For now.
That was another thing about the ER.
You learned not to confuse back with saved.
I moved through it all the way I had trained myself to move through chaos—steady, methodical, eyes open, hands sure. Vitals. Lines. Labs. Orders. Comfort when I could give it. Pressure when blood needed stopping. A sharp voice when someone started spiraling and needed something firmer than sympathy.
People said emergency medicine took nerves.
Maybe.
But I had grown up around club life, old secrets, violent men with soft hearts, soft women with steel spines, and rooms where everyone smiled while calculating exits.
Chaos did not scare me.
Chaos was practically a family member.
I knew how to function when everyone else was panicking. I knew how to read a man’s shoulders before his mouth caught up. I knew when silence meant shock and when it meant danger. I knew blood was not always the worst thing in a room.
It made me good at my job.
That was what I told myself anyway.
By ten-thirty, Lily and I were both running on vending machine pretzels, burnt coffee, and the kind of adrenaline that made your hands too steady and your thoughts too sharp.
She found me at the nurses’ station typing notes with one hand and trying to open a protein bar with my teeth.
“You look feral,” she said.
“You look like you lost a fight with a copier.”
She pushed her glasses up with the back of her wrist. “I did. The copier fought dirty.”
“Did you win?”
“No, but I did threaten to report it to biomedical, so emotionally, yes.”
I almost laughed.
Almost.
Then the radio cracked.
Every head in the station shifted.
Static.
A paramedic’s voice, rough and clipped.
“Albuquerque General, incoming. Two adult males. Multiple gunshot wounds. One critical, hypotensive, abdominal trauma, significant blood loss. Second male GSW shoulder and chest, unstable but maintaining airway. ETA seven minutes.”
The ER changed shape.
Instantly.
No panic.
Not from the people who knew what they were doing.
