Page 11 of Never Quite Gone

My pen dug into paper like it had a grudge, leaving an angry blot. “He's just another developer with a pitch,” I said, voice flat as Kansas. “Nothing more.”

The silence stretched between us, heavy with twenty years of friendship and all the shit we'd seen together. Sofia had been there through it all - residency hell, my wedding, the funeral. She could read my tension like a CT scan.

Finally, I looked up. Her face played at neutral, but I knew that look. Same one she wore when she found me in the ER that night, still wearing Michael's blood, refusing to leave until-

Three seconds. Lock it down.

“Vale's circling like a shark,” she said quietly, eyes sharp with warning. “Don't give that bastard ammunition.”

“The project could fuck with response times,” I deflected. “My job to make sure that doesn't happen.”

“Sure it is.” Sofia's voice went gentle but firm. “Just like reviewing those cardiac unit proposals last month. But you didn't look at those developers like they were ghosts walking around in suits.”

Ghosts in suits. Too fucking close to the truth I was trying not to see - how Alex's presence felt foreign and familiar at once, like a song you forgot you knew until it started playing.

“Got patients waiting.” I gathered my charts like armor, needing to escape before Sofia's x-ray vision saw through to bones I wasn't ready to expose.

“Eli.” Her hand caught my wrist, anchoring me to now. “Just... watch your ass. Whatever this thing is, whatever's got you spooked-“ She chose her words like surgical instruments. “Vale's been gunning for you since you destroyed his boy at M&M. Don't give him an opening.”

I managed a stiff nod, words stuck in my throat.

Sirens split the morning like a headache, ambulances screaming to a halt outside. Multiple vehicle pileup on the FDR, dispatch warning of four critical incoming. My pager started its dance as I was already moving, wrestling with a fresh trauma gown.

“Major crush injuries, chest and abdomen,” the first medic barked, wheeling in their human wreck. “BP in the toilet, bleeding somewhere inside.”

The ER erupted into beautiful chaos - my kind of chaos. Orders flew from my mouth on autopilot: “Type and cross four units!” “Get me a chest tube tray!” “Where the fuck is my surgical consult?”

Blood made my gloves slick as I worked, hands finding rhythms learned from thousands of similar dances with death. But between each critical move, each life-or-death call, something else flickered at the edges:

Hands stained with paint instead of blood.

Pine air and rushing water.

Music that felt older than time.

I shoved the weird shit aside, focusing on the body under my hands. Ultrasound showed free fluid in the belly - internal bleeding, just like I'd called it. “OR Two's ready,” a nurse shouted. “Surgery's incoming.”

My hands stayed steady placing lines and tubes, but those foreign sensations kept ambushing me. Oil paint smell mixing with antiseptic. Monitor beeps morphing into music I couldn't possibly know.

“BP's coming up,” someone called. “OR's waiting.”

I stripped off the bloody gloves, my wedding ring catching fluorescent light like an accusation. Just stress, I told myself. Stress and fucked-up dreams.

Because the alternative - that Alexander fucking Rothschild had woken something impossible in me - threatened to tear down every wall I'd built since Michael died.

“Good catch, Dr. Monroe.” Yang handed me fresh labs, hungry for approval like all the new residents.

Numbers don't lie: hemoglobin tanking at 8.2, lactate screaming at 4.1. Clear signs of shock that didn't need any mystical interpretation.

“Follow them to the OR,” I told Yang. “I want every bloody detail from that surgery.”

Heading to check another post-op, I tried processing the weird shit from the trauma bay. Those flashes felt more like memories than imagination - but that was fucking impossible. I was a surgeon, a scientist. I dealt in facts you could measure, not some metaphysical past-life bullshit.

“Dr. Monroe.”

Vale's voice hit like ice water. He slid out of a side corridor smooth as a snake, smile all teeth and no warmth. I'd been waiting for this - Vale never missed a chance to go for the throat.

“Got a minute?” He nodded toward an empty consult room, making it clear it wasn't really a question.

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