in either direction. His back felt frozen solid. It seemed to be resting on cold metal. He desperately wanted to curl up into a fetal position but there simply wasn’t any space to do that. The realization suddenly hit him: I’m in a morgue.

Santosh attempted to calculate how much time he could survive inside the refrigerated coffin. He remembered reading somewhere that body heat is lost twenty-five times faster in cold water than in cold air. Most morgues are kept at around four degrees Celsius. At that temperature in water, a person would survive around an hour. Theoretically, he had several hours left provided he remained conscious and kept some movement going.

He succeeded in lifting an arm but there was simply no way to bend it. There was a metal ceiling above him that was only a few inches above his nose. He touched it with the back of his hand. It was just as cold as the floor on which he lay. He touched his thigh with his hand. He was pretty certain he was naked even though the freezing temperature had reduced the sensation in his body. Then the panic attack set in.

He suddenly felt a hot flash in his toes. Then his fingers. To shut down the loss of heat from the extremities, his body was inducing vasoconstriction—a reflexive contraction of blood vessels. But the muscles required to induce vasoconstriction had failed. It was causing warm blood to rush from the core to his extremities.

Santosh tried screaming but couldn’t be sure whether any sound was emerging from within him at all. His body seemed to have slowed down to a point where no physical activity was possible. The sounds that did emerge were slurred, almost as though he were under the influence of drugs or alcohol. He felt dazed. Disoriented. Confused. The effects of hypothermia had begun to set in.

He tried getting his mind to remain focused. He knew that if the hypothermia became severe, it would eventually slow down his respiration and heart rate, making him lose consciousness before the onset of death.

He attempted to recall what had happened before he’d passed out. He had met Ibrahim and had then received a blow behind his head. They had obviously brought him here later. But why was he in a morgue? Had he been assumed dead? Or were they trying to kill him by freezing him? Which morgue was he in? Did Nisha or Neel know he was in trouble?

Santosh felt suffocated. It wasn’t claustrophobia—it was his lungs giving up.

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