Smoke in her hair.
Crimson on her lips.
Haunted eyes asking if I had come to save her.
Beautiful.
My mouth moved.
This time, the word made it out.
“Beautiful.”
Her eyes shattered.
Then the doors swung open, the lights went white, and everything went black.
CHAPTER 8
DESTINY
Albuquerque General did not believein quiet nights.
People liked to say that sometimes.
Quiet night.
Slow night.
Calm night.
Anyone who worked emergency medicine knew those were curse words wearing scrubs.
The ER had its own weather system, and that night the pressure sat heavy long before the storm broke. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead. Monitors beeped. Phones rang. Someone coughed wetly behind a curtain in Bay Three. A toddler with a fever cried against his mother’s chest while she whispered prayers in Spanish and pressed kisses into his sweaty hair.
It was normal.
Which meant awful.
A domestic violence case came in just after eight. Woman in her thirties. Split lip. Bruising around one eye. Two kids in the waiting room with a social worker, both too quiet in the way children got when they had learned that noise made bad things worse. Lily took one look at my face and stepped between me and the curtain before I could decide I was fine.
“I’ve got this one,” she said.
“I can handle it.”
“I know.” Her eyes softened behind her glasses. “That’s why I’m taking it.”
I wanted to argue.
I didn’t.
Lily was still five-four, still wore thick glasses that slid down her nose when she got tired, still looked like she belonged in a library surrounded by cozy sweaters and highlighters instead of blood pressure cuffs and trauma shears. But people underestimated Lily McCallister exactly once.
After that, they knew better.
She handled the woman with a gentleness that made my throat hurt. I handled a teenage soccer player with a dislocated shoulder who kept trying not to cry in front of his father. Then a baby with RSV symptoms. Then a construction worker with a nail through his palm. Then two overdoses fifteen minutes apart, one breathing when he came in, one not.
We got them both back.
