Sophia
I clocked in at six minutes to seven with that same grin still on my face, and the first thing I did was check the board, because a senior trauma nurse did not stand in the corridor of a county hospital smiling at the middle distance like she'd had a head injury.
The board was quiet. A sprained wrist in two. A query-cardiac in four the triage note already half-suspected was a bad burrito. Nothing with my name on it yet. Good.
I smiled as I remembered Caleb’s words from this morning.Fuck. You’re beautiful.
I snapped out of it when I got my first case of the night: a sprained wrist. The patient was nine years old and trying hard not to cry in front of his dad, which I respected. He got through the splinting on bravado and a hard study of the Velcro, his lip going only once and only for a second. Clean sprain — splint, ice, follow-up in a week. He asked if he could keep the splint forever, and I told him that was between him and the splint.
The query-cardiac in four was a fifty-six-year-old convinced he was having the heart attack that had killed his father. He'd done the right thing coming in. ECG clean. Bloods clean. Theman himself the color of someone just handed his whole life back and unsure where to put it.
After informing him it was likely heartburn from the enchiladas he had for dinner and sending him off with some antacids, he left. The board went quiet again.
This was the part of the job nobody wrote shows about — the long flat stretches where you restocked the trolley and the loudest thing in the building was the vending machine deciding whether to commit to a Sprite.
I was at the desk pretending to chart when Marisa slid into the chair beside me, looked at me for about a second and a half, and said, "Who is he?"
Marisa had eyes like a falcon and three teenagers at home, which meant there was no expression on the human face she hadn't already seen through. No point lying about the existence of him. Only the question of scope.
"There's no he."
"You've been smiling at the supply cupboard since seven."
"It's a nice cupboard."
"Mm." She let it sit there for a moment, and I was sure she was going to pry me open. But she let me off, squeezed my shoulder on her way past, and said the thing you were never supposed to say out loud in a hospital: "Quiet one tonight."
I should have knocked on something. It was 9:48 p.m. when the radio went.
Marisa took the call standing up, two fingers pressed to the earpiece, and I knew before she said a word, because the slow-night softness went out of her face like someone had flipped a switch under the skin.
“Listen up.” She didn’t raise her voice. She never had to. “Two rigs inbound, ETA four. Two adults, gunshot — one chest, one abdo. Mum’s in arrest, CPR in progress. Three peds following with PD, all uninjured.”
The bay reorganized around the words. Nobody rushed. A four-minute warning does the opposite — everyone slowed down and went precise, because the next four minutes were the only ones you’d get to think. I headed to Trauma One. Drew the trolley out, snapped the brake, ran my hand down the kit in the same order every time — airway, lines, chest, the tray of things I hoped not to need — counting under my breath, not because I’d forget but because the count put my hands on the rails instead of anywhere else.
Peds following with PD. Count of three.
The word “peds” landed harder. I stored it away, something to deal with later.
Gloves. Gown. The lead apron over the gown. Marisa called roles — she had the chest, Petra on lines, Danny on the airway, the registrar paged and taking the stairs two at a time because the lift was slower than a man who knew what was waiting. Blood bank phoned, O-neg pulled and running. Somebody chalked the time of the call on the board: 21:48.
I went still. Training and instinct kicking in at once — my face smoothing, my hands going light, the whole loud building dropping away until there was nothing left but the strip of corridor between the ambulance doors and my trolley.
Three minutes.
Two.
The doors at the far end were the old kind, glass over reinforced wire, and through them I could see the ramp and the dark and the rain that had started up sometime in the last hour without telling anyone. Headlights swung onto the ramp, the strobe of the first rig taking the turn behind them, and I stepped to the threshold.
The doors hit the sensors and hissed wide, and the rain came in, and so did they.
The mother came first, a paramedic up on the side rail doing compressions as the gurney moved, balanced over the rolling bed and counting with her whole body. The second rig was hard behind: the father, conscious, grey, one hand pressed flat to his own side like he could keep himself shut by holding on. Two crews, fast and clipped, handing over in the shorthand.
And a boy walking alongside the first gurney with both fists knotted into the blanket over his mother, moving when it moved, and nobody peeling him off, because there was a paramedic on her chest and you didn’t stop the machine for the boy.
He was small. Twelve, maybe. Sock feet, no coat, rain still in his hair, not making any sound at all — which was worse than if he had been — just walking his mother in with his hands full of blanket, like if he didn’t let go he’d be allowed to stay part of whatever was keeping her here.
“Mum on One,” Marisa said. “Dad on Two.”
