Yeah. Okay.
Once, I rushed into the workroom and caught him with a spoon in his mouth—peanut butter, of all things. He froze, gaze flicking to mine as if I’d caught him mid-crime, and tried to hide the jar behind his elbow. I looked away so he wouldn’t catch my smile.
Guess we all had our private little comforts when a shift dragged. Me? Lemon bars. Him? Peanut butter, apparently. The crunchy kind.
Another time, he corrected my chart—just a phrase he reworded to something more surgically precise, along with a typo that had slipped past me. Who evendidthat? Jesse, apparently—perhaps overcorrecting against any impression of lenience, or maybe just…whatever. Either way, I tried to laugh it off. “Guess I need more coffee.”
He gave me thislook, as if he was memorizing the lines of my face. “Or maybe a day off,” he said, low and gentle. Before I could reply, he’d moved on to the next page.
Later that day, we reached for the same bottle of hand sanitizer in the workroom. His hand brushed mine, and God, it wasn’t—didn’tmeananything. Just an accident. He paused, eyes on mine. I held my breath while one corner of his mouth lifted. Then he stepped back, smooth like butter, and mentioned something about how the boy in Room Four finally tolerated full feeds to Dr. Carter. As if nothing had happened even as I kept replaying it in the elevator.
Professionals.
Time blurred into small repetitions—Jesse adjusted my retractor angle and I handed off lab results; at home, I practiced two-hand ties until my fingers cramped. There was the dubious arch of his eyebrow when I reheated my forgotten coffee in the microwave; parent updates where he stood just behind my shoulder, silent backup in case I needed it. Everything normal, nothing to see here. Just a senior fellow coaching an intern.
Only—fuck. It felt like living behind glass. Likealmost. Like some part of me still looked for the version of him who’d once called me beautiful. Jesse, though? He made it look easy, as if his ribs didn’t press down on his lungs the way mine did for me. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe for him, that night was just a blip he’d filed away under “safely handled, thank God.”
I told myself it was fine. That I wasn’t thinking about all his competence translating elsewhere—hands, mouth, the way his voice dipped low. Fine, yeah.
It was.
Right up until an underground cable fire knocked out power in most of Upper Manhattan and the glass wall shattered.
Between one blink and the next, the ceiling panels snapped dark.What—?Air handlers cut to silence.
A second of total black.
Then red exit signs pulsed on, dim as embers. My pulse thumped in my ears, heavy and fast. Someone swore behind me. Power failure? Backup generator kicking in, critical infrastructure only? Must be.Fuck.
I fumbled for my phone’s flashlight. The faint glow forced back some of the shadows, other phones coming on like the glint of fireflies to illuminate the meds room.
“Whole hospital?” Dr. Carter’s calm tone couldn’t quite mask a glimmer of something unsteady.
“Looks that way.” A flashlight caught Nurse Smith’s worried face and the reflective strips on her shoes. “They just sent the alert—no external power.”
As if to back her up, the intercom croaked to life, cool as a guided meditation. “Attention all units. External power failure, backup systems engaged. Please initiate emergency protocols.”
Okay, right. Calm and steady. Except something was beeping like it knew this was a countdown. My brain grappled for the instructions that we’d reviewed during orientation. Infrastructure loss or failure, right. No external power, backup generator engaged. Which meant… Jesus. Critical infrastructure only. Reduced lighting, no automated doors, no functioning monitors in some rooms unless they were on emergency circuits. No coffee. Which—God, really not theissue. ORs? Intensive care units? Critical. Right, okay.Okay. How long would the ventilators last on battery? No, they’d be on backup power. Yeah. Of course. Just—I couldn’t fuckingrememberwhat the stupid instructions hadsaid.
“Hayes.” Carter shifted a little closer, his flashlight steady, voice low. “Breathe. We’ve got protocols in place for this exact thing, backup generators.” Quiet, almost like he was talking to himself. “Everything important will hold up.”
Facts—solid, familiar. They snagged my spiral, slowed it. I inhaled deeply through my nose and counted to four, then nodded. “Thank you,” I whispered.
“Don’t mention it.”
Someone called from the hallway, firm and urgent. “Pediatric team—Dr. Carter, I need you with the review board. They’re coordinating cases in case surgeries have to be rescheduled.”
Carter was already moving. “On it.”
“We need runners,” Smith’s voice rang out, clipped, her finger running down the laminated page of an open binder. “Only two elevators are functioning, critical patient transport only. Anyone who can run supplies between units, manual relay? We need bodies.”
Yes. Something I coulddo.
“Put me on the list,” I said immediately. “I’m fast.”
“Good.” She made a note just as something buzzed—her pager. A glance before she nodded at me. “You’re up, Hayes. PICU needs blood. A-negative, newborn crashing.”
PICU. They’d called Jesse up just minutes ago. My stomach cramped.
