I watched Giovanni’s expression carefully then, searching for the anger I’d expected earlier. But it wasn’t anger. Not really.
The kind of urgency that lives in people whose job it is to run toward disasters while everyone else runs away.
For a moment it looked like he might actually sit back down. Then the monitor cable caught on his elbow. The movement was slight — barely more than a tug as he shifted his weight to step forward — but it was enough to throw off his balance by a fraction.
And in emergency medicine, fractions matter.
He swayed.
The reaction was instantaneous. Desmond stepped forward without hesitation, one hand catching Giovanni’s shoulder to steady him before the stumble could turn into a fall.
It was such a familiar movement — automatic, protective, instinctive. But my stomach dropped the second I saw the angle. The pivot forced Desmond’s weight sharply onto the prosthetic.
The foot slipped.
Just a little.
Just enough.
Time stretched in that awful, elastic way it sometimes does in the trauma bay when you realize something has already gone wrong, but your brain hasn’t caught up yet. “Des?—”
He caught himself against the metal edge of the bed before he went down fully, but the movement dragged the frame across the lower curve of his residual limb where the socket met skin.
The sound he made was barely audible, but I felt it like a bladeunder my ribs. “I’m fine,” he said immediately, before anyone had even uttered a word.
But blood had already begun to seep through the edge of the liner.
Ezra swore quietly under his breath. Giovanni went completely still. For a man who commanded fire crews and collapsed buildings for a living, the look on his face in that moment was startlingly human. “Shit,” he said softly.
Desmond straightened immediately, his pride moving faster than his balance. “You didn’t?—”
“Sit,” I said. The word came out before I could soften it.
All three of them turned toward me.
For a split second, the old version of myself — the one who used to flinch under Frank Patel’s voice, the one who second-guessed every command that left my mouth—tried to claw its way back into my chest.
But Desmond was bleeding.
And that voice didn’t get a say anymore. “Desmond,” I said again, quieter but firmer. “Sit.”
His jaw tightened. I could see the familiar flicker of resistance behind his eyes, the instinctive refusal to look vulnerable in a room full of people. Then he exhaled slowly and lowered himself onto the edge of the bed.
The relief that washed through me was so immediate it made my hands tremble for half a second before I forced them steady. Ezra leaned back against the counter, arms folded across his chest as he watched with the resigned patience of someone who had clearly expected this outcome from the beginning.
Giovanni didn’t move. “I’m sorry,” he said finally.
Desmond looked up at him, shaking his head. “It’s just a scratch.”
“That’s not the point.” Giovanni ran a hand over the back of his neck, the earlier frustration gone now, replaced by something heavier. “I know better than to argue with doctors in their own house,” hesaid. “And I damn sure know better than to let a friend take the hit for me.”
“You didn’t make me do anything,” Desmond replied.
“Still,” Giovanni said. “I’m sorry.”
I knelt in front of Desmond before the moment could stretch any further. The prosthetic latch clicked under my fingers with practiced familiarity. “Anya,” he murmured quietly.
“Don’t,” I said. The socket released. The liner peeled back easily in my hands.
