Page 6 of Never Quite Gone

The ER transformed around us, this beautiful terrible machine clicking into war mode. Nurses cleared trauma bays like bouncers at last call, techs prepped equipment with military precision, residents materializing from whatever corners they'd been hiding in.

The first ambulance screamed in at 10:47, the sirenhitting that exact pitch that made my heart stutter. Sofia shifted closer - my human guardrail against the memories threatening to drag me under. The next forty minutes became a blur of blood and desperate decisions.

Each victim brought their own symphony of chaos: construction foreman with his chest caved in like a broken birdcage, office worker with rebar through her torso like some twisted modern art, young engineer whose legs looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to marble.

I conducted this orchestra of trauma like a possessed maestro, my voice carrying over the cacophony of death trying its best to win.

“Type and cross-match four units!”

“Get me trauma surgery, now!”

“Where the fuck is radiology with that chest film?”

The metallic stench of blood mixed with concrete dust and something else - gasoline? No. Not here. Not now. Focus, you stupid fuck.

“Multiple long bone fractures, suspected internal bleeding,” a paramedic called out. The gurney wheels shrieked against tile, morphing into the sound of metal kissing metal at 60 mph-

Three seconds. That was the rule. But rules meant jack shit to trauma-induced PTSD.

“Doctor Monroe?” Yang's voice yanked me back. Here. Now. Living patients.

“CBC, metabolic panel, portable chest,” I rattled off, my voice steady even as my pulse did the cha-cha. “Trauma panel and-”

The next victim came in wearing a crown of glass shards, blood painting abstract patterns on their skin. Suddenly I was kneeling on wet asphalt, pressing against Michael's chest while his life leaked between my fingers, begging him to stay, just fucking stay-

“Doctor Monroe!” Sofia's voice cracked like a whip. “Trauma One is coding!”

I moved before thought, fresh gloves snapping on. Theforeman lay there, his chest a roadmap of broken bones beneath frantic hands. The monitor wailed its death song - v-tach, no pulse. Just like-

Different patient. Different day. Different ending.

“Beginning CPR,” I announced, hands finding their home on shattered sternum. Each compression precise, measured. Don't think about counting on another chest, don't think about the way ribs feel when they're already broken...

“Push one of epi. Charge to 200.”

The defibrillator's whine merged with phantom sirens, radio static, that goddamn paramedic's voice saying “Time of death...”

“Clear!” The foreman danced his electric jig. Still v-tach. Fuck.

“300 joules.” Another shock. Nothing. Just like- No.

“Again.” Voice steady as a surgeon's hands, even as sweat traced ice-cold fingers down my spine. Different patient. Different day. “Another epi. Where's my fucking chest tube?”

The team moved like a single organism, each piece knowing its dance. Time stretched like taffy, measured in heartbeats and breathing tubes and jolts of electricity. We fought death with science and stubbornness and sheer fucking spite.

“Converting to sinus rhythm,” someone called out. “BP coming up, 90/60.”

I stripped off the gloves, movements mechanical. My hands didn't shake anymore. I'd built walls thick enough to contain earthquakes, buried everything deep enough that nothing could surface.

That's when I felt it - that prickle at the base of your neck when someone's got their crosshairs on you. I looked up through the observation window, and reality did a sideways shuffle.

He stood there like a statue among the chaos, some fucking Renaissance painting dropped into a war zone. Charcoal suit that somehow repelled the blood and grime in the air, dark hair going silver at the temples like he'd planned it. But those eyes - Christ,those eyes. Deep blue and ancient as sin, filled with something that felt like recognition. Like he knew every secret I'd buried under six years of carefully constructed control.

Three seconds for memories. That was the rule.

But this wasn't memory - this was something else. Something cracked in my fortress walls. A spark of... something. Dangerous. Electric. Familiar in a way that made my brain itch, like a word stuck on the tip of your tongue. For a moment, the ghosts that haunted me seemed to fade, replaced by others I couldn't quite grasp-

The monitor chirped its warning, yanking me back to the bleeding, broken present. When I looked up again, he was gone. The space where he'd stood felt wrong somehow, like someone had cut a hole in reality.

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