I watched her teach, her hands moving as she demonstrated techniques, her voice never wavering. This was Calla in her element. Competent. Commanding. The woman who'd made me fall in love with her in an operating room a lifetime ago.
I looked away before she could catch me staring.
The scene at Riverside General was exactly as bad as promised.
The emergency department had been transformed into organized chaos. Patients on gurneys lined every available inch of hallway. Nurses sprinted between them, triaging and re-triaging as conditions changed. Doctors shouted orders over the constant din of monitors and crying and the distant wail of approaching ambulances.
The smell was overwhelming. Blood and antiseptic and fear, thick enough to taste.
"Karras, take trauma bay one," I directed, slipping into command mode. "I'll take two. Mireya, you're with Karras. Residents, split between us. Chen with me, Patterson with Karras."
We moved as a unit, falling into rhythm despite the unfamiliar space. The Riverside staff barely glanced at our Obsidian badges before putting us to work. In a mass casualty event, credentials mattered less than capable hands.
I lost count of how many patients crossed my table in the first hour. Chest wounds requiring emergency thoracotomies. Head trauma that needed immediate imaging. Multiple fractures that would require surgery if the patients lived long enough to reach an OR.
Some I could save. Some I couldn't.
The ones I couldn't haunted me between cases. A teenage girl with internal injuries too extensive to repair. A father of threewho'd been conscious when he arrived and flatlined before I could open his chest. I marked their times of death and moved on because stopping meant drowning, and drowning meant more people dying.
Across the emergency department, I caught glimpses of Calla working with the same focused intensity I remembered from our residency. She had a patient bleeding out, her hands steady as she worked to clamp a severed artery. Mireya anticipated her needs before Calla voiced them, passing instruments with the precision of a surgical dance they'd choreographed on the fly.
Calla was magnificent. Even exhausted, even surrounded by chaos, she moved with a certainty that made everyone around her calmer. Residents deferred to her without question. Nurses fought to be assigned to her bay. She was a fixed point in the storm, steady when everything else was spinning apart.
I forced myself to focus on my own patients instead of watching her.
Hours blurred together. My hands cramped from suturing. My back screamed from standing in the same position for too long. But I kept moving because stopping meant thinking, and thinking was a luxury I couldn't afford.
At some point, maybe hour four or five, Calla appeared beside me.
"I need an extra set of hands." Her voice was hoarse from hours of giving orders. "Patient in bay three. Penetrating abdominal trauma, unstable vitals. I can't do it alone."
I followed her without question.
The patient was a man in his forties, a piece of metal from the collision embedded in his abdomen. He was conscious but fading, his blood pressure dropping faster than the nurses could push fluids.
"I need to explore the wound," Calla said, pulling on fresh gloves. "You retract while I find the source of the bleeding."
We worked in sync. Me holding the incision open, her hands moving through tissue and blood with surgical precision. It was like being back in residency, when we'd been assigned to the same cases and learned to communicate without words. I knew when she needed more light before she asked. She knew when I needed her to shift position before I said anything.
"Clamp," she said.
I already had it in my hand.
"Nice."
"We've done this before."
"Yeah." Her eyes met mine over the patient's open abdomen. "We have."
The patient stabilized. We closed him up together, our sutures alternating in a pattern so familiar it made my chest ache with memories I'd tried to bury.
We moved to the next patient, then the next. Somewhere around hour six, Mireya appeared with coffee that tasted like it had been brewed sometime last week.
"You two are impressive together," she said, handing us both cups. Her eyes moved between us with knowing curiosity. "I can see why Patel paired you on the protocol."
Calla and I exchanged glances but said nothing.
By the time the last ambulance arrived, it was past ten PM. The Riverside staff looked hollowed out, running on fumes and stubbornness. I felt the same way. My scrubs were stained with blood that wasn't mine. My eyes burned from hours under harsh lighting. Every muscle in my body begged for rest.
