Page 3 of Never Quite Gone

“Michael, please.” I was begging now, pride abandoned in favor of desperate prayer. “Please answer me.”

The seatbelt release clicked with terrible finality. My body moved on autopilot, years of trauma training kicking in even asmy heart threatened to explode. Pain shot through my ribs – probable fracture, part of my brain noted clinically – but I pushed it aside. Eight years of emergency medicine had taught me how to compartmentalize pain. What I hadn't learned was how to compartmentalize terror.

The driver of taxi was dead that was for sure. Michael was pinned against the metal that twisted into a grotesque cage around his chest. Blood ran in thin rivulets from a deep laceration at his temple, collecting in the hollow of his collarbone where I'd kissed him just hours ago. His skin was already taking on that terrible pallor I'd seen too many times in my ER, the color that made my stomach drop every time.

“Michael.” My voice came out raw, like I'd been screaming. Maybe I had been. I couldn't remember. My fingers found his carotid artery, the motion so practiced I could have done it in my sleep. For a moment, there was nothing, and the world stopped breathing. Then – there. A flutter beneath my fingertips, weak but present. The surge of hope was immediate and crushing.

But I knew too much. That was the curse of medical training – you could read the ending of the story before it was finished. The blood loss, the likely internal injuries, the mechanism of trauma... my mind calculated survival rates without my permission, each percentage point a nail in my heart.

If we'd been in my ER, I knew exactly what I'd do. The steps played out in my head like a familiar dance: rapid sequence intubation, bilateral chest tubes, central line access, massive transfusion protocol. I'd done it a thousand times. My hands had saved countless lives caught in the same terrible mathematics of physics versus flesh.

But here, in this broken car that still smelled like Michael's cologne, my surgeon's hands were useless. All my knowledge, all my training, all my supposed skill – none of it meant anything without an OR, without a trauma team, without the tools that turned me from a terrified husband into someone who could actuallyhelp.

“Stay with me,” I whispered, cradling his face between my palms. Rain dripped through the shattered windshield, washing away the blood but not the truth. Not the knowledge that every second was precious, that time was flowing as surely as the blood staining my anniversary suit. “Please, baby. Stay with me.”

The sirens grew louder, their wail cutting through the night like a scalpel through flesh. I could time their approach by sound – still too far, too slow, too late. Part of me wanted to laugh at the irony. How many times had I stood in my trauma bay, wondering why EMS was taking so long? Now I knew. Every second felt like an eternity when you were the one waiting.

They arrived in a chaos of lights and motion, their reflective gear turning them into ghostly figures in the rain. I recognized some of them – Jake from Station 12, Maria who always brought us coffee during night shifts. Now they moved around us with professional efficiency, their faces set in masks of concentration I knew too well.

“Sir, you need to let us work.” Hands pulled at my shoulders, trying to separate me from Michael. I resisted, my medical knowledge spilling out in a desperate stream.

“Thirty-seven-year-old male, direct lateral impact at high speed. No previous medical conditions, no medications, no allergies. Last tetanus two years ago. Type O positive. Wedding ring might need to be cut off for access-”

“Dr. Monroe.” It was Maria's voice, gentle but firm. “We need you to step back now.”

The cruelest part was understanding exactly what they were doing. Every move, every piece of equipment, every shouted vital sign – it was a language I spoke fluently. I watched them establish IV access, saw the way they exchanged looks at his blood pressure reading, recognized the urgency in their movements as they prepared him for transport.

My hands curled into fists at my sides, nails cutting crescents into my palms. The pain was grounding, real, something to focuson besides the mechanical whir of the hydraulic stretcher being lowered.

“I'm riding with him.” It wasn't a request. They knew better than to argue with a doctor in shock, especially one with blood on his hands – Michael's blood, oh god, Michael's blood was on my hands.

The ambulance interior was too bright, too sterile, too familiar. I'd been back here countless times doing ride-alongs, teaching new medics, running codes. Now I sat clutching Michael's hand, watching his wedding ring catch the fluorescent light. His fingers were already growing cold.

The monitor began to scream, its steady beeping dissolving into that terrible continuous tone every medical professional dreads. Maria started compressions immediately, her movements precise and powerful. I watched her hands on my husband's chest – hands I'd praised just last week for their skill – and felt something inside me shatter.

“Starting epinephrine,” Jake announced, his voice steady. “Dr. Monroe, you should look away-”

“No.” The word came out like broken glass. “Don't you dare tell me to look away.”

I counted compressions silently, measuring out the seconds of my husband's life in sets of thirty. One minute. Two minutes. Three minutes. The statistics marched through my head with brutal clarity – survival rates dropping with each passing minute, neurological outcomes becoming more dire, the cold equations of death making themselves known.

The ambulance screamed to a stop at the emergency entrance of Presbyterian, the back doors flying open to reveal a trauma team already assembled. I recognized every face – these were my people, my team, the ones I led every day into battle against death.

Today, they looked at me like a stranger.

Sofia appeared as they wheeled Michael through the automatic doors, her dark eyes wide with horror as she took in the scene. She was still wearing the dress from her daughter's dancerecital – she must have been called in from home. The sight of her in civilian clothes instead of scrubs made everything feel more surreal.

“Eli.” Her voice cracked as she grabbed my arms, trying to stop me from following the gurney. “Eli, you can't go in there.”

“Like hell I can't.” But even as I fought against her grip, I knew. I knew because I'd been on the other side of this scene too many times. I knew because I'd written the protocols myself about family members in trauma rooms. I knew because I could read the truth in Sofia's face, in the way she was already crying.

“Please,” she whispered, and her grip turned from restraining to supporting as my legs finally gave out. “You can't be in there for this. You know you can't.”

Through the trauma room windows, I watched my team work. Their movements were perfect, choreographed, exactly as I'd trained them. I saw them cut away Michael's shirt – the one he'd chosen specially for our anniversary, the one that brought out his eyes. I watched them place the defibrillator pads on his chest, covering the freckle I'd traced with my finger that morning. I observed it all with the detached precision of a surgeon, cataloging each intervention, each medication, each joule of electricity they sent through his heart.

My hands pressed against the glass, leaving smudged prints next to the ones left by countless other family members I'd kept out of this room. How many times had I told people to trust us, to let us work, to stay behind this very window? The irony would have been funny if it wasn't destroying me.

Inside, they worked with the urgency of people trying to save one of their own. Because Michael was one of their own – he'd brought them coffee during overnight shifts, had redesigned the doctor's lounge last year, had charmed every nurse and orderly with his terrible medical puns. I watched the one of the female nurse take over compressions, her face set in fierce concentration.

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