"Two hundred. Charge it." I stacked my hands on his sternum and dropped my weight, and a body that size shoves right back. I put everything I had behind each compression while his blood went slick under my hip. "Don't you dare. You did not take three bullets just to die on my table over paperwork."
"Charged."
"Clear."
He arched and dropped. Flatline, then a flicker, then nothing worth keeping.
"Again. Clear."
The second jolt caught. The rhythm staggered, found its feet, and climbed into something ragged but honest, something I could finally use. His heart had quit for nine seconds. People tell me I take rejection badly.
I didn't look up at the men until his pressure held. When I finally did, all four had locked onto me, only me, with a weight that held nothing warm in it. Not gratitude. Gratitude runs hot. This was the cool, patient attention of wolves working out exactly what a sheepdog is worth. The leader tilted his head a half inch, and somehow it landed like being knighted by a locked door.
"He's stable. For now," I said. "He needs an OR, he needs blood, and he needs a name on that band before he goes up."
"Later," the big one said.
"A wristband doesn't take 'later.' It takes a name."
"He gives the name. Not you."
And that ended it. They didn't argue. They simply declined to move the way I'd asked, which is its own kind of answer, and then the surgical team swept through and carried him off behind the doors with the suits trailing after, and the bay went suddenly too quiet and far too red.
Deysi blew out a breath. "Three gunshot wounds, a suit worth more than my rent, and not one insurance card." Her gloves came off with a snap. "Cool. Normal Tuesday."
"Don't name the day. You'll order us another one."
"Noted. Never again."
Theo was still watching the doors swing shut. "You just saved that man's life. You get that, right?"
"It's the job. It's printed on the badge and everything."
"I'm serious, Ruby."
"So is the badge." But my hands had started to shake now that they were finally allowed to, the adrenaline cashing itself out all at once, and I needed two minutes and a solid wall before the night handed me its next disaster.
The locker room was the only quiet left in the building, one row of dented metal and a bench that had soaked up more confessions than any priest. I spun my combination on muscle memory, three turns I'd done ten thousand times, and opened up for my water bottle, my last clean hair tie, and the photo of my abuela taped inside the door for exactly this kind of night.
A box was sitting on the shelf.
Small. Wrapped. Silver paper, real ribbon, the sort a person has to go out and buy on purpose. It rested on my folded sweater like it had every right to be there, like I'd set it down and forgotten it, except I hadn't, because I don't wrap things, I've never owned ribbon in my life, and I'd locked this door myself at the top of my shift.
I checked the latch. Solid. I checked the dial, the one that catches a little at twenty-two, a flaw I'd never bothered to report because it was mine and nobody else's problem. Nothing forced. Nothing pried. Nothing out of place but the gift that shouldn't exist.
The card under the ribbon was cream-colored and stiff, no envelope, no name on the front. I told myself to leave it closed.Then I opened it anyway, because the night had already made its character perfectly clear.
Four words, in a careful hand that had pressed hard enough to leave grooves in the paper.
You were magnificent tonight.
I went very still. The break-room fridge hummed through the wall. Down the hall, a monitor whined for somebody's attention. I stood there and worked the cold math of who could have reached this shelf, behind a lock set to my own numbers, while both my hands were buried in a stranger's chest one room over. Every name I tried came back the same. No one could have. And the box sat there anyway, still warm where my thumb had brushed the paper.
"Ruby." Deysi's head came around the door. "They're taking your John Doe up to the unit. Surgery's calling him a miracle and wants to know who caught the pneumo, because Theo's already taking his bow."
"Of course he is."
"He's practically signing autographs out there."
