He let out a sharp breath and took a step closer to her, lowering his voice slightly as if trying to force himself to stay calm despite the urgency written all over his face. His brows were tightly drawn together, and the tension in his jaw was obvious even under the hotel lights.
“I need you to approve an emergency helicopter landing on the hotel helipad for a patient,” he said.
Amara blinked at him, confusion immediately appearing in her eyes.
“Emergency landing?”
Elias nodded quickly. One hand pushed back through his hair while the other rested on his waist impatiently. He looked exhausted and restless, as though he had been dealing with this situation for hours.
“There’s a patient in critical condition,” he explained. “We need to transfer them to a hospital immediately, but the hospital doesn’t have a helipad, and getting permission to land anywhere else is taking too long.”
As he spoke, he glanced briefly toward his phone before looking back at her again, his expression growing even more tense.
“This is the closest location to the hospital with a helipad.”
He extended a paper toward her.
Amara’s eyes dropped to it. The paper fluttered slightly in the night breeze before she took it from his hand. Her fingers adjusted the sheet as she scanned the header—patient details, hospital transfer authorization, and helipad landing approval.
Her gaze moved quickly across the lines, not lingering long enough to absorb every detail. The urgency in the situation was already clear.
Without hesitation, she flipped to the signature line, bent slightly at the waist, and signed with a quick, controlled stroke of her pen. Then she straightened, exhaling softly, and handed it back to him.
Elias took it immediately.
His fingers tightened around the paper as he pulled out his phone with the other hand. In one swift motion, he snapped a photo of the signed document, his thumb moving quickly across the screen as he sent it off.
“Here!” he called sharply toward the hotel entrance.
A staff member who had been standing near the doors jolted into motion. He rushed forward, shoulders slightly hunched in urgency, and took the document from Elias with both hands.
“Got it, sir,” the man said quickly before turning and hurrying back inside.
For a second, there was only the distant hum of the city.
Then—
A deep, rising roar cut through the night.
The sound of helicopter blades spinning grew louder and sharper, slicing through the air above them.
Amara lifted her head immediately.
Within seconds, the sound deepened into a loud, spinning thrum. A helicopter came into view, cutting through the night sky before descending toward the hotel’s helipad. The downdraft whipped her hair back from her face, and she instinctively raised a hand to shield her eyes while watching it land.
She turned her head toward Elias, confusion forming in her expression.
“Who is the patient?” she asked.
Elias didn’t answer right away.
He was looking down at his phone again, fingers moving quickly across the screen, typing something urgently. His jaw was tight,his attention split between the landing helicopter and whatever message he was sending.
At her question, he paused for a fraction of a second—just long enough for his thumb to hover—before he lifted his eyes to her.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, then looked away again.
Something about him dismissing her question like that made her chest feel uneasy, though she didn’t know why. Her gaze stayed fixed on the hotel entrance as the helicopter blades continued to slice through the air above.
