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foxtrology · 2 months ago

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dr!joel x resident!reader

inspired by the pitt on hbo | series | ao3 link

notes: this took me way too long to write. but i had to. couldn't stop watching the pitt and thinking about our old man. joel is basically if dr robby and dr abbot had a morally complicated, emotionally constipated lovechild. also abby does not kill joel in this, everyone is friends! god bless america.

warnings: this contains intense and graphic deceptions of medical trauma, emergency room scenarios, death (including children), physical violence, workplace assault, substance use, bodily fluids, mass casualty events, and realistic portrayals of burnout, grief and PTSD in a high stakes-medical environment.

it also includes themes of misogyny, harassment, and implicit threats of sexual violence. reader discretion is strongly advised. please take care while reading--especially if you are sensitive to medical distress, depictions of pediatric injury or real-time crisis response.

word count: 15.k

─────

The morning of the Fourth of July in Austin, Texas, feels like a moment held in the lung, right before the exhale.

That breathless pause before fireworks, before the sirens scream and the ER radios stuttering with trauma codes and stroke alerts and the endless crush of the heat-baked, alcohol-soaked chaos that follows any major American holiday. It’s always the calm before the storm—if you could even call it calm.

You pull into the staff garage at 5:52 a.m. and sit in the car for a moment longer, letting the silence stretch. Black scrubs still freshly laundered, badge clipped, hair pulled back, and your shoes already forming to your feet like muscle memory. You reach for your tumbler, still warm from the coffee Joel handed you in the kitchen an hour ago, already half-drunk.

There’s that brief moment you consider calling out. Just for today. Just to stay in that house, in that bed with him, where he kisses your bare shoulder before telling you to be safe.

But you won’t. You never do.

Because no matter how bad the ER gets—and it always gets bad—this is the only place that makes any kind of sense to you.

Inside, the air conditioning hits like a slap, and you walk past the security station where Bill gives you a small nod, already sipping from his thermos like a man bracing for war.

“Morning, sunshine,” he says. His voice is gravel, his beard immaculate. “You ready for the circus?”

You offer a tired smile. “You know we don't get clowns. We get drunk uncles with bottle rockets.”

He chuckles, shaking his head as he scans another nurse’s badge behind you. “Same difference.”

The ER already smells like overcooked coffee and sterile gauze, and the waiting room—visible through the thick glass partition—looks like an airport at Christmas. People slumped against the wall, some pale, some bleeding, some just desperate for help they’re not sure they need. A woman with a crying toddler in one arm and a vomit bag in the other is standing at the triage desk. Behind her, a man in a tank top clutches his ribs and moans like he’s in labor.

Inside the main ER pod, the low hum of monitors, pagers, and movement never really stops. Maria Miller stands at the hub, perfectly composed, her hands wrapped around a travel mug and a tablet tucked in the crook of her arm.

“Six a.m. and already short three nurses,” she mutters as you step up beside her. Her eyes flick to you. “Happy Fourth. You look like hell.”

You arch a brow. “Why thank you, Maria.”

She smirks, amused. “I saw your name on the schedule and bumped Henry’s start time earlier. Figured you’d need someone to boss around.”

“Nice. Nothing says holiday spirit like free labor.”

Her mouth twitches into a smile before she heads off toward the trauma bay. You breathe in the scent of antiseptic and coffee. Your shift hasn’t even started, and already you can feel the heat pressing behind your eyes.

“Doc!” Jesse calls out, sliding past with an IV pole in one hand, his badge swinging. “Your favorite guy’s back. Bed three.”

“Which one?”

“Golf cart DUI. Same guy from last month. Says he’s got chest pain.”

You groan, snagging your stethoscope from your pocket and making your way toward the row of curtained bays.

“Hey, doc,” Marlene calls, intercepting you with a chart. “You’ve got a belly pain in seven. NPO since last night, vitals stable, but she’s already mad she’s waited an hour.”

“Great,” you sigh. “Let me guess—says she’s dying?”

“Says she wants to die,” Marlene says dryly. “Progress.”

Inside Bed 3, the familiar face of Mr. Golf Cart is flushed and sweaty, his eyes darting from you to the EKG leads on his chest. He tries to smile through chapped lips.

“Hey there, doc. Long time no see.”

“It’s been three weeks,” you reply, glancing at the monitor. “You said chest pain?”

“Felt like a raccoon sittin’ on my sternum.”

You don’t bother asking how he knows what that feels like.

“I’ll get your labs and a troponin. Don’t eat or drink anything, and don’t try to leave AMA again.”

“Cross my heart,” he grins.

“You did that last time too.”

Outside the room, Tommy is coming in from the ambulance bay, gloved hands smudged with dried blood, sleeves rolled to the elbow. He spots you and tips his chin up.

“You get the kid with the fireworks burn?”

You didn't fucking get the people who lit up fireworks before the actual holiday.

“Not yet.”

He shrugs. “He’s all yours. Level 2, maybe deeper dermal. Holding it together, though.”

“Great,” you say, and Tommy claps you on the shoulder as he moves past, already shouting something to Frank who’s restocking their rig with trauma dressings.

Frank pauses to shoot you a quick smile. “Morning, doc.”

“You ready for hell?” you ask.

“Born in it,” he replies with a wink, disappearing into the supply closet.

By 6:40, the line to triage has doubled. You slip into Exam 7 where Abby and Mel are squinting at a portable chest X-ray.

“I think it’s a widened mediastinum,” Abby says, uncertain.

Mel frowns. “I think it’s a terrible film.”

You glance between them and sigh. “You’re both right. Let’s get a CT angio. Rule out dissection.”

Abby lets out a breath. Mel nods, jotting it into the chart.

You turn to leave, only to be stopped by Henry in the hallway.

“I finished my charting on the chest pain in four,” he says. “Do you want me to see the laceration in bed nine?”

You nod. “It’s a head lac. Two-centimeter frontal scalp. Walk-in. You can staple it.”

Henry brightens just slightly before hurrying off, excited to staple someone's scalp.

Kathleen stands at the nurse’s station, arms crossed, lips pressed into a line as she watches three nurses hustle to cover six rooms. She barely glances at you, but when she does, her voice is velvet over steel.

“You better love this job, sweetheart. Because it sure as hell doesn’t love us back.”

You offer her a tired grin. “I’m in a toxic relationship with medicine.”

“I’d say get out,” she murmurs, tapping something into the computer, “but I’ve been saying that for twenty years.”

You’re interrupted by Ellie appearing behind you like a caffeinated ghost, her voice quick and panicked. “I just had a guy vomit blood on my shoes and I don’t think that was in the orientation packet.”

You blink. “Was it a large volume?”

“Like a tarantula of blood exploded out of his mouth.”

“Sounds like a GI bleed. Grab Marlene and get him on O2, two large bore IVs, and get a CBC, type and screen, and a bolus of saline.”

Ellie stares at you, eyes wide. “...I love you.”

“You’ll hate me in two hours.”

Dina slides past a moment later, rolling her eyes as she scribbles a note onto a file. “You need me for the kid from the group home?”

“Yeah,” you say. “Bed twelve.”

“I’ll bring stickers,” she mutters, already moving.

You turn a corner to find Riley standing outside a room, fidgeting with her stethoscope.

“I tried to get a BP but the patient wouldn’t stop yelling at me.”

“Welcome to emergency medicine,” you say, opening the curtain.

The hours between 7 and 9 blur into a tangle of trauma activations, overdoses, and one elderly woman who insists she’s seeing angels. Joel appears somewhere around 7:30, silent and gruff, already charting by the trauma desk. His sleeves are rolled up, hair still damp from the shower both of you shared early this morning. He looks at you like he’s already tired for both of you.

You pass behind him and your hand grazes the small of his back, just enough for him to shift his weight and glance at you from the corner of his eye. That’s all. That’s enough.

He doesn’t need to say anything. Nobody talks about it, but everyone knows.

By 9 a.m., you’ve had three traumas, two psych consults, and a toddler with a swallowed battery. A man in a star-spangled bikini was just escorted to the waiting room by Bill, Ellie and Abby giggling in each other's arms watching the scene.

You think you might be sweating through your scrubs.

You duck into the breakroom, finally, and find Tess already in there, sleeves rolled, sipping black coffee and glaring at the microwave like it owes her money.

“Fourth of July,” she says without looking at you. “God bless America.”

You groan and collapse into the chair next to her. “How many stabbings so far?”

“Three. One with a fork. Guy said he was trying to get the last sausage off the grill.”

You snort, leaning back and letting the moment hold. Outside, another ambulance pulls into the bay. The day is only just beginning. And no one’s getting out early.

Just as you sat down, Ellie burst into the break room like her body was still moving faster than her brain could catch up. Her face was flushed with adrenaline, lips parted, hands trembling just enough to tell you this wasn’t a drill.

“Hey—hey—uh—can you—can you come? Right now. It’s that guy in Bay Two. He—he fucking lunged at me.”

Tess straightened up immediately, coffee forgotten. You were already on your feet, coffee sloshing onto the table as you moved past Ellie, her hand catching your elbow.

“I didn’t even touch him. I was just checking his vitals and he went off. Said women shouldn’t be in medicine, shouldn’t ‘touch him,’ called me a goddamn slut, and then he lunged. I didn’t—I mean I moved back—he didn’t land it, but—”

“I’ve got it,” you said, your voice already lowering, the calm hard edge setting in. “You’re okay. You did everything right.”

Tess looked like she wanted to follow, to keep an eye on things, but you shook your head. “Stay here. I got this.”

You headed for Bay Two with a kind of purposeful gait that had nurses flattening themselves against the wall. Marlene caught your eye from the main desk and gave you a look, sharp and knowing. She didn’t need an explanation.

The man in Bay Two was middle-aged, built like someone who spent more time drinking beer than going to the gym, his hands cuffed to the rails, red-faced and sneering. A big, mean, fleshy kind of guy with the kind of grin that made your stomach twist—not in fear, but in a deep, guttural revulsion.

“Here she is,” he crowed when he saw you enter. “Another whore with a stethoscope. They just handing out medical degrees to anyone with a pussy now, huh?”

Your heart didn’t even skip. You had heard worse. But not recently. Not in Joel's ER.

You approached, eyes flicking to the security strap readouts, the monitor, the vitals. Elevated BP, slightly tachycardic, but stable. You stood just out of reach, arms crossed, voice perfectly even.

“Sir, you’re in the emergency department of Austin General. My name is Dr. —”

“Don’t want your fucking name. Don’t want your hands on me either,” he snarled. “Get me a real doctor.”

“That would be me,” you said, unfazed. “You assaulted a medical student. You will now deal with me.”

“You little bitch. You think you got any right to—”

He spat. At you.

The glob landed on your scrub top just left of your collar, thick and glistening.

You didn’t flinch. You refused to give him that.

But when he jerked forward against the cuffs—catching you off guard with a sudden surge of movement—his nail scratched across the base of your neck. Not deep, but enough to burn. Enough to make Marlene, who had followed you at a distance, shout for security.

Enough for Joel, who’d been passing by and caught the tail end of that violent motion, to come to a dead stop at the doorway like a goddamn thundercloud.

“What the fuck did he just do?” Joel’s voice was low, calm. Terrifying.

You blinked, your hand gently coming up to feel the small scratch. Warmth there. Nothing that needed more than a Tegaderm. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine.”

You turned to him, quiet, eyes locking. It was one of those moments where a single breath passed and everything unsaid between you stood on the edge of a blade.

“Let me treat him,” Joel said, stepping closer. His voice wasn’t a request.

“Joel.”

He turned to you—deliberate, slow. “You got a goddamn cut on your neck. You’re not treating him. You treat the people who deserve you.”

And then, to your absolute surprise, Joel stepped in.

The patient was smirking again. “Oh, now we got a real man in here,” he said, a mocking grin. “What are you, her boyfriend? Fucking lucky bastard.”

Joel didn’t say a word. He just walked over, gloved up in one fluid motion, and began to examine the man with a detached, surgical coldness that sent chills down your spine.

“What, she send you in ‘cause she can’t handle me? Tch. Figures. You look like the type to put a leash on your bitch, huh?”

Joel wrapped the BP cuff tight—too tight.

“You son of a—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Joel said evenly.

The man froze.

Joel leaned over the bed, voice low and sharp as a scalpel. “You don’t talk to my staff that way. You sure as hell don’t touch anyone. And if you so much as blink wrong again, you’re not gonna like how I handle it. You understand me?”

“You can’t talk to me like—”

Joel pressed the cuff bulb once more. The man hissed in pain.

“I asked if you understood.”

The man’s breath was shallow, face flushing again. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. Jesus. Fine.”

You stood just outside the curtain, your jaw tight, watching Joel work with a professionalism sharpened by fury. You’d seen him rough before—on the job, during trauma—but never like this. Never with his jaw clenched like that. Never with his hands steady as stone but his body bristling with quiet rage.

Kathleen appeared beside you at some point, arms crossed.

“Jesus,” she muttered, watching through the curtain. “What happened?”

“He assaulted Ellie,” you said. “Tried to hit me.”

Kathleen’s eyes flicked to the small scratch at your collar. Her mouth went tight. “Should’ve let Bill loose on him.”

Joel finished dressing the man’s wound with the grace of a wolf playing surgeon. Then he turned, gloves off, and met your gaze. His face was unreadable. But his eyes told you everything.

He was done being polite. For the rest of the shift—and likely the day—he’d be wound tight. He would do his job. But that thin line he normally walked between professionalism and unfiltered rage? It was gone.

You met him halfway in the hall, his hand brushing yours for a second, a brief, nearly invisible contact.

“You okay?” he asked, low, barely audible.

“I’m fine.”

“He hurt you.”

“Barely. Joel—don’t do something that’ll get you written up.”

He exhaled slowly, jaw ticking. “Let ‘em write me up.”

You stared at each other in that fluorescent hallway, footsteps pounding, phones ringing, voices shouting. But all you heard was him.

Behind you, Ellie reappeared, her face tight and pale but determined.

“I’m okay,” she said quietly, more to Joel than you. “He didn’t land it.”

Joel nodded once. “You handled yourself.”

Ellie smiled, just barely. “You going to tell HR about your bedside manner back there?”

He didn’t even look at her. “HR can kiss my ass.”

The ER didn’t slow. The next wave of traumas rolled in before you could even sit. A car crash. A fireworks explosion that nearly cost a teenager his hand. Jesse passed you gauze with one hand and held pressure on a neck wound with the other. Frank and Tommy burst through the ambulance bay doors with another critical, blood on their uniforms, sweat streaking their faces.

The air smelled like burnt flesh and Betadine. The walls were closing in with noise and heat and the never-ending, never fucking ending churn of human pain.

You didn’t stop. You didn’t flinch. Joel didn’t leave your side for more than five minutes at a time. And no one said a word about it. But they all saw. They always did. Even when they pretended they didn’t.

Especially when it came to you and Joel. The glances in the hall, the stillness that took over his body when your name was called out overhead, the way his eyes always found you first, scanning for blood, for bruises, for the smallest fucking thing that might’ve happened in the last ten minutes he hadn’t been watching.

Everyone saw it.

And no one said a goddamn word.

Because Joel Miller didn’t take kindly to anyone prying. And more importantly—he was a better doctor when you were around. They all knew it. It made them like you more. It made them protect you, in a way. Quietly. Stealthily. With a kind of respect that was hard-earned in a place like this.

But respect didn’t stop the world from burning. The ER was a fucking pressure cooker by the time the sun hit its apex. And even though you couldn’t see it from inside—no windows, no light except the harsh fluorescents—the shift in the air was tangible. It was the crescendo. The peak.

The waiting room had filled an hour ago. Now it was bursting. You heard the shouting first. Low and muffled from behind the secured double doors, the ones that kept the main ED from descending into chaos every time someone with a sprained ankle thought they were dying. Then the angry thuds—boots on linoleum, chairs scraping, someone pounding their fist on the glass partition near triage.

You caught the tail end of it from the nurse’s station. Kathleen had her jaw set, arms crossed, standing like a statue of stone as she radioed for Bill. She didn’t flinch as someone outside yelled about waiting four fucking hours with a sick kid. About how the government should burn for the state of the American healthcare system. About how their taxes should be buying better care.

How fucking ironic telling a healthcare worker that.

Jesse muttered under his breath as he wiped his hands on a towel, “People think ERs are fucking drive-thrus now.”

“They’ve always thought that,” Kathleen snapped.

You heard the buzz of the security door unlocking and then saw Bill stride out into the storm, calm as a mountain, broad-shouldered and stone-eyed. The crowd parted enough for him to speak in that deep, measured voice of his. You didn’t hear the words, but the tone was clear—this isn’t a negotiation.

Someone pushed. Big mistake.

Bill moved faster than anyone expected, crowding the man backward with one hand braced on his chest, steering him toward the wall. “Don’t. Touch. My. Staff,” you heard him growl.

The man’s arms lifted—weak, blustering, drunk or angry or both—but Bill wasn’t even winded. He radioed for APD, kept himself between the chaos and the front desk, and when the doors buzzed shut again ten seconds later, the noise behind them didn’t stop—but it dulled.

“Fourth of fucking July,” Marlene muttered as she walked by. “Every goddamn year.”

The real storm, though—the one that mattered—was what came through the ambulance bay.

The first call came at 10:41. Child. Near-drowning. Backyard pool. No adult supervision. ETA: two minutes.

Then another. And another. And another.

You stood in Trauma One as Maria directed the incoming flow like a symphony conductor, her tablet clenched in her hand like a sword. “Put the six-year-old in Trauma Two. Get Pediatrics paged down here. Respiratory on standby. Tell CT we need head and C-spine for all drownings, intubate as needed.”

“Where the fuck are we supposed to put them?” Jesse asked, not even trying to hide his frustration. “We’re at max capacity!”

Maria’s voice sliced through the noise. “Make room. Stack if you have to. Double rooms. Trauma hall overflow. I don’t give a shit. We are not turning away pediatric codes.”

And you were moving before you even processed it. Pulling on gloves, snapping goggles over your eyes, shoving trauma shears into your pocket.

The first kid—boy, seven or eight—was cyanotic, limp, his chest rising only slightly under bag ventilation. Joel took point, barking orders with brutal precision.

“1 mg epinephrine IV push. Get ready to tube. Peds crash cart now. We need a line—Jesse, get that line. You, get that IO if you have to.”

“Got it.”

“Push faster.”

The parents were in the hallway screaming. You didn’t stop. There was no room for that. You could fall apart later.

The second kid—blonde, five, blue lips, vomit around her mouth—was rushed into your room. You caught her from the gurney mid-transfer, nearly dropping to your knees with the dead weight.

“Started CPR on scene,” Tommy said breathlessly. “No pulse for four minutes. They pulled her from the shallow end.”

You moved on instinct. “Start compressions. Get the crash cart. I need 0.01 mg/kg epi. Let’s go.”

You worked until your arms felt like jelly. Until sweat was dripping down your spine, soaking through your black scrubs. Until your fingers ached from bagging, from checking pulses, from writing code notes that your brain refused to absorb. You snapped orders, half-yelled at Abby for hesitating too long on a tube size, and didn’t even feel guilty.

These were kids. And they were dying.

By the time you got the third one—a boy, barely three—he was already cold. Tommy handed you the chart with blood on his cheek, his eyes hollow.

“Nothing in the field,” he said.

You stared at the kid. You didn’t say anything. You intubated anyway. You tried.

Joel came in halfway through and didn’t even look at the clock. He just picked up the ambu bag, his face carved from stone.

“Come on, baby boy,” he murmured, almost too quiet to hear. “Come on. Breathe.”

The rhythm of the bagging. The flatline. The futile compressions.

You heard Mel whisper, “He’s gone.”

But you kept going. Just long enough. Just to make sure.

When you finally called it—when the silence came—you felt it ripple through the room like a knife through skin.

Joel didn’t move. He looked down at the boy for a long time. Then up at you. His jaw clenched.

You looked away. You left the room. And still, the day didn’t stop.

Another crash. Fireworks embedded in a thigh. A man who’d tried to jump a fence with sparklers in both hands and shattered his femur on landing. Someone else with a roman candle burn across their cheek and no fucking idea how they got it.

Again. It was daylight. Why the fuck are people doing fireworks already.

You caught a glimpse of Ellie across the trauma hallway, covered in soot, helping Riley wrap a dressing. Her hands were steady. Her mouth was set.

Marlene passed you a water and said, “You need to drink something or you’re going to pass out.”

You didn’t even realize your hands were shaking.

By the time you made it back to Joel, he was standing at the med station with his palms flat on the counter, shoulders hunched, breathing slow and heavy like a man trying not to crack his ribs from the inside out.

You stood behind him. Quiet. Present.

“He was so young,” you said, voice hoarse.

He nodded once. “I know.”

“We did everything.”

“I know.”

You didn’t touch him. You couldn’t. Not here. But his hand brushed yours when you reached for the pen, just the smallest press of his pinky against your skin. It was enough.

You stayed like that for a breath. Then two. Then the radio crackled again. Another code. Another ambulance. No rest. Not today. And not now.

It was barely past eleven and the ER had transformed from a battlefield into something more biblical. Plagues of chaos. Floods of noise. Screams from the trauma bays, sobbing from the waiting room, blood on the linoleum, and no time to wipe it up before someone else was bleeding over it.

You were halfway through stitching up a forehead lac—nine-year-old girl, tripped chasing her older brother with a sparkler—when your pager buzzed again. Rapid succession. Three back-to-back calls.

You looked down at the kid, her tiny legs swinging off the gurney, lips trembling.

“You’re doing amazing,” you told her. “Almost done, sweetheart. Just five more.”

She gave a brave nod, but her chin wobbled anyway. Jesse handed you the next suture without speaking, the tension behind his eyes saying more than words ever could.

The second the stitches were in, you stripped your gloves and tossed them toward the bin, already moving. The noise hit you in waves as you emerged back into the hallway. Another stretcher wheeled past, pushed by Tommy and Frank, both breathless.

“Sparkler injury!” Frank shouted. “We’ve got a foreign object in the left orbit. Firework’s still in the goddamn eye!”

You blinked. “Still in?”

“It’s lodged. Like a fucking spear.”

They wheeled the teen—maybe fifteen, maybe sixteen—into Trauma Four. Blood was pouring from the socket, and he was screaming loud enough to rattle your skull. The jagged metal tip of a bent, burnt-out sparkler jutted from the flesh where his eye should’ve been. His hands were tied down. One eye wide with terror.

“Why the fuck are people lighting fireworks before the sun even sets?” you muttered, pulling on a fresh gown.

“Because Americans are stupid,” Marlene said flatly, handing you saline flushes.

It was chaos in the room. Abby tried to push meds, but the kid kept thrashing.

“Stop, stop, stop,” Abby shouted. “I can’t get the vein!”

“Hold him down,” you snapped. “Get a sedative on board. Joel!”

He was already beside you, steady hands gripping the boy’s shoulders, voice firm and low, “You gotta stay still, kid. We’re gonna fix you up. Just hold still.”

“But my eye! My fucking eye—!”

“We see it,” you said. “You’re not gonna lose more if you let us help. We’ve got you.”

Blood ran down your gloves. The sparkler was still hot when Tommy pulled it from the wound—safely, slowly, with Joel guiding the angle—and the kid passed out from the pain.

You stepped back, adrenaline crashing into your bloodstream. No time to breathe. No time to break. The second you stepped out of Trauma Four, Ellie sprinted up, pale and winded.

“There’s a kid in triage with full-body hives,” she gasped. “Face is like—bad.They think it’s an allergic reaction. Face paint.”

You blinked. “Fucking face paint?”

“Red, white, and blue stripes,” she said, still panting. “Apparently it was ‘organic.’ Mom said he’s never had allergies before.”

“Where is he?”

“Exam 6. Jesse’s already pushing Benadryl but he’s wheezing. He’s scared.Like full-on panicking.”

You followed her down the hall, cutting through noise and stretchers and the rising scent of blood and chlorine and burning hair. The kid was around six, covered in angry red welts, his face ballooning, lips beginning to swell.

His mom was sobbing.

“I didn’t know—oh God, I didn’t know—I thought it was just paint, it was from Whole Foods, it said natural—”

“It’s okay,” you said quickly, crouching down. “Hey buddy, can you take a deep breath for me?”

He tried. It wheezed out in a thin rasp.

“Epi,” you said. “Right now. Auto-injector to the thigh. Push fluids. O2.”

Ellie already had the mask on him. Jesse handed you the pen.You jammed the injector into his leg through his shorts. He jolted, eyes wide, and then started to cry. That was a goodsign.

“Good job,” you said, breathless. “You’re gonna be okay, kid. Just keep breathing for me, alright?”

A nurse from Peds rolled in with an Epi drip and you handed off. Your hands were shaking again. You didn’t even realize it until Jesse brushed his fingers against yours.

“You alright?”

You looked down at your scrubs. More blood. More paint. More fucking sweat.

You nodded. “Yeah.”

You were lying. Your stomach hadn’t stopped twisting since the last code. But you kept going. Because that’s what everyone here did.

You barely made it two steps out of the room before Henry came barreling up the hallway.

“Doctor!” he wheezed. “We’ve got a—uh—a patient from a hot dog eating contest! They—they passed out mid-competition. Obstructed airway, I think. They’re coding in Bay Eight.”

You ran. By the time you got there, Riley and Mel were already doing compressions. A man—mid-thirties, athletic build—was purple-faced and frothing at the mouth. His stomach was distended and there was a faint smear of ketchup across his cheek.

“Hot dog still in there?” you asked, snapping gloves on.

Riley nodded. “We tried Heimlich. Failed. We’re suctioning but it’s not clearing.”

You stepped up. “Forceps. Laryngoscope. Bag valve.”

You shoved the scope into his mouth, peered past the pink folds of tissue. There it was—a slick, greasy chunk of frankfurter lodged in the airway like a cork.

Joel appeared behind you.

“You good?” he asked.

“Hand me the damn forceps.”

He did. You fished for it—deep, too deep—and pulled it free with a sickening squelch. The hot dog thunked to the floor like something cursed. Mel jumped in with the ambu bag.

“Pulse is back,” she confirmed a moment later. “It’s weak. But it’s back.”

“Never,” Riley panted, sweat plastering her baby hairs to her face, “never fucking entering a hot dog contest. Ever.”

You were leaning against the wall now, chest heaving, and your neck throbbed where that earlier patient had scratched you. You’d forgotten about it. The pain was back now, a dull ache that pulsed with your racing heart.

Joel stood in front of you, brow furrowed. “You’re not okay.”

You looked up. “Neither are you.”

“I know,” he said. “But I’m not the one bleeding.”

You glanced down. The scratch had reopened, blood soaking the collar of your scrub top. Not much. Not dangerous. Just another wound in a long, long list.

You swallowed hard. “Just a scratch.”

Joel didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. He just stood beside you as the chaos surged around you again.

Because there was no end to it. The doors would keep opening. The stretchers would keep rolling. And you’d keep going. Because no one else could.

That was the brutal, blistering truth of it.

You stood there—goggles tight on your face, blood crusted on your collar, gloves pulled on with a snap and your spine locked straight—not because you had some noble sense of duty or unshakable resolve, but because you couldn’t afford to stop. Because every time you even thought about sitting down, someone coded. Someone crashed. A kid stopped breathing. A man lost an eye. A woman sobbed over her infant’s tiny hand as the nurses tried to get a line in, whispering, “please, please, please” like a rosary.

And now, apparently, someone had blown themselves up in a fucking Porta-Potty.

"Incoming," Tommy said grimly, as the double doors from the bay burst open.

“Trauma One!” Maria barked from across the hub. “Now!”

Frank came in with the gurney, face tight, jaw locked. The smell hit first—burned fabric, scorched hair, shit. Literal human waste, clinging to the burned man’s clothes, his skin. His legs were torn up—open wounds studded with plastic and fragments of shattered porcelain from the toilet itself. One hand was charred black. His skin was red and sloughing, patches of it bubbling.

"Jesus Christ," Jesse muttered, yanking a mask up over his nose.

"Firework in a Porta-John," Tommy said as he wheeled the guy in. "M-80. Don’t ask me how."

"Someone fucking would on the Fourth," you muttered, snapping on another gown. “Where was it placed?”

“In the bowl,” Frank said. “He sat on it.”

“Of course he did.”

Joel was already across from you, snapping on a pair of surgical gloves with a sound that could slice through bone. His jaw was clenched, face unreadable.

"Vitals are trash," Mel said, sliding in with a monitor. "BP’s in the tank. O2 sat’s crashing. We need to intubate now."

You grabbed the laryngoscope while Joel prepped the tube. He was calm—dead calm—the kind of calm that comes before an explosion. His voice cut through the room with that hard, sharp edge.

“Lidocaine in. Cricoid pressure. Bag him.”

Jesse handed you the blade. You guided it into place, careful and precise. The airway was distorted but patent. Joel took over. The tube slid in on the first pass. Of course it did.

You looked down at the man’s legs, charred and littered with embedded shrapnel and what looked like wet confetti.

“Someone tell me that’s not toilet paper in his femoral wound.”

“Oh, it is,” Joel growled.

Marlene gagged.

“Flush the wounds. High-dose antibiotics. He’s septic already, or he’s about to be.”

You cleaned what you could while Kathleen handed you a syringe. “Chemical rash on his back. He landed in the tank.”

“Tank was full,” Tommy added helpfully, stepping out of the way.

“Jesus,” you muttered.

“He’s not gonna make it through the hour,” Joel said, bluntly. “Let’s get plastics and trauma surgery down here. He needs a burn unit bed but I’m betting San Antonio’s full.”

You didn’t ask how he knew that. You just nodded.

“Let’s call it in anyway.”

There wasn’t a single clear patch of this man’s skin left untouched. He looked like the Fourth of July had tried to swallow him whole and shit him back out.

You worked fast, coordinating with a speed that could only be honed by months—years—in this warzone of a hospital. Joel didn’t look at you once, not directly, but he moved around you like gravity, always one step ahead, always covering your blind side. He handled the patient with a kind of ruthless efficiency that others might’ve called cold.

You knew better. Joel wasn’t cold. Joel was focused. He didn’t waste softness on the people who didn’t deserve it. That man on the table? He might have deserved pity. He sure as fuck wasn’t getting it.

Joel tore his gloves off once the patient was stabilized enough for surgery and tossed them in the bin like they’d personally offended him. His hands shook once—barely noticeable—before he shoved them into his pockets.

“Fucking idiot,” he muttered.

You didn’t disagree.

And you didn’t stop moving.

Because the very next second, Ellie poked her head in.

“Uh, we’ve got a kid in Exam 3? Swallowed a toothpick? Like…a flag one. From a cupcake.”

You blinked. “A flag?”

“Yeah, like the American flag. From the dollar store. She’s five.”

“Is she choking?”

“No, but the family’s…a lot.”

“How a lot?”

“You’ll see.”

You left Joel in Trauma One and headed toward Exam 3. You could hear them before you opened the door.

The mother was sobbing. Loudly. Hiccuping breaths and wailing cries like she was auditioning for a soap opera. The father was yelling—at the kid, at the mother, at the air. Clearly drunk already, beer-breath sharp in the room.

“She’s gonna die,” the mom wailed. “My baby’s gonna die from a cupcake!”

“She ain’t fuckin’ dyin’,” the dad snapped, swaying slightly. “Y’all makin’ a big deal about nothin’!”

“Why did you even let her have the cupcake? You always do this—you don’t watch her!”

“She’s five, she can eat a goddamn cupcake! We all did when we were kids!”

“She swallowed a fucking flag, Kyle!”

In the corner, Grandma was sitting in a plastic chair, swaying gently and singing America the Beautiful off-key and with unnerving enthusiasm.

“O beautiful… for spacious skies…”

The child—the only reasonable person in the room—sat on the bed kicking her heels, totally unbothered.

“I feel fine,” she said. “Can I have another cupcake?”

Dina was already in the room, crouched next to the mother, talking in that soft, steady voice she used when everything was teetering on collapse.

“She’s okay,” Dina said. “She’s alert, she’s talking, she’s not choking. Let’s just take a breath, alright?”

The mom sobbed harder. You stepped in, hands in the air like you were entering a hostage negotiation.

“Hi, I’m one of the doctors. I hear we had a little cupcake situation.”

“She swallowed a flag,” the dad said proudly. “America!”

“She’s fine,” the mom cried. “But what if she’s not? What if it cuts her up on the inside?”

“Ma’am,” you said gently, approaching the little girl. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Kaylee.”

“Hi, Kaylee. Can I press on your tummy a little?”

She nodded solemnly. “You’re pretty.”

You smiled. “So are you.”

You examined her—no abdominal tenderness, no signs of perforation, vitals stable. You made a note to get an abdominal X-ray, just to make sure the damn flag wasn’t sharp enough to do damage. But this wasn’t a code. This was a circus.

Dina stood up slowly, easing the mom back onto the chair.

“She’s gonna be fine,” she said firmly. “We’re gonna monitor her and make sure everything passes okay. But you need to breathe.”

The grandma took that moment to hit a high note.

“...for purple mountain majesty…”

You looked at Dina. Dina looked at you.

“I’ll give them some water,” she muttered. “And maybe a Valium.”

You squeezed her arm gently. “You’re a national treasure.”

Dina smirked. “Someone has to be.”

You stepped out of the room and leaned your head against the cool wall for just a moment. Just a moment of silence. Of stillness. But there was no such thing today.

There were voices shouting again. Footsteps pounding. Another trauma called overhead. And Joel’s voice, snapping sharp in the distance—

“Get me a fucking gurney now or I’ll throw this guy over my shoulder myself!”

You straightened your spine. Wiped your hands. And ran toward it.

You didn’t know what room it was yet. You didn’t know who was bleeding, coding, or screaming—but the air in the ER had changed again, like it had decided to climb one more goddamn rung on the ladder to hell.

By now it had bled into noon, and that meant it wasn’t just a peak anymore. This was the full boil. No more build-up. No more lulls. Just the ER at its most unhinged, bloated with bodies and chaos and pain, stinking of chlorine and antiseptic and sunburned skin.

You rounded the corner, expecting another trauma code, expecting the worst—and instead, you got two teenage boys, one on a wheelchair, the other pushing him with the nonchalant energy of a kid who thought his own mortality was at least a decade away.

“We tried to do a Slip ’n Slide,” said the one in the chair, grinning despite the fact that his wrist was visibly fractured and his shoulder was dislocated at an angle that made Jesse wince. “It was sick.”

“We used trash bags and Dawn,” his friend said, absolutely proud of the decision. “It’s, like, eco-friendly, right?”

“Yeah,” the injured one added. “Until he slipped and hit the sprinkler head buried in the lawn. I thought his bone came out of his arm, but it was just soap and panic.”

“Yo, are you my doctor?” the boy said, eyes dropping to your badge, then slowly crawling back up to your eyes. “Because like…you’re so hot.”

You blinked. Behind you, Jesse choked on his laugh.

“Yeah,” the boy continued, winking despite his very obvious pain. “I think I just dislocated my heart.”

“Okay,” you said, stepping in. “We’re going to get your vitals, your arm back in its socket, and absolutely never talk like that to a medical professional again.”

“But if I die—”

“You won’t.”

“—will you come to my funeral?”

“I’ll resuscitate you just to kill you again.”

Jesse wheeled the kid into Exam 5, cackling.

“I love this job sometimes,” he muttered. “Teens flirting with trauma. Classic.”

You didn’t get far before Joel appeared. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t have to.

Just looked at the kid, then looked at you, and that single blink—slow and pointed—said all of it.

Joel was not the jealous type.

Joel was the territorial type. Like a wolf. Like a loaded weapon just waiting to be cocked.

“Relax,” you muttered under your breath as you passed him, shoulder brushing his. “He’s seventeen and concussed.”

Joel growled low in his throat. Actually growled. “Little bastard keeps looking at your ass, he’ll leave here with more than a cast.”

You fought back a smirk. “He’s barely out of diapers.”

Joel shot you a look like that wasn’t the goddamn point.

But then Tess was suddenly at your side, moving at speed, hair half-falling from her bun, eyes wild and voice sharp.

“Hey—Miller. You. Room 12. Right now. I don’t have time for this.”

“What is it?” you asked, already falling into step beside her.

She didn’t break stride. “Geriatric. Took too much THC lemonade. She thinks she’s ascending. I need backup before she climbs the fucking bed rails.”

You and Joel both followed.

Inside Room 12 was an elderly woman in a red-white-and-blue shawl, lying in a hospital gown with her arms stretched out like she was ready to be crucified.

“I hear the trumpets,” she whispered, eyes glassy. “They’re calling me home.”

Ellie stood nearby holding an EKG lead in one hand and what looked like an empty bottle of artisanal lemonade in the other. “Her granddaughter brought this,” she said. “She thought it was regular lemonade.”

“I thought it was an Arnold Palmer,” the woman corrected, voice dreamy. “It tasted like freedom.”

“She chugged half the bottle in the sun,” Tess explained. “Heart rate’s 140 and rising.”

Joel moved to the monitor, eyes flicking over the numbers. “BP’s shit too. You got a line?”

“Yeah,” said Mel, double-checking the drip. “But she keeps pulling at it.”

“Ma’am,” you said gently, approaching the bedside. “You’re not dying. You just had too much cannabis.”

Her eyes found Joel. They widened. “Saint Peter?”

Joel stared. “No.”

“Have you come to escort me?” she whispered, reaching out a hand.

Joel took a single step back.

“I’m ready,” she continued, eyes glistening. “Take me into the light.”

“She needs Ativan,” Abby said, handing it off. “And maybe like…a priest.”

“Just keep her in the bed,” Tess said. “She keeps trying to crawl toward the halogen light in the ceiling.”

Joel turned away, muttering, “I fucking hate this holiday.”

You looked at him, lifting a brow. “You hate every holiday.”

“Yeah,” he said. “And this one’s the worst.”

It would’ve been funny, if the ER hadn’t chosen that exact moment to go off the rails again.

Marlene poked her head in. “You guys got a throat bleeder in Exam 2. Woman swallowed a metal bristle from a grill brush. Says she noticed halfway through her hot dog but didn’t wanna be rude.”

“What the fuck,” you muttered.

“She’s stable,” Marlene added. “But her sister’s already yelling.”

You and Joel exchanged a look. Of course.

You followed Marlene down the hall, Ellie falling in behind you with Riley trailing behind her, both clutching their tablets and trying to finish charting from the last five traumas. Henry passed you in the other direction, visibly sweating, muttering something about a broken ankle in the hallway again.

Inside Exam 2, the patient sat clutching her throat, blood on her napkin. Next to her stood a woman in her fifties with perfectly curled hair, a clipboard, and the righteous fury of a suburban mom who read one article once.

“She swallowed what?” Joel asked, arms folded.

“A grill bristle,” you said, eyeing the bleeding. “Probably from one of those wire brushes. They snap off sometimes. I read about this.”

The sister stepped in front of the bed like a lawyer at a press conference.

“This is why I tell everyone not to use metal tools when cooking. There are non-toxic options. Bamboo. Silicone. But nobody listens to me. And now this happens!”

“Ma’am,” Joel said flatly. “I don’t give a shit about your non toxic options right now. Your sister is bleeding.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re excused,” he said, walking past her to check the monitor. “Let the doctors work.”

You fought a smile and grabbed gloves. The woman on the bed gave you a tired, slightly woozy grin.

“I mean, it was a good hot dog,” she rasped. “Didn’t wanna ruin the vibe.”

“Next time,” you said, gently tilting her head, “ruin the vibe.”

She chuckled. Then winced.

Dina appeared at the doorway, her voice a breathless sigh. “There’s a baby on the floor in the waiting room trying to eat a Pop-It firework. No parents in sight.”

“I’m gonna commit a felony,” Joel muttered.

“I’ll hold your pager,” you said.

Everyone laughed. For half a second, it felt like the room wasn’t collapsing. Then the lights flickered. The power hiccupped. And another trauma was called over the PA.

You looked at Joel. He was already moving. And you followed him. Because no one else could.

That sentence followed you like a goddamn shadow.

It echoed in your head as you and Joel passed through the final security doors into the waiting room—a wall of sweaty, shouting, sunburned humanity. It was packed to the gills. Coughing kids, cranky geriatrics, one guy snoring against the vending machine, another pacing the floor in flip-flops and nothing else but an American flag wrapped around his waist like a towel.

The Fourth of July in Texas. The absolute worst kind of magic.

And right in the middle of all of it—by the edge of the grimy tiled floor, next to an overflowing trash can—was a baby. A real-ass baby.

Maybe nine months old. Crawling across the fucking floor with a soggy diaper and an open Pop-It firework gripped in his drool-slick hand like it was a holy relic.

“God damn it,” Joel muttered, and you were already moving.

You scooped the baby up before he could slam the firework into the floor. He shrieked in protest, flailed in your arms, and then—somehow—managed to sneeze directly into your mouth.

You froze.

“Did he just—?”

“He fucking did,” Joel confirmed.

Your jaw clenched.

Joel took the firework from the kid’s hand and hurled it into the nearest trash bin like it had personally offended him. Then he looked around the room with all the tenderness of a hunting dog tracking a wounded deer.

“Whose kid is this?!” he bellowed.

Silence. No one moved. No one looked up.

“I said—whose fucking kid?!”

You rocked the baby gently on your hip. “He doesn’t have a wristband. He’s not registered.”

Joel scanned the crowd, eyes narrowing. “We’re calling CPS.”

“I’ll call 'em,” Dina said, appearing from nowhere, eyes exhausted and jaw tight. “Jesus fucking Christ. This is the third abandoned kid today. Do people think this is a goddamn daycare?”

“Apparently,” Joel growled.

The baby cooed in your arms and drooled on your scrub top.

You sighed. “Okay. This one’s mine now. I’ll call him July.”

Joel looked at the baby. The baby blinked at him, completely unbothered.

Joel didn’t smile. But you could tell he wanted to. He just touched the baby's foot making him giggle.

Then the screaming started. Not from the baby. From the ambulance bay.

You both turned just in time to see Tommy and Frank wheel in a gurney that looked…wrong. The patient wasn’t lying flat. She was…angled? Propped up in some kind of twisted plastic hellscape. And she was howling.

“I’m stuck!” she screeched. “I cannot feel my ass!”

“She got melted into the chair,” Frank explained as they wheeled her past the desk. “Aluminum frame, plastic seat. Left it out in the sun too long. She sat down and… boom. Cheeks fused.”

“She tried to stand up and the chair came with her,” Tommy added, still holding the IV bag. “Had to cut the lawn hose to fit her through the door.”

You blinked. Marlene blinked. Joel’s eye twitched.

“Get her into Procedure Three,” Maria barked from behind the main hub. “And prep a burn tray. This is gonna be a surgical extraction.”

You followed the gurney in, July passed off to Dina, as Joel grabbed the trauma shears. Dina disappeared down the hall to hand the baby off to Social Work. Jesse, Tess, and Riley were already in the room. Henry stood against the wall, pale as a sheet, staring at the patient like she was some rare museum exhibit.

“Don’t just stand there,” Joel snapped at him. “You’ve seen an ass before.”

“Not like this,” Henry whispered.

The patient was red in the face, gripping the sides of the chair like it was a ride at an amusement park.

“She’s got second-degree burns on the posterior,” Mel said, pulling on gloves. “We’re gonna have to cut the chair off in sections.”

“She’s got third-degree pride damage,” Abby muttered.

“I heard that!” the woman yelled.

“We’ll get you out, ma’am,” Tess said, rolling up her sleeves. “But you need to hold still. If you twist, you’ll rip skin.”

“I’ve been twisted since brunch,” the woman moaned. “Do it fast!”

You stepped in with trauma scissors and started cutting the straps of her sundress where it had fused to the chair legs. Joel knelt at the base, prying at melted plastic.

“Jesse, saline. And get me lidocaine. Abby—scalpel. Riley—monitor. Now.”

They moved. You moved. The chair creaked as Joel wedged the blunt scissors into the side and began to snip.

“You’re gonna feel pressure,” you warned.

“I feel humiliation!” the woman shouted.

The room was chaos. Screams. Grunts. Sweat. Abby nearly slipped in a puddle of saline. Jesse started humming The Star Spangled Banner under his breath like it was going to save his soul.

“Pressure coming,” Joel warned.

“Now,” you said. “Mel—on the back panel.”

One final snap—and the chair split. The woman yelped. Joel caught her before she could slide off the gurney. Burns covered the backs of her thighs and ass. Angry red welts. Plastic still clinging to the skin.

“Get burn cream,” Joel barked. “And wrap it. We’ll get plastics to consult. If this gets infected—”

“It won’t,” you said quickly. “We won’t let it.”

The woman sniffled. “Do I… still have an ass?”

You nodded solemnly. “It’s just less optimistic now.”

Joel gave you a look. But it was almost—almost—amused.

Jesse gently covered her with a sheet. “You’ll be fine, ma’am. But maybe next time, check the chair temperature before you park it.”

“Fuck you,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

Tess wiped her forehead. “Somebody better bring me a margarita after this.”

“I got a jug of hospital juice,” Riley offered.

“Go to hell.”

Ellie leaned in through the curtain, tablet clutched in one hand. “Someone just walked in with a buncha sparklers taped to their chest.”

You stared. She stared. You sighed. Then reached for your stethoscope.

You didn’t even get the damn thing around your neck before it happened. The world cracked in half.

A boom, deep and cavernous, roared through the hospital like a goddamn earthquake. The lights flickered. The floor shook. Somewhere far off, car alarms screamed to life. You had just turned to Joel, mouth open to ask what the fuck was that, when the second explosion hit.

It was louder. Closer.

You staggered, caught the edge of the stretcher to steady yourself. From down the hall came the sound of shattering glass. An IV pole tipped, clattered to the floor. Somewhere, someone screamed. The lights dimmed, buzzed, then held steady, flickering like they were considering going out entirely.

Joel was already moving. You didn’t even see him react—just felt it. A hand on your arm. Hard. Gripping. Yanking you in, fast.

He pulled you to him, one arm curling instinctively around your back, his chest flush to yours as the wall behind you both trembled under the blast’s echo.

You could feel his heart racing through his scrubs. His breath was sharp, tight, furious.

“Are you hurt?” His voice was low and sharp, a breath away from a growl.

“No,” you panted. “I’m—what the fuck just happened?”

Across the ER, controlled chaos exploded.

Maria’s voice bellowed from the central hub, clear and commanding, her voice slicing through the panic. “Mass casualty protocol! All trauma bays cleared now. Abby, Mel, start staging the clean beds! Riley, Henry, grab gurneys and start lining the main hallway. Jesse, Marlene, alert radiology and prep the portable X-ray machines—now!”

Joel looked out the window. Smoke. Billowing, black smoke rising from the supermarket lot across the street. People running. Screaming.

“Oh, fuck me,” Kathleen said from the nurse’s desk, eyes wide. “It’s the firework truck.”

“The illegal one,” Marlene added, her voice flat with horror. “That vendor with the fucking tent full of black market shit—it’s gone.”

“Exploded,” said Ellie, appearing at your side, breathless and pale. “It just—exploded. Twice. We felt it inside.”

You looked toward the windows. The supermarket parking lot was chaos. Fireworks still going off mid-air—rockets bursting into reds and greens like it was New Year’s instead of noon. People were running toward the hospital, some limping, some screaming.

A kid was carried by a man soaked in blood.

A woman fell into the bushes near the entrance.

The hospital doors hadn’t even fully opened before Bill was there, already barking into his radio, hand on his hip, stance like a fucking soldier. “We’ve got multiple casualties inbound. Lock this place down, route ‘em to emergency access. Tell APD we need crowd control now. No civilians inside the ER.”

“Tell Fire they’re still igniting,” Tommy shouted as he hauled a backboard off a gurney. “Shit’s not out yet. We’re gonna have more.”

Maria turned to you and Joel. “You two. Trauma Three. First waves’ll be here in thirty seconds.”

The doors burst open again. Sirens now. So many sirens.

Then they came.

The first patient—dragged in by two strangers, clothes still smoking—was screaming, half his face red and blistering, the skin peeling off his arm like plastic wrap. “It was in my goddamn truck!” he yelled. “I told him not to park it next to the propane—”

“Vitals tanking,” Mel called, rushing up with the monitor. “BP 84 over 40!”

“Get fluids. We’re intubating now,” Joel barked. “You—” he pointed at Henry, who flinched— “cut that shirt off and watch for chest expansion.”

“I’ve got an O2 mask!” Ellie shouted, barreling in behind him.

Abby was already trying to start a line, fumbling.

“Abby—center that angle or you’re gonna blow it,” Joel snapped. “Get out of the way. I’ll do it.”

You slipped in with the burn kit, pushing the cart to the side of the bed. “We need lidocaine, silvadene, morphine. He’s gonna crash.”

Second patient came in a minute later.

Woman. Late twenties. Not screaming.

Because she couldn’t breathe.

A rocket had shot straight through the windshield of her car. Glass shredded her chest. One rib cracked. The pressure had collapsed her lung.

“She’s hypoxic,” Jesse called, wheeling her into Trauma Two. “Sat’s in the fifties. Trachea’s shifting. We’ve got a tension pneumo.”

“I’m needling her now!” you said, already gloved up.

Joel moved to your side without hesitation.

“Three fingers below the clavicle. Do it fast or she’s gone,” he said, voice calm, commanding. Like the world wasn’t on fire.

You pierced the chest wall with the needle, felt the rush of air, watched her chest rise.

“She’s stabilizing,” Riley said, breath catching.

Another one.

A child.

Carried in by a stranger, his leg soaked in blood, a metal shard sticking out just above the knee. Screaming. Wailing.

“Shrapnel,” Marlene said. “Straight from the explosion.”

Dina rushed in behind them, voice shaking. “Mom’s not with him. Said she ran off looking for his little brother—he’s alone.”

You pushed the adult crash cart aside, swapping in peds trauma.

“Stay with me, kiddo,” you whispered, eyes locking with his. “You’re not alone anymore.”

Joel appeared beside you, hands already working to stabilize the limb. “Get that pressure dressing on. Marlene—lidocaine local. I’m not cutting metal until he’s numb.”

“Roger that.”

“We can’t pull it here,” you said. “Not without imaging. We don’t know what it’s resting against.”

Joel’s jaw clenched. “Then we work around it. Until radiology’s ready.”

The ER was vibrating with sound. The doors slammed open again, and Frank came in pushing another gurney.

“Burns and lacerations,” he said. “Lost a shoe, still has a firework tube in his hand.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Tess muttered, meeting him at the door with a splint and gauze. “Get me a tray. And a scalpel. I think we’re cutting around this one.”

“Where’s Ortho?” Maria asked, hands on her hips. “Someone page Ortho, I want consults in fifteen minutes or I’m dragging them down here myself!”

“Dr. Gail is in surgery!” Riley shouted back. “I’ll grab second call!”

Kathleen blew past the hub with four gurneys trailing behind her like a train, three med techs jogging to keep up. Her face was stone.

“Ten more ambulances on the way,” she called. “The parking lot’s a war zone.They’re staging by triage. We need everyone outside of Trauma Hall to prep overflow.”

You grabbed a portable monitor and a trauma checklist, snapped at Henry to follow.

He hesitated.

Joel barked—“Go.”

Henry went.

You didn’t see where Joel ended up for the next ten minutes. You were too busy. You were stitching, packing wounds, answering rapid-fire questions from Ellie, who was practically vibrating from adrenaline. You passed Jesse in the hallway, sweat pouring down his face, three soaked gowns already in the trash. You heard Abby shouting for a bolus in Room Seven, saw Mel carrying a tray of wrapped scalpels like her life depended on it.

And then—

Joel was beside you again.

You didn’t know how long it had been.

His eyes scanned you fast, checking every inch of you in a breathless beat.

“You okay?”

You nodded.

“You?”

He didn’t answer.

But his fingers brushed your hand for just a second. Just long enough to say still here.

And then more patients poured in.

And you both ran toward it.

There wasn’t even time to think about how long it had been since you’d eaten, or went to the bathroom, or even blinked without your eyeballs stinging. The air in the ER had thickened—hot, metallic, sour with sweat and sterilized burn dressings. Every inch of your black scrubs was soaked in blood, saline, and god knew what else. You couldn’t tell where your pulse stopped and the noise around you began.

There was no clock anymore. Just waves of patients. Gurneys rolling in, IV poles clattering against corners, bloody towels slapping the linoleum. You moved through it like muscle memory—stitching, bagging, ordering scans, barking instructions to interns who hadn’t even hit their first bowel movement on the job.

Joel was a few paces ahead, pulling a C-collar from a wall mount, jaw tight as iron, barking over his shoulder to Riley, who was jogging to keep up with a trauma sheet.

“Have the trauma room ready before I get there, or I’m working on this guy on the floor. Got it?”

“Got it, Dr. Miller,” she said breathlessly, already sprinting down the hall.

You saw Henry leaning into a hallway crash cart, face pale and shiny. He’d just finished assisting with a child whose femur had shattered clean through the skin. His gloved hands were still shaking, and you wanted to say something—something decent—but the next gurney was already coming in, and someone was shouting for an airway and suction, and the moment was gone.

Then the doors opened again.

You heard the change in the room before you saw who it was.

There was a shift—like the sound dropped an octave. Like gravity changed hands.

A firefighter came in.

He wasn’t screaming.

He wasn’t saying anything.

That was worse.

Frank was wheeling him, and the medic at his side looked fucking wrecked.

“Flash burns,” Frank shouted. “Second and third degree, neck down to his hip. Helmet took most of the blast. He was on top of the truck when it popped the second time.”

“Vitals?” Joel asked, already snapping on gloves.

“Dropping. BP’s shit, O2 sat’s low 90s. He needs fluids, airway’s tightening.”

The man’s skin was cracked, dark, curled. Parts of it bubbled, weeping plasma.

“Get him to Trauma One,” Joel barked. “You—” He pointed to Ellie, who was two steps away. “Get Respiratory down here right now.”

“He’s trying to talk,” you said, leaning in.

You crouched beside the gurney as Frank slowed it beside the trauma bay. The firefighter’s lips were blistered. His voice was gravel.

“My…my wife’s here…”

“We’ll find her,” you said. “But you need to stay with us, alright? You’re at Austin General. You’re safe.”

He blinked slowly. “It hurts.”

“I know. I know it does.”

“Push fentanyl, IV,” Joel said, already cutting away what was left of the turnout gear. The skin underneath peeled off with the fabric.

“Motherfucker,” he growled, tossing the gauze aside. “This is third-degree over at least thirty percent. Get the burn team on standby.”

Tess appeared at your side with two nurses and a trauma surgeon. “Ortho’s full upstairs. Trauma Two is open but we’ve got a bleeding scalp lac in there. I’ll switch ‘em if we stabilize him in the next ten.”

You nodded. “I’ll start cooling compresses now.”

You grabbed a silver-coated burn dressing, opened it, and started gently laying it over the exposed tissue. The firefighter didn’t even flinch.

That was the worst part.

The not flinching.

Then came the second shift in the air. The kind you only felt a few times a year.

The doors opened again.

A uniform came through.

Police.

Dragging another.

The cop on the gurney was groaning, blood pouring from a shoulder wound, his vest soaked through, cheek torn open. One of his boots was missing. There was soot on his face.

Joel looked up. Groaned. Loudly.

“Fucking great,” he muttered, wiping his hands on a towel. “Just what we fucking need.”

You barely caught your laugh before it escaped. It wasn’t funny. But it was also so goddamn Joel.

Because whenever a cop rolled through the trauma bay, it meant one thing, the rest of the department was about to show up.

And they’d be in the ER. Hovering. Pacing. Armed.

It turned your trauma bay into a political minefield.

And Joel? Joel didn’t play that game.

“Officer was helping crowd control during the blast,” Tommy reported, voice clipped, wheeling the officer in beside Tess. “Got hit with some shrapnel and then trampled.”

“Vitals?” Joel asked, walking over.

“Stable. But barely. Pressure’s borderline. Laceration on the scalp, and that shoulder’s fucked.”

The officer groaned. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine,” Joel said. “You’ve got a puncture wound half an inch from your subclavian artery, and you’re actively bleeding onto my floor. Shut up and let me work.”

You stepped in behind him, grabbing gauze, gloves already on. “Do you want me to start a second line?”

“Yes. Left AC. Jesse—clamp this.”

“I’m clamping, I’m clamping,” Jesse muttered, hands bloody.

And right on cue, the cavalry came.

Five more officers entered the ER like they owned the place, guns holstered, expressions hard. They didn’t say a word, just hovered outside Trauma Three like sentries.

Dina appeared at your side with an exhausted expression. “I’m going to need a Xanax just from looking at this testosterone.”

“They’re gonna breathe down our necks until this guy’s transferred upstairs,” you muttered, snapping the catheter into place.

Joel didn’t even look up.

“Hey,” he barked, without turning. “One of you pacing jackasses wanna be useful? Go get your boy’s blood type from dispatch and stop fucking crowding my hallway.”

A few of them stiffened.

One opened his mouth.

Joel glared.

The cop closed it again.

Marlene slid in beside you with an extra tray. “You want me to log this guy’s injury for the report?”

“Document it for surgical,” you said. “He’s not going to need an incident report if he bleeds out on the floor.”

“I heard that,” the officer mumbled.

Joel leaned over him. “Good. Maybe you’ll listen better now.”

And then, somehow, like some cruel joke from above, a sixth cop walked in carrying a teenage girl with a bruised face.

“Hit by a rocket while filming a TikTok,” he said. “She’s got glass in her cheek and maybe a concussion.”

Joel blinked.

“Riley. That one’s yours,” he said.

“Me? I—I've never done this before—”

“You’ve got me,” Joel barked. “She’s stable. Triage her. I’ll double-check your assessment before discharge.”

You caught his eye.

You didn’t say anything.

You didn’t have to.

You could see it in him—the storm building behind his ribs. The fire that never quite went out. Joel wasn’t just in charge. He was containing the whole fucking hospital with the force of his will.

And still—when his eyes met yours, something shifted.

His jaw relaxed. Just a fraction.

You wiped sweat off your brow and nodded.

He didn’t nod. He just looked at you.

You pressed your glove to the officer’s wound and let yourself feel his gaze for one more second before the chaos swallowed you whole again.

It was four-thirty p.m. now. Or close to it.

The firework truck disaster had slowed—not ended, not resolved, but dulled just enough that you could hear your own breathing again. Maybe even someone else's. EMS was still ferrying in stragglers from the blast radius, but the heavy flow was stemmed. Controlled. Stitched and stapled back into some semblance of order by a crew of exhausted, bloodstained healthcare workers who hadn’t took a break since sunrise.

The ER was open again. Technically.

The triage desk was back on, the phones buzzing, the automatic doors kissing open with every new patient. The city hadn’t paused just because a truck of illegal fireworks blew up across the street. This was Austin. People still choked on hot dogs, burned their hands on grills, took edibles they didn’t understand and panic-texted their exes from Exam room 2.

And every. Single. Fucking. Room was full.

Overflow was full.

Trauma bays were full.

Peds, Ortho, Neuro, Med-Surg, Hall Beds 1 through 5, and the goddamn family bereavement room were full.

You were treading water, heart beating in your ears, sweat soaking your scrubs. There were two paper cups of coffee you hadn’t finished and three patients you hadn’t followed up on yet. Ellie was at the nurse’s station reviewing a chart with one hand and eating a banana with the other, eyes glassy from too much input. Riley had just returned from the stairwell, where she admitted to crying for two minutes, washing her face, and then saying I can do hard things.

That was you during your first year too.

You hadn’t even taken your gloves off for the last hour. At some point, they just fused to your skin.

But then it happened.

The way it always does.

Sudden.

Loud.

Violent.

The radio crackled in from EMS. The voice was fast, panicked.

“Male, mid-thirties, penetrating chest trauma, left thoracic cavity—multiple stab wounds—no pulse for the last thirty seconds. We’re two minutes out—we’re performing compressions en route but he’s—he’s tanking.”

There was silence for one breath.

Just one.

Then Joel’s voice, low and lethal from the trauma bay, “Clear Trauma One. Now.”

You dropped the file in your hands onto the desk.

Tore off your gloves.

And you ran.

By the time you got to Trauma One, Joel was already there—mask on, arms scrubbed to the elbow, gown halfway tied. His jaw was clenched, eyes scanning the crash cart like he was inventorying a fucking battlefield. The room smelled like sweat and sterile burn cream, and still, something in the air cracked open, the second you stepped in.

Not panic. Not fear.

Something heavier.

Something that whispered this one’s gonna be different.

“Get them all in here,” Joel snapped to Marlene, who stood at the door. “Everyone. Jesse, Abby, Mel, Riley, Henry. Ellie too.”

“They’re not all on rotation for—”

“I don’t give a fuck,” he barked. “They want to work in the field? They want to become doctors? They watch. They help. They need to see this.”

You stepped in beside him, already pulling on a new pair of gloves. “Is it…?”

Joel looked at you. Really looked.

And when he nodded, your pulse jumped.

“Emergency thoracotomy,” he said. “If he arrests, we crack the chest.”

Your heart stuttered.

This was it.

This was the thing you’d been obsessing over for months—talking Joel’s ear off about it over half-empty glasses of whiskey at his kitchen counter, watching old procedural videos while curled up next to him in bed, asking him over and over what was it like the first time you did one? Did it work? Did it feel real? He never answered in full. He just grunted, or said “bloody,” or told you to go the fuck to sleep while he digs his head back into your warm neck.

And now it was happening.

And he was here.

And you were ready.

The doors burst open.

The paramedics wheeled him in at a dead sprint. Literally. Because the man on the gurney was dead.

Pulseless.

Agonal.

The first medic was shouting, “We lost him for thirty—make that forty seconds now. GSW to the chest, left thorax, suspect a knife. Maybe a piece of pipe. Whatever it was—punched straight through.”

Joel was already at the bedside, yanking off the sheet.

You followed without needing to be asked.

“Jesse, get vitals on monitor. Abby, you’re on line. Riley, grab the thoracotomy tray. Henry—”

Henry paled. “Yeah?”

“Don’t fucking faint again.”

“I won’t.”

“You faint, I leave you there.”

He nodded. Swallowed. Backed up.

The man’s skin was waxy. Blue around the lips. The gaping chest wound glistened and bubbled with thick, frothy blood—the worst kind. Pulmonary. Wet. Final.

“We’re cracking,” Joel said to the room. “Now. He’s not coming back with compressions. We open.”

Ellie blinked. “You mean like—like open open?”

“Like ribs-on-display open,” Joel snapped. “Don’t move unless you want your shoes soaked.”

And then—Joel turned to you.

Paused.

Looked at you with that sharp, knowing edge that said this is the moment you've been waiting for.

“Do it,” he said.

You blinked. “Me?”

“You’ve been begging for this for six fucking months. Talking my ear off. You want it—take it.”

The room froze.

Everyone stared at you.

“No pressure,” Mel whispered. “Just someone’s life on the line.”

You didn’t blink.

Didn’t flinch.

You stepped forward, and you cracked his fucking chest.

Joel guided, hands over yours, voice low but never soft. “Midline. Left thoracotomy. Rib spreader. Go now.”

Riley handed it over with trembling hands. Abby dropped suction tubing on the floor and didn’t even pick it up.

You made the incision.

Deep.

Fast.

Confident.

The blood poured.

Joel caught it.

Jesse cursed under his breath. Ellie made a sound like she was swallowing vomit. Henry straight-up whimpered.

You cut through the muscle.

Joel barked again. “Keep going. Don’t stop until you see the goddamn heart.”

You spread the ribs. The crack was wet and obscene and louder than you expected.

It wasn’t like TV.

It was real.

Inside, the left lung was collapsed, the pericardium filling with blood.

You could see the heart.

And it was still.

Joel didn’t say anything.

You didn’t need him to.

You reached in.

Your gloved hand slid into the cavity like a blade. Warm. Tight. Full of potential.

And you found it.

The heart.

“Massage it,” Joel said. “Rhythm. Controlled. You’ve got this.”

You started compressions—internal. Thumb and fingers. Slow, then faster.

Riley was in the corner, trying to stand tall.

Abby whispered something that sounded like a prayer.

Mel had gone quiet, which was somehow worse.

Henry was gripping the counter, white-knuckled.

Jesse stood frozen until Joel barked at him to bag the fucking patient.

And you—you were the one keeping the man alive.

For ten seconds.

Then twenty.

Then thirty.

Then—

Beep.

Faint.

Then stronger.

Joel leaned over the monitor.

“Sinus rhythm,” he said, eyes flicking to you. “Goddamn. You got him back.”

A gasp filled the room.

Abby nearly dropped her syringe.

Mel exhaled like she hadn’t breathed in minutes.

Jesse muttered “holy shit.”

Ellie said, “you just—he was dead. And now he’s not.”

Joel looked at you.

Just for a second.

And his face didn’t soften.

Not quite.

But his jaw relaxed. His eyes cooled.

“Good work,” he said, voice like gravel. “Now close him up.”

You did.

You fucking did.

You closed him. The room moved around you—cleaning, charting, reeling—but you stayed still. Hands deep in blood. Covered in it. Gowned and soaked and shaking just a little.

Joel stepped up beside you.

“Looks good,” he said.

You turned.

“Did I do it right?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

He just nodded once.

A single, hard nod that meant more than words ever could.

Everyone else eventually left. One by one. Except Joel.

When it was just the two of you, he reached out and wiped a streak of blood from your cheek with his gloved thumb.

“You’re disgusting,” he said.

You grinned, breathless. “So are you.”

“Don’t let it get to your head.”

“Too late.”

He rolled his eyes.

But then, under his breath, like it wasn’t meant for anyone else,

“Proud of you.”

You almost missed it.

But you didn’t.

You never did.

Because it was Fourth of July, and the world outside was still burning.

But inside this room, for just one breathless moment—

You had brought someone back to life.

And Joel fucking Miller had watched you do it.

And he wasn’t going to forget it.

Joel Miller didn’t say things twice. If he was proud of you, that meant something. That meant everything.

You peeled off your gloves and stepped out of Trauma One with the sting of adrenaline still buzzing under your skin. Your hands trembled slightly—not from fear, but from the absolute goddamn power of that moment. You’d cracked a chest. You.

And Joel let you. Trusted you.

That kind of trust didn’t come easy from a man like him.

It was 5:00 p.m.

One hour left.

You told yourself you’d make it. You could do another hour. You’d get through whatever the Fourth of July still had left to vomit into your ER. You’d go home, peel off your scrubs, crawl into Joel’s bed, and maybe—maybe—you’d even get to fall asleep with your face buried in his neck before another fucking Code Blue ripped through your subconscious.

You turned the corner and nearly ran into Kathleen, who stood like a weathered pillar of war-torn exhaustion at the nurse’s station. Her face was flushed, arms crossed, brows pulled into a flat, unimpressed line.

“There’s a call for you,” she said. “Line two. Marlene has it.”

You blinked. “Someone called me?”

Kathleen didn’t blink. “Apparently it’s urgent.”

You stared.

She didn’t explain.

Marlene handed you the receiver with the grace of someone physically holding back a cackle.

You pressed it to your ear. “This is—”

“Thank fuck.”

Owen’s voice. Too loud. Too fast.

“Owen?”

“Hey. Yeah. Hi. Listen—I need a huge favor. Massive. I’ll owe you a kidney or three consults, I don’t care, just—please, can you cover the first three hours of my shift?”

You glanced at the clock.

5:01 p.m.

“I’ve been here since five this morning.”

“I know. I know. You’re a goddamn hero. Literally Jesus in black scrubs. Just—three hours. Please. Just until nine. I’ll come in at nine. Nine sharp. Not even a minute late.”

“Why?”

There was a pause.

And then, “I wanna have dinner with Mel.”

You inhaled slowly.

“Seriously?”

“I made a reservation,” Owen said, like that was somehow a valid excuse. “At the fancy new restaurant, the one Joel took you to. I bought cologne. I haven’t eaten real food in two weeks.”

You turned to look behind you.

Abby was standing by the vitals board, arms crossed, trying not to look like she was listening.

But she was.

And her face had gone tight in that way you recognized—the jaw-clench of someone pretending they don’t care.

Shit.

“Owen,” you said carefully. “This is your shift. You’re scheduled. You’re—”

“I’ll trade you! Anything. I’ll do your whole weekend. I’ll take all your psych evals for a month.”

“That’s a bold offer.”

“I’ll clean the vomit buckets in the peds trauma room!”

“You should already be doing that.”

“I will now.”

You sighed. Rubbed your forehead. Glanced at Abby again. She was now fake-charting on a blank clipboard. Poorly.

You shouldn’t do it.

You knew you shouldn’t.

But then Marlene handed you a new chart—incoming trauma. Level 1. ETA five minutes.

“Goddammit,” you muttered. “Fine. Three hours. But you owe me your soul.”

Owen cheered on the other end.

You hung up and looked over at Abby.

She didn’t look up.

You stepped closer. “Hey.”

“I’m fine,” she said. Immediately. Too quickly. “Totally fine. Not my business. Not even my night. Just…you know. Cool. Love that for them.”

“Abby.”

“I said I’m fine.” She slammed the clipboard on the desk and walked off, her ears visibly red.

You sighed again.

Before you could process any of it, a stretcher screamed into the trauma bay.

Tommy was at the head, barking orders, and Frank had blood on his shirt again—big surprise.

Teenager. Male. Fourteen, maybe fifteen. Slumped over. Screaming.

“Lawnmower accident,” Frank snapped, pushing hard. “Fucking dad didn’t check his blade height—hit a rock, launched it like a missile.”

“Penetrating orbital trauma,” Tommy added. “It hit the kid in the eye. He’s bleeding like hell. Not responsive.”

Jesse was already snapping gloves on beside you. “Tell me that rock didn’t puncture the fucking globe.”

You moved to the side of the bed as the kid’s head rolled. His left eye—Jesus fuck—his left eye was gone. Or at least it looked like it. Crushed inward, blood and viscous fluid pouring down his cheek.

Riley gagged.

Mel paled.

Abby reappeared beside you, full fury now replaced by full panic.

“What the fuck,” she muttered. “People should need a fucking license to own a lawn.”

“Vitals?” Joel’s voice cut through the trauma room as he entered, already gloved, already dark-eyed and tense.

“BP dropping,” Jesse said. “Heart rate climbing. He’s crashing.”

“Jesse, get a line,” Joel barked. “You—” he pointed at you. “Ocular tray, now. I want that eye covered. He so much as twitches and the optic nerve’s gonna shear.”

You grabbed the tray from Riley’s shaking hands. “We’re sedating?”

“If I don’t, he’s gonna start fucking thrashing and drive that rock deeper into his skull.”

The father—still in a goddamn polo shirt and sandals—stood at the door, blood on his arms, face pale.

“I just wanted to mow the yard before the guests came,” he kept whispering. “We were gonna grill—he was helping—I just—”

“Sir,” Joel said coldly, without turning, “if you don’t shut up, I’m going to have you dragged back into the waiting room.”

The dad shut up.

You placed the rigid eye shield over the wound. Blood pooled around the edges. It was already soaking the pillow. The kid groaned, twitching.

“Don’t move,” Joel growled. “Do not fucking move.”

“He’s coding,” Mel snapped. “BP’s bottoming out—seventy over thirty.”

“We need a cric tray ready,” Jesse said. “I can’t get the O2 past the swelling.”

You were moving, hands slick, adrenaline high and sharp.

Joel grabbed the ultrasound probe. “FAST scan. I want to rule out abdominal trauma while we stabilize the head. If that rock skipped through—”

“It didn’t,” Tommy said grimly. “We found the fucking thing in the driveway. Looks like a meteor.”

Joel’s hands moved fast. Surgical. Terrifying.

You mirrored him. Fast. Exact. No room for error.

This wasn’t like the thoracotomy. This was slower. Messier. No clean incisions here. Just trauma. Raw and violent. The kind that steals things. Childhood. Sight. Fucking Fourth of July barbecues.

Abby pressed gauze to the kid’s neck. “He’s tachycardic. We need to intubate.”

“I’ll do it,” Joel said, snapping his fingers. “Get the tube. Bag him. Suction ready.”

“You want me on airway?” you asked, stepping in.

He looked at you. That same look from earlier.

“I trust you.” he said.

So you did it.

You took the tube. You got the line. You shoved the fucking endotracheal tube into a kid who just lost his eye and might still lose his life. You did it because you had to. Because no one else could.

And because Joel trusted you.

You bagged until the O2 sats climbed back out of hell.

Mel ran labs.

Riley got a chest film.

Abby called Ophthalmology.

Jesse finally got the dad escorted to the waiting room by Bill before Joel could murder him with his stare alone.

Joel stood at the foot of the gurney, arms folded, eyes dark and burning.

“He’s stable,” Jesse said, breathless.

“For now,” Joel muttered. “Get imaging. Stat.”

You leaned over the bed, wiped some of the blood from the kid’s temple.

And then you felt Joel behind you.

Close. Not touching. Just there.

“You did good,” he said, low, just for you. “Again.”

You turned slightly, eyes meeting his.

“You keep saying that,” you murmured.

“That’s because it keeps being true.”

And then he was gone.

The kid was wheeled to CT.

You turned to the trauma team, who were collapsing one by one against the wall, soaked in blood and sweat and the sheer weight of almost.

Ellie looked ready to cry. Riley was holding a juice box. Jesse was on his second bottle of water and muttering something about moving to Canada. Abby was pacing, muttering Owen’s name under her breath.

And you?

You checked the clock.

5:43 p.m.

You still had two hours and seventeen minutes left in the shift you weren’tsupposed to work.

And already, it felt like a whole new fucking war had begun.

You cracked your neck. Wiped your forehead. Took a deep breath. And turned toward the doors.

Another stretcher was rolling in. Because of course it was.

Happy Fucking Fourth of July.

It was six when the first wave of soldiers walked off the battlefield.

The day shift clocked out like they were fleeing a warzone—scrubs stained, hair plastered to their foreheads, eyes too wide and hollow to belong to people under thirty. The fluorescent lights had aged them by decades. Some had blood on their shoes. Some had blood in their hair. Some weren’t sure whose blood it was.

Kathleen passed by the desk with her bag over her shoulder, muttering, “If they page me before five tomorrow, I’ll set this place on fire.”

Jesse was limping, dragging one foot behind him like a wounded animal, sipping a smoothie someone handed him two hours ago that had fully liquified into soup. He waved weakly in your direction, eyes dead. "Don't let anyone else swallow a flag," he said. "Just… don’t."

Ellie was practically vibrating on her way out, holding a foil-wrapped bundle that had been a brownie Dina was eyeing earlier. “I’m gonna eat this and then sleep for six days,” she told Riley, who was chewing on ice like it was a coping strategy.

Dina had her phone pressed to her ear, her free hand gesturing wildly as she talked to some poor soul on the other end. “No, I can’t go out tonight, I literally watched a baby eat gunpowder. Yes, literal gunpowder. Like from a firework. I don’t care if it’s rooftop karaoke, I’m not fucking going.”

Mel, fresh scrubs on now but still blotchy from everything, lingered at the front with her bag slung low and her hair half-down. She spotted Dina and beamed like the sun hadn’t just tried to kill everyone inside the ER.

“I’m serious,” Mel gushed, linking her arm with Dina’s as they walked. “Owen made reservations. He was so sweet. I think he even bought a new shirt. He didn’t say it, but it wasn’t wrinkled, so that has to mean something.”

Dina snorted. “Wow. A man wearing a clean shirt. You better marry him.”

You weren’t listening on purpose.

You just…couldn’t not hear it.

Because Abby was two steps behind them, standing by the elevator bank, still in her half-zipped hoodie and Crocs, staring at the tiled floor like she could melt through it.

You stood near her.

Close but not close.

She noticed you before you said anything.

“I’m not gonna cry,” she said flatly. “So don’t say something nice.”

You shrugged. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Good.”

She paused.

Then, quietly, “Did you know?”

You didn’t answer. Because you had. Of course you had. The way Owen had started standing closer to Mel. The way he’d brushed Abby off the past two weeks with half-assed excuses.

“I’m not mad at her,” she said, still staring forward. “I mean…maybe I am. But it’s not like she knew.”

You leaned next to her against the wall. “You don’t have to be fine.”

“I know.”

“I’m not fine either.”

She nodded.

And that was enough.

The elevator dinged.

She got in.

Didn’t look back.

You stayed in the hallway for a beat longer, the hum of overhead lights buzzing in your teeth. Your eyes were dry and scratchy. Your hands smelled like latex. There was blood on the cuff of your sleeve again, and you didn’t even remember who it belonged to.

The night shift was officially here now.

Soon the night staff began pooling into the ER.

They shuffled in with the kind of dead-eyed resignation of people who knew exactly what they were walking into. They looked at you with curiosity, confusion.

“You're still here,” one said.

You just nodded. “Still am.”

The ER had quieted in the way a battlefield does after the airstrikes stop—still full of smoke, rubble, and bodies, just… quieter. The screams were fewer. The alarms less frequent. But the stench of bleach and burnt flesh still clung to the walls.

You were working a bay in the corner, checking on a man who’d driven straight into a ditch after swerving to avoid a firework that had launched into the road.

“Wasn’t even my firework,” he mumbled, a gash splitting across his temple, blood matting his hair. “Some asshole two blocks over. Guess they didn’t like my truck.”

You were scanning for signs of concussion, clicking the penlight, asking about nausea, when he squinted at you.

“You’re cute,” he slurred. “Like real cute. Do you—uh—do you always look this good when you save lives?”

You didn’t answer.

He tried again.

“You got a boyfriend?”

You snapped the light off and looked him dead in the eye.

“I’ve got a scalpel,” you said.

He laughed.

You didn’t.

Across the ER, you heard a sharp voice bark, “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”

Your heart skipped.

Joel.

He was back.

Fully suited in trauma gear again, hair still damp with sweat, scrub top stretched over tense muscle. His eyes were already narrowed, fixed on you.

You didn’t even see him walk over—he was just suddenly there, all heat and static and restrained violence. He looked down at the chart in your hand, then up at your face, then over at the patient who still hadn’t stopped smiling.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Joel said, voice low and lethal.

“I’m working,” you said, frowning. “Owen called and asked me to cover—”

“Owen’s a fucking idiot,” Joel snapped. “This isn’t your shift.”

“He begged. He wanted to—”

“See Mel. Yeah, I fucking heard.”

Joel looked down at the driver again, eyes narrowing. The man blinked at him like he wasn’t sure if he was about to be murdered or offered another morphine drip.

“Go,” Joel growled. “Get the fuck out of here.”

“I’m almost done.”

“No. You’re not.”

He stepped forward, crowding your space. Not touching, but too close. His presence filled your lungs like smoke.

“I didn’t let you walk out of that trauma room with your hands inside someone’s goddamn chest just to have you stay late because some piece of shit didn’t want to miss his fucking dinner reservation.”

“I said I’m fine—”

“You’re not. Your face is pale. Your knees are shaking. You’re bleeding from your neck again—”

You touched your collar.

Shit.

The scratch had reopened.

Again.

You hadn’t even noticed.

Joel’s voice dropped lower. Quieter. More dangerous.

“You stay here another hour, I’m not gonna be able to stop myself from saying and doing something that gets me fired.”

You swallowed.

“You need someone to finish the chart.”

“I don’t need anything but you out of this hospital and in my bed before I fucking lose it.”

You blinked.

His eyes locked on yours.

“This isn’t up for debate.”

He turned to the driver without breaking eye contact.

“She’s off,” Joel told him. “She doesn’t work for you. You want someone to hold your hand and stroke your ego, call your fucking wife.”

The man gaped.

Joel turned back to you.

And this time—softer, just slightly—he added, “Go home.”

You didn’t argue.

Because he wasn’t asking.

You peeled your gloves off. Dropped them into the bin.

Your scrubs were soaked. Your throat burned.

And for the first time in hours, you realized how goddamn tired you were.

Joel’s eyes followed you until you reached the staff hallway.

And you could feel the heat of them still burning between your shoulder blades as you stepped into the elevator—

Finally, finally—

Done.

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