I scream, my hands hovering over his chest.
My instincts kick in, but they are the wrong instincts. I am a forensic pathologist. My hands are trained to find the why of a death, not the how of a life. I spend my days weighing organs and tracing bullet paths through cold flesh.
I know exactly how these toxins are melting his nervous system. I can visualize the chemical erosion, but I don't have the tools to stop it. I’m not a trauma surgeon. I’m not an anesthesiologist. I’m the woman who studies the end, not the one who prevents it.
"I can't... I can't do this!"
I cry out toward the dark glass.
"Deimos, he needs a hospital! He needs a bypass, a full systemic flush! I don't have the equipment here!"
"You have a scalpel," his voice returns, cold and steady, cutting through my panic.
"And you have a dying man. The hospital is ten miles away. He has ten minutes of consciousness left before the pain induces a permanent cerebral shutdown. You are the only doctor he has."
I grab a syringe of epinephrine from the emergency cart, my hands shaking so violently I nearly snap the needle. I jam it into his thigh, praying for a miracle, but the monitor only wails louder.
Bryan’s eyes snap open. Wide, bloodshot, and filled with a silent, agonizing plea. He can't speak, but his gaze is locked on mine, begging for the nightmare to stop.
Every medical fact I’ve ever learned is screaming at me: He is physiologically incompatible with life. The dose was too high, the delivery too precise. Deimos didn't leave a margin for error. He designed this death to be an absolute.
"Please," I sob, leaning over Bryan, my tears falling onto his cold skin.
"I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."
I look at the tray. His silver cross lies next to the scalpel. The sacred and the profane. The mercy and the murder.
I realize then, that he isn't testing my skills as a pathologist. He’s testing my soul. He wants me to understand that in his world, "saving" someone often means being the one to end them. He wants to pull me down into the grey space where he lives, where every choice is a different shade of blood.
The monitor lets out a long, continuous flatline tone.
"Mali," Deimos’s voice is a ghost’s whisper now, almost sympathetic.
"Don't let him die in terror. Give him the peace the light won't allow."
The continuous, high-pitched scream of the flatline fills the room, vibrating against the tiled walls and burrowing into my skull. Bryan’s body convulses one last time, a violent arch of his spine that makes the metal table groan.
I look at his face. His eyes are wide and locked onto mine. There is no judgment in them, only a raw, primal plea. He istrapped in a burning house with no exit, and I am the only one holding the key to the door.
My hands are shaking so violently I have to grip the edge of the stainless steel tray just to stay upright. I look at the scalpel. It’s a tool I use every day to uncover the truth of the dead, but now, it’s the only instrument of mercy.
"Forgive me, Bryan," I sob, the words disappearing into the sterile, cold air.
I reach out, my fingers trembling as I brush a stray lock of hair from his sweat-soaked forehead. His gaze doesn't waver. He’s begging me to end it, just so he can finally stop feeling his nerves dissolve.
I pick up the scalpel.
The cold weight of the metal feels like a lead sinker pulling me down into the abyss. I can feel Deimos watching from the gallery, his silence a heavy, suffocating pressure. He isn't just watching a procedure; he’s watching the woman I used to be die along with Bryan.
I lean over him, my vision blurred by a steady stream of tears. I trace the mark. The carotid artery, the quickest path to the end. My medical training screams at me to stop, to keep trying, to perform a miracle that doesn't exist. But the human in me looks at his agony and knows there is only one way out.
He blinks once, a slow, agonizingly grateful movement.
I don't look up at the glass. I focus entirely on the man on the table. With a single, precise motion, the kind of movement I’ve practiced a thousand times on the dead, I grant him the only gift I have left.
The flatline tone doesn't change, but the tension in Bryan’s body evaporates instantly. The hitching of his chest stops. The light in his eyes flickers and goes out, replaced by the hollow, peaceful vacancy of the residents I usually tend to.
I drop the scalpel. It hits the floor with a sharp, metallic clang that echoes like a gunshot.
