The storm rolled over Houston in long, low rumbles that shook the hospital windows. Rain blurred the city into streaks of neon and brake lights, turning every puddle in the parking lot into a restless mirror. The first warning came in flashes—ambulance lights spinning red and white across the glass doors of St. Gabriel Medical Center.

Then the siren cut out, and for one suspended beat the only sound was rain hammering the awning. The automatic doors slid apart. Two paramedics drove a gurney through hard enough that one wheel squealed in protest.

The man on it was built like a wall, muscle gone slack beneath a shredded black tactical shirt. His chest gleamed dark where blood had soaked through. A trident patch still clung to his shoulder, torn at one corner as if something—or someone—had tried to rip it away.

“Male, mid-thirties, GSW, right shoulder with blast involvement. Vitals crashing,” the lead medic barked, already breathing hard. “Name he gave us is Reddick. Captain. United States Navy.”

The triage nurse slammed the code button. A harsh tone stabbed through the ER, and the hallway tightened like a muscle. Voices sharpened. Footsteps quickened. Someone yanked a curtain aside so hard the rings slapped the rail.

Grace Holloway was halfway through restocking a supply cart when the alarm sounded. She flinched at the tone, then forced her shoulders to loosen. Codes were normal on nights. So was blood on the floor.

She shoved the last pack of gauze into the bin and nudged the cart back into its bay.

“Holloway,” one of the older nurses called as she passed, “stick to the easy stuff. If you see anyone with more than a sprained ankle, send them to me.”

He grinned like it was a joke. Everyone laughed like it was one. Grace gave the quick, automatic smile she’d perfected—on, off, effortless. Her badge swung as she turned toward the trauma bays: Grace Holloway, RN, in clean black print, with a small red sticker beneath.

New staff.

The plastic edge tapped softly against her scrub top with every step. She threaded past gurneys stacked in the hall and peered into Trauma Two just as the paramedics rolled the new arrival in.

The smell hit before the full sight did—copper thick in the air, bleach underneath, wet wool from rain-soaked uniforms. It braided together into a scent she knew too well, though her expression stayed smooth as she slipped just inside the curtain.

“What do we have?” someone demanded.

“Captain Noah Reddick, say again,” the medic repeated. “Entry high, exit low, possible shrapnel. Took some kind of blast, lost consciousness in transit. BP eighty over fifty and dropping. We’ve got fluids running, but he needs a miracle or a surgeon.”

“I am the miracle,” a voice cut in from the far side.

Dr. Victor Lang pushed through the crowd at the head of the bed, lab coat hanging open, stethoscope draped around his neck like jewelry. Forties. Gray streaks in his hair. Lines carved deep into his face. The kind of man who moved like he owned the room and everyone in it.

“Monitors on. I want CBC, type and cross, full trauma panel,” Lang snapped. “Respiratory, stay close. We may need to intubate.”

Hands jumped into motion. Clips snapped onto pale skin. The heart monitor lit up with bright green spikes—erratic, but alive. An O2 mask hissed as it settled over Noah’s mouth. Someone sliced the rest of his shirt away.

Scars mapped his chest—pale lines over old burns. A roadmap that didn’t come from bar fights. Grace found herself at the foot of the bed, fingertips resting lightly on the metal rail. She watched blood trail down his flank and drip onto the sheet. Each drop struck with a tiny, dull sound she could hear through the noise.

Under the fluorescents he looked sun-browned, but the color had gone gray. Sweat ran from his hairline into the close-cut beard along his jaw. High on his left chest, half-hidden beneath an ECG lead, a small tattoo showed itself.

A simple black bird, wings folded, perched on a branch.

Raven.

The word slid across her mind without permission.

“Move, Holloway.”

The bark snapped her back. Dr. Lang was glaring over the gurney, hands already swallowed by blue gloves. His eyes flicked to her badge, to the red new-staff sticker, then returned to her face.

“This is not a first-week case. Go help with sutures or something.”

“Yes, doctor,” she said. The words came out steady.

They always did.

She stepped back, then another, but didn’t leave the doorway. From here she could watch without being in the way. A blood pressure cuff squealed around Noah’s arm. The monitor answered with a soft insistence—beep-beep-beep—speeding up, then stuttering.

“BP seventy over forty!” someone called.

“Push another bolus,” Lang ordered. “Has he been sedated?”

“Small dose in the rig, barely touched him,” the medic replied. “I think he was fighting us in his sleep.”

Grace watched Noah’s hand. It lay open on the sheet, fingers loose. Then it twitched. Tendons in his wrist sharpened.

“He’s stirring,” a resident said.

“Good,” Lang replied. “I want a neuro check. Reddick, can you hear me? Captain? Open your eyes.”

For a moment nothing changed. Then Noah’s lids fluttered. His eyes opened to a narrow slit, unfocused, pupils blown wide. His gaze swept the room without landing, like he was tracking something only he could see.

“Sir, you’re in a hospital,” Lang said, loud and clear. “You’re safe. Stay still and let us work.”

The words hit a wall Noah had built in his head. His breathing hitched. The hand on the sheet curled, dragging fabric into his fist. Muscles jumped along his neck. Grace felt the hair rise on her arms.

“BP dropping again,” the resident warned. “Sixty over thirty-eight.”

“Then move faster,” Lang snapped. “Prep him for surgery. Get consent from whoever has authority if he’s not lucid. I’m not losing this case.”

The monitor beeped faster, the lines turning jagged. Noah’s eyes finally locked onto something—not a face, not a person. A corner of the ceiling where the light fixture buzzed and flickered. A bright rectangle glaring down like a searchlight cutting through dust.

He inhaled like he’d broken the surface of dark water. His entire body tightened beneath the sheets.

“Easy, Captain,” the respiratory tech said, reaching to adjust the mask. “Just breathe with the O2. In and out. You’re good.”

Noah’s hand snapped up faster than anyone expected. He knocked the mask away, plastic cracking against the rail. Monitor leads popped free from his chest one by one.

“Don’t touch me,” he choked. The sound was raw, scraped out from behind clenched teeth.

His eyes were wide and bright now, but they weren’t seeing the room. Sweat tracked down his temples, carving shiny paths through the grime.

“Grab his shoulders!” someone shouted.

Two nurses surged in, hands open. Noah reacted like they’d raised weapons. His arm shot out, slamming one nurse in the chest. She stumbled into a rolling stool that skidded away and crashed into the supply cart.

The other nurse jerked back instinctively. The IV tore loose, blood streaking across the white sheet.

“Security!” Lang bellowed.

Grace stepped closer without thinking. Her pulse climbed into her throat, matching the chaos, matching the alarms as they stacked and screamed.

The door banged open. Two security officers rushed in, belts heavy with radios and plastic restraints. One still held a half-eaten granola bar.

“This guy armed?” he asked.

“Just dangerous,” Lang snapped. “Pin him before he hurts someone.”

Noah was breathing fast, chest heaving, jaw muscles working like he was chewing down words he refused to release. His gaze swept over white coats, masks, the cameras in the corners, and slid right past Grace standing in the doorway. He wasn’t looking for help.

He was counting exits.

The officers closed in, reaching for his wrists. Noah’s fingers flexed, veins lifting along the backs of his hands. The sheet bunched in his grip. His shoulders rolled, testing the gurney, testing the people around him.

Something in the way his eyes narrowed told Grace exactly what would happen next. He wasn’t confused.

He was taking inventory.

The officers moved another step, palms out as if softness could change the outcome. Someone at the head of the bed reached for a restraint strap.

Noah moved.

He bucked hard, the gurney shuddering. One officer grabbed his forearm and lost balance. The other went for his wrist and caught elbow instead. Curtain hooks rattled as the whole bay shook.

“Stop resisting!” the first officer barked.

Noah snarled something that wasn’t English—clipped, compressed, the cadence of a radio transmission meant to punch through static. His free hand swept out, knocking an instrument tray sideways. Metal clattered across the floor, scalpels and clamps spinning under shoes.

“Hold him!” Lang shouted. “Now!”

The resident at the foot of the bed grabbed for Noah’s leg. It was like trying to seize a live wire. Noah jerked, knee slamming the rail, and the gurney slid an inch across the linoleum.

The monitor lost contact and shrieked. The blood pressure machine beeped error codes. Oxygen tubing slithered off the bed and dragged along the floor. Grace felt the sound in her teeth.

She watched Noah’s face. His eyes had gone flat and far away—focused, not empty. Fixed on something beyond the ceiling, beyond the building, beyond the city. He wasn’t seeing fluorescent lights and white tile.

She knew that look.

It belonged to people who had the wrong sky in their head.

“Sedate him!” Lang snapped.

“I can’t get close!” the nurse with the syringe shouted, breathless.

The security officer who still had the granola bar shoved it into his pocket and lunged for Noah’s shoulder. Noah twisted, broke the grip, and for one razor-thin second his hand rose toward the officer’s face.

Grace moved before she could weigh the risk.

She stepped fully into the bay, slipping past a rolling stool and the overturned instrument tray. Someone shouted her name, but it washed over her. She stopped at the head of the bed, inside the ring of chaos.

“Grace, back up!” Lang barked. “You’re not cleared for this!”

She didn’t answer.

Noah’s arm drew back again, muscles coiling, knuckles white. His eyes snapped to the brightest light above the bed as if it were a flare. His breath came in harsh, shallow pulls.

And for half a second, Grace saw something else in his stare—powdery dust, a pale stone ceiling burned black at one corner, air so hot it scorched when you dragged it into your lungs. A helicopter somewhere you couldn’t see yet, only hear, rotors pounding the sky.

Her own breath shortened. Her fingers curled.

She took one step closer and placed her hand flat on the rail near his head—close enough to feel heat rolling off his skin, far enough to pull away if he swung.

“Captain Reddick,” she said quietly. “Noah.”

He didn’t turn. His gaze skittered past her to the curtain, to the officers.

“Don’t touch me,” he snarled again.

The second officer reached for his wrist. Grace didn’t raise her voice. She aimed it instead, the way she once aimed a flashlight down a blacked-out corridor.

“Noah.” No title this time.

His eyes flicked toward her for a fraction—more motion than focus, but enough. She leaned closer so her words had nowhere to go except his ear.

“Raven three,” she murmured. “Echo fall.”

Six syllables. Smooth. Quiet. A pattern she hadn’t spoken in years. They tasted like sand and metal in her mouth. They didn’t belong in a bright, sterile room, but they slid out anyway.

The entire bay seemed to hesitate.

Noah froze.

His next breath stopped halfway in his chest. His fingers loosened, grip slackening on the sheet. His eyes snapped away from the light and locked onto Grace’s face.

The officers hung in mid-reach. Lang’s mouth stayed open around the start of another command. The only thing still moving was the heartbeat line, trying to make sense of the renewed contact.

Noah blinked once—slow, dragging.

“Say it again,” he rasped.

Grace swallowed. Her tongue felt thick. She lined the words up in her mind before pushing them out a second time.

“Raven three,” she repeated, steadier now. “Echo fall.”

His throat worked. The cords in his neck softened. He stared at her like he was trying to reconcile two images laid over each other. Up close, she saw the small white scar at his hairline, half-hidden by his short dark buzz. A crescent shape, like something had grazed him and moved on—leaving memory nicked and marked.

“You’re not here,” she said softly. “You’re not under fire. You’re at St. Gabriel—Houston, Texas. Look at me.”

His gaze sharpened by a fraction as haze receded. His chest shook on the exhale.

“Doc Holloway,” he whispered.

Barely a sound. A breath shaped into a word. Grace felt it anyway—two syllables meeting her six, clicking a lock she’d welded shut years ago.

No one in this room had ever called her that. Not here.

The resident blinked. “Did he just say doctor?”

Lang shot him a look sharp enough to cut, then turned it on Grace. “What did you just say to him?” he demanded. “What code was that?”

Grace didn’t look away from Noah to answer.

“Get a new line,” she said evenly, “and another set of leads. Reconnect him—gently. He’s not going to swing at you if you stop treating him like a threat.”

The closest officer hesitated. “You sure about that, ma’am?”

Noah’s hand lay open now, fingers still. Tendons relaxed from wire-tight to merely taut. His shoulders sank into the mattress, the feral burst burned out. He was breathing fast, but it was less like gasps and more like controlled pulls.

He watched Grace as if the rest of the room had blurred.

“I’m sure,” she said. She didn’t have to shout it. The certainty did the work.

Slowly, the officer released Noah’s forearm. The other eased his grip. No new punches came. No new kicks landed. The bay began to move again.

A nurse approached with fresh ECG leads, her hands shaking at first. Grace shifted a few inches, placing herself so Noah had to look through her to see the nurse.

“Eyes on me,” Grace told him.

He obeyed.

The nurse pressed the leads to his skin. The monitor beeped, searched, and caught rhythm again—ugly, unsteady, but there. An oxygen mask hovered.

“No mask yet,” Grace said. “Nasal cannula first. Give him air without covering his face.”

Lang stared at her. “This is my trauma bay, Nurse Holloway,” he snapped. “You don’t walk in here and start giving orders based on some mystery phrase and a hunch.”

Grace finally glanced at him. “Then order it yourself,” she said. “You want him calm? Don’t strap plastic over half his face right after he ripped it off.”

Lang opened his mouth, then closed it. His eyes flicked to Noah, who watched with faint, exhausted awareness. The respiratory tech was already swapping equipment. Soft prongs slid under Noah’s nose. Tubing looped over his ears, not across his mouth.

The numbers on the monitor climbed a notch.

Noah swallowed. His throat bobbed. His gaze had cleared enough now that Grace could see the struggle to stay present—how much effort each second cost.

“Is it really you?” he asked. No rank, no protocol—only disbelief, the sound of someone who had already buried the person he was staring at.

Grace’s mouth went dry. For a heartbeat she wanted to glance over her shoulder, to see if there was someone else behind her with the same name and the same history and the same ghost.

She didn’t.

“It’s me,” she said. Her voice didn’t shake. That surprised her more than anything Noah had done.

Silence pressed at the edges of the bay. Even the background noise of the ER dulled, as if the whole department had leaned in without realizing.

Near the curtain, someone whispered, “He knows her.”

Another voice answered, even softer, “Thought she was new.”

Noah closed his eyes for one long breath, then opened them again. When he spoke, the words came out rough with strain.

“You pulled us off that roof,” he said. “Valley east of the river. Nightglass. They said you never made it to the convoy.”

Grace’s fingers tightened on the rail until the metal bit into her palm, anchoring her. Heat flared beneath her ribs and cooled into a heavy, solid weight.

“We’re not talking about that,” she told him.

The line of his mouth twitched. He took the deflection the way soldiers took bad weather—not gladly, not completely, but with the understanding that arguing wouldn’t move it. He let his head sink back into the pillow, eyes still fixed on her.

Around the bed, the staff drifted back into motion. Someone called out a fresh blood pressure reading. Another nurse capped and labeled vials with quick, practiced hands. The ER’s rhythm reclaimed the bay—but half a beat slower, as if everyone were moving carefully around a presence they didn’t yet understand.

Lang remained planted at the foot of the bed, arms folded, jaw set. “Well, Doc Holloway,” he said at last, the title sharpened with disbelief, “since your magic words apparently bought us a cooperative patient, maybe you’d like to explain how you know classified-sounding call signs in my emergency department.”

Grace kept her gaze on Noah for one heartbeat longer. He watched her right back, a faint spark at the corner of his eyes—almost humor—buried under pain and fatigue. She released the rail and straightened.

“I know how to read a wound,” she said. “Start with that, Dr. Lang. Then we can talk about the rest.”

For a beat, nobody moved. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. The monitor clicked and chirped like it was catching its own breath. Somewhere down the hall a gurney squealed, thin and distant. Grace pulled her focus back to the present, to the patch of skin and blood that actually mattered.

“Let me see the wound,” she said again, more precise this time.

Lang hesitated, then jerked his chin toward the nurse nearest the head of the bed. “Peel it back.”

The nurse swallowed and reached for the soaked dressing. Her gloves were already smeared red. She lifted one corner slowly, careful not to tug more than necessary. Blood welled up—dark and sluggish now instead of spraying. The gauze came free with a soft tearing sound. The smell shifted—warmer, heavier, metallic in a way that made the air feel thick.

Grace stepped into the space the nurse opened. Her world narrowed to shoulder and flank, to a path carved through flesh. The entry wound sat high near the front of Noah’s right shoulder—ragged around the edges, skin burned in a speckled, uneven radius. Not a clean circle. The staining spread wider than it should have for a single straight track.

The exit wound lay lower toward his back, smaller than she would expect if a high-velocity round had simply punched through on a clean line. A shallow fan of abrasions spread around it, as if something else had struck at an angle.

She could feel Lang’s eyes on her cheek, waiting for her to say something wrong.

“Clean that,” she told the nurse softly. “Gently.”

The nurse dabbed at the edges with saline gauze. As the thickest blood lifted, more of the pattern surfaced. Grace leaned in. Small dark specks peppered the tissue—different sizes, different depths. Some barely broke the surface. Others sat buried deeper. She didn’t have a CT yet, but she didn’t need one to recognize shrapnel.

Her fingers itched for forceps and a headlamp. Old muscle memory stirred inside her like a patient waking up. She listened to it.

“That is not just a simple gunshot,” she said.

“He took blast,” Lang snorted quietly. “Everyone heard the medic say there was blast involvement. This isn’t news, Holloway.”

She let the edge in his voice slide past her. “Look at the pattern,” she said. “Entry too shallow for the amount of tissue damage. Exit too narrow for a full round. Secondary abrasions around both. Burn spread—not uniform.”

She traced the perimeter in the air without touching him, mapping invisible lines.

“This was fragmentation. Concussive. Something exploded and sent metal in at an angle. He didn’t just get shot. He got caught on the edge of something that wanted to take the whole room.”

One of the residents edged closer, curiosity beating hierarchy. He squinted at the wound, then at the flecks embedded in tissue. “So those specks are…” he started.

“Fragments,” Grace said. “Casing, walls, whatever sat between him and the blast center.”

Lang’s posture softened half an inch despite himself. “Fine,” he said. “He was on the wrong end of an explosion. That still doesn’t explain why he came in labeled as a gunshot wound.”

“Because people say gunshot when they see blood and a hole,” Grace replied. “It reads better in a chart than something went very wrong.”

The resident lifted his eyes to her. “You saw this a lot?” he asked.

She felt the room’s attention tighten again. Grace met his gaze fully. “I saw enough,” she said.

Noah shifted at the sound of her voice. His eyes drifted half-closed, exhaustion creeping in now that his body wasn’t trying to throw itself off the bed. He glanced toward his shoulder, then back to her.

“Doorway,” he murmured. “Two floors up. Charge went off lower than it was supposed to.”

Grace’s jaw tightened. The image snapped back with sharp, unwelcome clarity: a blown-out doorway, its frame sagging; dust like fog; the taste of chalk and iron; a pressure wave rolling up a stairwell. She shoved it down far enough to keep moving.

“Injury trajectory,” she said, directing it at Lang now. “Tilt him slightly. I want to see how far the path extends.”

Lang motioned to the team. “On three,” he said. “One, two, three.”

They rolled Noah just enough to expose his back and side without tearing anything else. He grunted, teeth clenched, but didn’t fight them. Grace saw the full channel then.

The angle didn’t match a straight shot from the front. It slanted down, curving as if the force had come from his right and below, catching him while he was turned. Exactly how you stood when you were covering a stairwell and someone shoved you sideways out of the main line.

Her stomach tightened. “I’ve seen this pattern,” she heard herself say.

Lang arched a brow. “In your extensive six weeks of civilian nursing?”

“In my years as a Corpsman,” she said finally, letting the word land where everyone could hear it. “And not just anywhere.”

The air in the bay changed. Residents traded glances. Security stayed near the curtain, but their stance had loosened—hands off restraints now. The nurse holding gauze froze mid-motion.

Lang folded his arms again. “Where, then?” he asked. “Since we’re apparently swapping war stories in my trauma unit.”

Grace looked back at the wound, at how the burns and specks and torn flesh formed a constellation she knew too well.

There had been a building. Thick white walls. Cracks running like veins. A charge hidden in rubble that should have been inert. The first blast had peeled the corner off the roof. The second had turned the stairwell into a shotgun.

The tactical signature had been distinct—the kind of method not improvised, but practiced, refined. She knew better than to say the region or the town or unit numbers out loud. Those details came attached to alarms she had no desire to trigger.

Still, the label rose in her mind without permission.

Nightglass.

She didn’t realize she’d whispered it until Noah answered.

His fingers flexed against the sheet. The lines bracketing his mouth deepened. “Yeah,” he rasped. “That one.”

The resident closest to the bed frowned. “Nightglass,” he repeated. “Is that some kind of op code?”

Lang shot him a warning look. “That is none of your concern,” he snapped. Then his eyes cut back to Grace, sharper. “And not ours either—unless it affects whether this man keeps his arm and his life.”

“It affects everything,” Noah muttered.

Grace drew in a slow breath through her nose. “Shrapnel like this migrates,” she said, forcing her tone back into clinical lanes. “You miss a few pieces and he bleeds later in places you’re not watching. Or it heats up in imaging. You need to know what kind of metal you’re dealing with.”

“Which we can determine with proper scans,” Lang said pointedly. “Not by staring at it and chanting poetry.”

“The pattern tells you where to look,” Grace replied. “How deep to expect it. Where overpressure may have caused internal damage without obvious external signs.”

Lang held her gaze. Under the armor of arrogance, something shifted—calculation, maybe, the recognition that information he didn’t have was standing in front of him in blue scrubs and a red sticker.

“You’re suggesting what?” he asked. “We tailor our scans to match some classified playbook in your head?”

“I’m suggesting you don’t treat this like a clean gunshot on a firing range,” she said. “He was in tight quarters when it hit. That means echo in his chest. Lung involvement. Microfractures. You look for the echoes, not just the holes.”

The words came easier now. She could almost feel sand under her knees again, the thud of distant artillery vibrating through her palms while her hands worked on someone else’s body. Her muscles remembered how to talk people through living.

The resident scribbled notes on the back of his glove with a marker, eyes too wide. Lang drew a breath like he wanted to argue, then let it go in a short, irritated exhale.

“Fine,” he said. “We’ll run an extended series on chest and shoulder and note possible concussive trauma. Satisfied?”

Grace almost smiled. “This isn’t about my satisfaction,” she said. “He’ll thank you when he can lift that arm again.”

Noah’s mouth twitched. “You assuming I’m keeping the arm?” he murmured.

Grace met his eyes, taking in the strain etched there, the way his fingers hovered as if they might reach for the rail and then stopped. “I’m planning for it,” she said. “You can handle the rest.”

That earned her a faint, tired huff that might have once been a laugh.

Lang cleared his throat. “Get him to imaging as soon as he’s stable enough to move,” he ordered. “Prep OR Two just in case, and someone find out if he has family on record.”

The team broke apart with renewed purpose. The nurse wrapped the wound with a temporary dressing. The resident with the marker stepped away to enter orders. Security, no longer needed at the bedside, slipped out through folds in the curtain.

For a moment, the bay felt strangely spacious. Noah tracked the bodies leaving, then eased his gaze back to Grace. Without all the noise and movement, the distance between them felt deliberate.

“You read that like a map,” he said quietly.

Grace lifted one shoulder. “You’re bleeding on my floor,” she said. “I’m motivated.”

He kept watching her, a question hovering behind his eyes. “You weren’t a doctor when I met you,” he said. “They called you something else.”

“Corpsman,” she said. “Or Doc, depending on how bad it was.”

He nodded, lids lowering for a beat. “They told us no Corpsman made it out,” he murmured. “Said the medic went down with the rest when the roof fell.”

Something tightened in Grace’s chest. She didn’t touch it. She had learned what happened when you pulled certain knots.

“They were misinformed,” she said.

Noah’s gaze sharpened, cutting through the fog. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m starting to see that.”

The monitor settled into a rough but workable rhythm. The air felt less charged now, less like the inside of a storm. From somewhere near the nurses’ station, someone called out to her.

“Holloway, we need you to sign off on the meds you pulled.”

Grace didn’t move immediately.

“Go,” Noah said. “You’re making the boss mad.” He tilted his chin toward where Lang had gone, a ghost of humor in the gesture.

Grace let the corner of her mouth lift. “He’ll live,” she said.

Noah looked at the temporary bandage, the lines and tubes keeping him anchored, the careful hands adjusting his world. “So will I,” he said softly. “Right, Doc?”

She met his eyes and held them, feeling the weight of too many nights in too many tents settle between them. “That’s the idea,” she said.

Then she stepped back from the bed, her hand trailing once along the metal rail before she let go and moved toward the curtain.

The hallway outside Trauma Two felt colder than the room she’d just left. Voices spilled from other bays—an angry argument about wait time, a kid crying behind a curtain, a television in the waiting room talking about the weather to no one. The sounds blended into a wash that did nothing to drown out the echo of her own words.

Raven three, echo fall.

Grace walked to the meds cabinet on autopilot. The scanner chirped when she swiped her badge. The screen blinked awake. She entered her code, selected the drugs she’d already pulled, and signed off. Her fingers hit the buttons cleanly, precise, despite the tremor crawling up her arms.

“Holloway?”

Grace looked up. Marta—the senior nurse who’d joked about ankle sprains earlier—stood a few feet away with a clipboard tucked to her chest. Her eyes were sharper now, stripped of amusement.

“You need a minute?” Marta asked. “You went quiet after they rolled him in.”

Grace shifted her weight. “I’m fine,” she said.

Marta glanced past her toward the curtain of Trauma Two. The monitor’s hum slipped through as thin mechanical beeps.

“He said your name,” Marta said. “Like he knew you from somewhere.”

Grace kept her expression smooth. “I was standing next to him,” she replied. “Not hard to catch a name in here.”

Marta studied her for another second, then snorted softly. “Well, whatever you whispered worked,” she said. “I haven’t seen Security back off a combative patient that fast in ten years.”

She tapped her clipboard with her pen. “Lang’s burning holes in your chart with his stare, but he hasn’t filed a complaint. That has to mean something.”

Grace managed the smallest curve of her mouth. “I’ll try not to ruin his stats,” she said.

Marta gave a short laugh. “Good luck with that,” she said, then moved off to answer a call light.

Grace closed the cabinet. The latch clicked—too loud, too final. She stood for a second with her hand still on the handle. Her reflection stared back from the brushed metal: pale under fluorescent light, hair pulled tight, eyes a shade too bright.

Doc Holloway.

Those words didn’t belong in this hallway. She pushed away from the cabinet and turned back toward Trauma Two.

The curtain had been drawn mostly shut again, leaving only a thin gap. Through it, she caught a sliver of Noah—the edge of the gurney, the slope of his knee under the sheet, the flex of his fingers when a nurse tightened a line. Lang wasn’t at the foot of the bed anymore. Only one resident remained, checking numbers and charting on a tablet—the younger one, the one who’d written on his glove.

Grace stepped in. The resident looked up, startled, then relaxed when he recognized her.

“Vitals are holding,” he said quietly. “Pressure’s still low, but it’s not free fall anymore. They’re getting imaging ready.”

Grace nodded and moved to the far side of the bed, opposite the resident. The nurse adjusting the IV line shifted aside for her. Noah’s eyes were open again—heavy, but present. The skin around them looked bruised, as if exhaustion itself had pressed fingerprints into his face.

“How’s the floor?” he murmured. “Still in one piece?”

Grace understood the translation. It was the kind of question you asked when you were used to rooms coming apart.

“For now,” she said.

“You made an impression.” He let out a small, dry huff. “That seems to happen a lot.”

The resident pretended to focus on the tablet, but his ears were tilted toward them. Noah stared at the ceiling for a long breath, then shifted his gaze back to Grace.

“They said you didn’t make it,” he said. “After Nightglass.”

The name hung between them like a dropped instrument—sharp, bright, wrong for this place. Grace felt it tug at memories she kept locked down: white stone walls lit orange by fire, a ladder against a crumbling edge, voices shouting over three different radios, a man with a ruined leg refusing morphine because he wanted his last words clear.

She gripped the rail again, thumb rubbing the cool metal. “They said a lot of things,” she replied.

“Yeah,” Noah said. “Like that all medics were KIA when the roof went. That no one walked out of that building with a red cross on their sleeve.”

His eyes flicked down to her scrub top. No cross, no rank—just the hospital logo and her name.

“You weren’t supposed to exist anymore,” he said.

Grace let out a breath she hadn’t noticed she’d been holding. “That makes two of us,” she said.

The resident finally looked up from the chart. “KIA?” he repeated, cautious.

“Killed in action.” Noah didn’t look at him. “That’s what they told us,” he said. “We put her name on a wall for three years.”

Grace’s stomach clenched. She’d pictured something like that—her name carved somewhere, chalked somewhere, spoken over a toast she wasn’t there to drink. It had felt safer not to know for sure.

“Who is ‘we’?” she asked, keeping her voice even.

Noah blinked slowly. “Raven team,” he said. “What was left of it. A few of us kept meeting up after they scattered us. Kept a bottle, kept a list.” He swallowed. “Your name was near the top.”

The resident’s eyes bounced between them like he’d wandered into a conversation in a language he almost understood. “You really were a medic,” he said to Grace.

Grace didn’t answer him. She looked at Noah instead. “Who else made it?” she asked. The question slipped out before she could stop it, surprising both of them. She saw it in the slight crease of Noah’s brow.

“You really want the roll call?” he asked.

Her throat tightened. “Start with the roof,” she said.

Pain crossed his face—nothing to do with his shoulder wound. “Roof team,” he said slowly. “You mean Carter, Mills, Reyes, and Russ?” He stopped on the last name.

Grace felt the air thicken. Carter. Mills. Reyes. Faces rose behind her eyes: Carter’s crooked grin. Mills’ steady hands on the radio. Reyes humming under his breath when he thought no one could hear.

“Reyes,” she repeated, barely audible.

“He made it to the convoy,” Noah said. “Leg never healed right, but he’s out. Owns a garage somewhere with terrible coffee.” He paused. “Carter didn’t,” he said.

The edges of the room blurred for a moment. A flash. The overhead beam cracking. Carter pushing her toward the stairwell with such force that she dropped to her knees. Dust rained down like ash. A flash that didn’t sound like the others. Hot wind hitting her side as she twisted around, only to see nothing where he had been. Her lungs forgot how to work for a heartbeat.

“And Russ?” she asked, even though she already knew the answer.

Noah’s jaw flexed. “You know,” he said.

She did. Russ in the doorway. Russ with his hand on her vest, pushing her through the last intact wall. Russ turning back toward the hall with his weapon raised as she dragged someone down the stairs. She heard his voice again so clearly it could have been now.

That is an order, Holloway. Move.

She had moved. The building folded in on itself behind her in a deafening roar.

She blinked hard. The ER snapped back into focus. The antiseptic smell replaced the stench of dust. The heart monitor beeped instead of distant rotor blades. The resident had gone very quiet.

“We are not talking about that here,” she said.

The line of Noah’s mouth tightened. “Where then?” he asked. “Because I’ve been carrying the version where you didn’t walk out. Turns out that was the wrong one.”

His voice stayed soft, but there was a weight to it now. Not accusation, more like insistence. Grace looked around the bay. At the nurse pretending to organize syringes. At the resident pretending to read lab results. At the curtain that couldn’t block the sound from leaking out.

“This is not the place,” she said.

Noah huffed, a humorless sound. “Feels familiar to me,” he said. “Bright lights, too many people, not enough doors.”

She couldn’t argue with that.

“Done.” A voice from the hall sliced through the tension. “Imaging is ready for Trauma Two.”

The resident jumped, then nodded quickly. “Right,” he said. “We should move him.” He looked at Grace like he was asking permission, though he had no reason to need it.

She stepped back from the bed. “Go ahead,” she said. “Just keep that arm as still as you can.”

Noah watched her as they unlocked the wheels and began rolling him out. The movement jostled his shoulder, pain creasing his forehead, but he didn’t look away.

“You disappeared,” he said quietly.

Grace stood just inside the curtain, hands at her sides. “So did you,” she replied.

His eyes held hers for one last second. Then the gurney turned, and he was gone, pushed down the hall toward Radiology, the sound of his monitor fading with every foot of linoleum. Grace stayed where she was, staring at the empty space he had occupied until the fabric of the curtain stilled.

“Holloway.”

The resident, the one with the marker on his glove, lingered at the edge of the bay. Up close, he looked younger than his white coat suggested.

“I’m Jamie,” he said. “Dr. Park. I, uh, probably should’ve introduced myself an hour ago.”

She nodded once. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Park,” she said.

He shifted his weight. “You really served,” he said. “In that operation… Nightglass.”

Her shoulders stiffened. “Is that going to change how you read my chart?” she asked.

He shook his head quickly. “No,” he said. “I mean, maybe in a good way. I didn’t know I was standing next to someone who could read a blast wound like that.” He flushed, realizing how that sounded. “I’m not saying you didn’t look like you could,” he added quickly. “I just… nobody told us.”

“Nobody was supposed to,” she replied.

He nodded slowly. “Well,” he said, “I’m glad somebody did. Tell us, I mean. Before we shocked his heart into oblivion.”

She almost smiled at that. “Go finish your notes,” she said. “He’s going to need a competent surgical team.”

Jamie straightened. “I’ll try to fake being competent,” he said. “You can correct me when I’m not.”

Then he left, hurrying down the hall with his tablet held tightly against his chest. Grace stepped out of the bay. Instead of heading back to the desk, she slipped into the small supply closet at the end of the corridor. The door clicked shut behind her. The air inside smelled like plastic and paper, with a faint rubber scent of gloves. It was quiet—no monitors, no voices.

She leaned back against the cool metal shelves and closed her eyes. For a moment, she let the other room come back, the one with the cracked roof and the broken staircase. The one where Carter hadn’t reached the convoy and Russ had turned into nothing more than a sound.

Raven three, echo fall. The code sat on her tongue like something alive.

She opened her eyes again and looked at her hands. They were steady now. She flexed her fingers once, then pushed herself off the shelf, reaching for a new box of gauze. There were still patients waiting, still charts that didn’t know anything about Nightglass.

She pulled the box down, tucked it under her arm, and stepped back into the light of the corridor.

By the time Grace stepped back onto the main floor, the tempo of the ER had shifted again. The early rush had thinned. A few discharged patients shuffled out, clutching plastic bags with prescriptions and instructions. A janitor worked quietly at a dried smear of mud by the entrance. The television in the waiting room had moved on from the weather to a talking head segment that no one watched.

At the nurse’s station, Marta was arguing with a pharmacist on the phone about a dosage error. A stack of charts fanned out across the counter. Someone had abandoned a cold cup of coffee near the printer; its surface shimmered with a thin layer of oil.

Grace dropped the box of gauze into the supply bin and checked the board. Trauma Two had a new line: Reddick, Noah — Imaging. Next to it, in neat block letters, someone had written: OR Two on standby. Her stomach tightened.

She pulled up his chart on the nearest computer, scanning the latest entries. Blood work logged. Orders for CT chest and shoulder. Notes from Lang and Park.

“Shiny.”

A shadow fell across the monitor. “Excuse me.”

The voice was male, smooth, and carried something that didn’t quite fit with the rest of the noise in the ER. It had a practiced weight to it, like something used in briefings and interviews.

Grace turned. The man standing at the corner of the station didn’t look like a patient or a family member. His suit was too well-cut, his posture too straight. He wore a dark gray jacket, no tie, a white shirt open at the collar. His shoes were polished, even with rain on the pavement outside. He held an ID badge clipped to his belt. The plastic caught the light when he shifted his hip, but the text was turned away from her.

“Can I help you?” Marta asked, still holding the phone to her ear.

“I’m looking for the attending on Captain Noah Reddick,” the man said. “And for a nurse named Holloway.”

Grace felt the back of her neck prickle. Marta covered the receiver with her hand and jerked her chin toward Grace.

“Holloway is right there,” she said. “Lang is in consult.”

The man’s eyes moved to Grace, and settled there. They were cool hazel, careful in the way they relaxed, as though every expression passed through a filter before it reached the surface.

“Ms. Holloway,” he said. “Good. Saves me a step.”

He stepped closer into the circle of fluorescent light above the station and flipped his badge around with two fingers. Department of Defense, Federal Liaison. Under that, his name: Cole Everett.

Grace didn’t flinch, but she did feel something inside her brace for impact. “Is there a problem?” she asked.

Cole shook his head once. “Problem is a strong word,” he said. “Let’s call it an urgent point of interest.”

Marta listened to that, then to the tinny voice on the other end of the phone. She muttered something about calling back and hung up.

“I didn’t know DOD sent suits for regular trauma cases,” she said.

“We don’t,” Cole replied. “Captain Reddick is not a regular trauma case.” His attention stayed on Grace as he spoke. “You were in the room with him when he came in,” he said. “You calmed him when Security couldn’t.”

Grace kept her arms loose at her sides. “I was doing my job,” she said.

“Plenty of people in scrubs in this building,” Cole said. “Only one of them said six very specific syllables.”

Marta looked between them. “I can go check on the front desk,” she announced, backing away. “Make sure nobody stole the magazines.”

She left—not so quickly that it looked like fleeing, but fast enough to leave the two of them in a small bubble of space. Cole watched her go, then refocused on Grace.

“Walk with me,” he said.

It came out as a suggestion, but there was an undertone beneath it that made it sound like an instruction, the kind built into bone. Grace glanced once at the board, then at the hallway that led toward Imaging. She weighed her options and found they all ended in the same place.

“Fine,” she said.

He started down the corridor at an easy pace, not strolling, not rushing. The kind of walk that assumed people would move out of his way, and they did, even if they didn’t realize why. Grace fell in step beside him. Up close, she noted the small details: the faint wear at the edges of his collar, the line of a watch under his cuff, the way his eyes flicked automatically to doorways and intersections as they passed. He was not just a suit.

“You know his rank,” she said. “You know mine.”

Cole glanced at her. “Hospital Corpsman Second Class, if the records I saw are not lying,” he said. “HM2. Or ‘Doc,’ apparently.”

The word brushed over her skin like a cold hand. “Those records were sealed,” she said.

“They were,” he agreed. “That seal loosened the minute you used an active call sign from a black file in a civilian emergency room.”

They reached a quieter stretch of hallway near an unused consult room. Cole stopped by the wall and turned to face her fully.

“You weren’t supposed to use it,” he said. “Raven three, echo fall.” The code sounded different in his mouth. Flatter, stripped of memory.

“I wasn’t supposed to need it,” she retorted.

Something flickered across his expression at that. Not sympathy. Recognition. “What did you see when you walked into that bay?” he asked. “Because from where I read it, all anyone expected to see was a dangerous veteran and a lot of paperwork.”

Grace pictured Noah again—eyes glazed, muscles coiled, hands snapping toward the oxygen mask. “I saw a man who didn’t know which room he was in,” she said. “And I saw where the blast hit his shoulder.”

Cole nodded slowly. “Not many people can read both at once,” he said.

He reached inside his jacket. Grace tensed just a fraction. It was reflex, not logic. His hands came back empty, holding a plain, thick envelope. No markings on the front, no return address—just a name typed in clean black letters: HM2 Holloway, Grace M.

The air around her seemed to go thinner. She looked at the envelope, then at him. “This is a hospital,” she said. “You could have sent an email.”

“Some things do better on paper,” he said. “There are still a few doors that only open with an actual signature.” He held it out.

She didn’t take it right away. “Why now?” she asked. “You had my records the whole time.”

“We had a file on someone who didn’t want to be found,” Cole said. “A medic flagged as ‘presumed KIA’ in an operation that went sideways in every direction. Command made a call to lock it. You helped that call stick by disappearing.”

His gaze held hers.

“Tonight, Captain Reddick comes in bleeding from a pattern that matches a case tactical report from the same region,” he continued. “Then he wakes up trying to rip the room apart and stops cold when you call him by a name that was never supposed to leave that valley.” He tilted the envelope slightly. “That makes your file relevant again.”

Grace stared at her name on the paper. “I’m not in the Navy anymore,” she said.

“I’m aware,” Cole said. “The envelope doesn’t change that. It updates the context.”

Something about the way he said context made her teeth clench. She reached out and took the envelope. The paper was heavier than it looked, cool against her fingers. Cole moved his hand back to his side.

“You should read it,” he said.

She slid a thumb under the sealed flap. The glue gave with a muted tear. Inside, there was no multi-page memo or printed briefing. Just a single sheet, folded twice. She unfolded it carefully.

Three lines. The first held a heading: Operation Nightglass Status Review. Her eyes dropped to the list below.

Reddick, Noah — Status: ALIVE
Holloway, Grace M. — Status: REACTIVATED

The rest of the page was blank. No explanation, no instructions, no signature. Her pulse thudded against her ribs.

“Reactivated,” she whispered. The word tasted dry, familiar, and foreign at once.

“In case the font is unclear,” Cole said.

Grace looked up. “I did not agree to that,” she said.

Cole’s expression did not change. “You agreed to keep breathing,” he said. “That put you back on the board the second Nightglass shifted from theoretical history to active concern.”

“You buried that file,” she said.

“We sealed it,” he corrected. “Different choice of verb.”

Her fingers tightened on the paper. “What does reactivated mean?” she asked.

“On paper,” he said, “it means your clearance status is under internal review and that your name just moved from the far-right column of a very old list into one we actually look at.”

“And off paper?” she pressed.

He considered her for a moment. “Off paper,” he said quietly, “it means the people who walked away from that building are still anchors when the ground around it starts to move again. We pay attention to our anchors.”

He was too calm, too measured. She recognized the technique. Keep the voice low and steady, drip information in controlled doses, never show urgency unless you want it to spread. She hated that it was effective.

“I left,” she said. “I took my discharge and I left. I did not ask to be anyone’s anchor.”

Cole inclined his head. “Your preference is noted,” he said. “So is the fact that when the situation pushed, you did not hesitate to reach for the tools you threw away.”

“His heart was racing,” she snapped. “His brain was back there. It was a code he would respond to, that is all.”

“It was a key,” Cole said. “You turned it, the door opened, and now we are here.”

Behind him, down the hallway, a transport team pushed an empty gurney toward the main hub. A volunteer walked past carrying a stack of folded blankets. The ordinary life of the hospital moved on just a few feet away, untouched.

Grace looked back at the sheet in her hands. Her name. The old operation. The new status. Reactivated. She folded the paper once, twice, along the original creases. Each line felt like a decision she had not been consulted on.

“Why put his name first?” she asked.

Cole’s mouth twitched at the corner, almost a smile, but not quite. “He’s the one in the bed,” he said. “You’re the one standing upright. Different kind of urgency.”

“He thinks I died,” she said.

“And until tonight, as far as his side of the paperwork knew, he was right,” Cole replied. “That’s another context that just shifted.”

Grace slid the page back into the envelope and held it against her chest. “Does he know?” she asked. “About this?”

“About the status change?” Cole said. “Not yet.”

“About you being here,” she said.

“I spoke with him before he went to Imaging,” Cole said briefly. “He is aware that the department is paying attention.”

Of course he had. “Did you ask him permission to drag me into this?” she asked.

“No,” Cole said. “I did not need his permission to follow a code phrase to its source.” He watched her fingers dig into the envelope. “I did ask him one question,” Cole added. “I asked if the person who used that phrase in the trauma bay tonight was the same one who kept them alive on another very ugly night.”

He paused.

“He said yes,” Cole finished, without hesitation.

Grace let out a slow breath. The hallway seemed to tilt for a moment, just slightly, as if the building had shifted on its foundation.

“You came here to tell me my name moved on a list,” she said. “Is that all?”

“For now,” Cole said. “This is an emergency department, and you’re on shift. I’m not here to pull you into a van.” The offhand way he said it almost made her laugh. Almost. His gaze flicked past her shoulder, back toward the trauma bays. “I needed you to see that paper,” he said. “To understand that people above my pay grade are aware you exist and are adjusting their mental maps accordingly.”

“Maps,” she repeated.

“You know the kind,” he said. “With circles and lines and names written in margins. You’ve drawn some yourself.”

That took her back for a second. Nights bent over crude sketches in dirt and on walls, marking choke points, blast radii, and safe routes. She pushed the memory away.

“I work here,” she said. “I draw blood and hang fluids and tell people where the bathrooms are.”

“You also talk a collapsing soldier out of a flashback with six words and diagnose blast pattern injuries before the scans even run,” Cole said. “You’re more than one line item.”

He stepped back a pace, leaving her with a little more air. “We will talk again,” he said. “Preferably when your patient is not about to visit an operating room.”

He turned, then paused as if remembering something. “Ms. Holloway.”

She looked up.

“Do not throw that envelope away,” he said. “Reactivated is not the sort of status that disappears because you pretend not to see it.”

Then he walked off, calm and unhurried, blending back into the flow of the hospital corridor until he was just another dark jacket among scrubs and white coats.

Grace stood alone for a moment after Cole disappeared into the traffic of the corridor. The envelope felt solid under her fingers, the corners digging into her palm. She slipped it inside her scrub pocket, flattening the fabric over it until the shape disappeared.

The hospital noise washed back in: a call light chimed somewhere, wheels squeaked, a distant phone rang, stopped,

She stepped inside. Noah was lying on the CT table, the sheet twisted beneath him. The nasal cannula had been swapped for a tight mask over his nose and mouth, his chest rising and falling with labored breaths. His skin had shifted from gray to an alarming shade of blue, and the right side of his chest rose slower than the left, as though something heavy were pressing against it.

Lang was already at the head of the bed, fresh gloves on, his expression tight and controlled.

“Pressure is crashing,” one of the CT techs called out. “He started desatting halfway through the scan. We tried to pull him out, but he just dropped.”

“Heart rate’s at 160, and it’s irregular,” a resident reported, eyes locked on the monitor. “He’s going into an arrhythmia.”

“Get the crash cart in here!” Lang barked. “Charge to 200. We’re not losing him in a hallway scanner.”

A nurse shoved the red cart closer. The defibrillator on top started humming to life, a thin, rising whine as it charged. Grace moved around a tech and arrived at Noah’s side.

His eyes were half-lidded, flickering under his closed eyelids, half-focused on nothing. His breaths were shallow, ragged gasps pulled through the mask.

“Move back, Holloway,” Lang snapped. “You don’t have clearance for this.”

Grace didn’t budge. She focused on the veins in Noah’s neck—thick and roped, pulsing against his skin—and then on his chest. The left side rose fully with each breath, but the right side barely moved, shifting slowly, like a tight, strained tug beneath the bruised skin.

She filtered through the noise in the room, zeroing in on the sounds that mattered. The monitor didn’t sound like a heart giving up—it sounded like a heart trying to push through something it couldn’t get around.

She pressed two fingers lightly against his collarbone, feeling the way the muscles strained with each breath. Too much effort for too little air.

The defibrillator beeped, ready. “200 joules,” the nurse by the cart reported.

“Charged,” Lang grabbed the paddles. “Clear!”

“You do that,” Grace said, “and you’ll fry a heart that’s trying to work.”

Her words sliced through the room, blunt but sharp. Lang paused, the paddles still in his hands.

“This isn’t the moment for poetry,” he snapped. “He’s in a malignant rhythm.”

“He’s in trouble because he can’t breathe,” Grace countered. “Not because his heart forgot how.”

She pointed toward Noah’s neck with her chin, keeping her hands clear. “Look at his neck,” she said. “Look at his right chest. Listen, if you have the nerve.”

The resident with the tablet hesitated, then grabbed a stethoscope and pressed it gently against Noah’s left chest, then the right.

“Left breath sounds are rough, but there,” the resident said. “Right…” There was a long pause, his voice unsure. “Decreased breath sounds on the right. Almost none.”

“Neck veins are distended,” another added, glancing between Noah’s throat and the blood pressure reading. “BP’s at 60 over 30. Heart rate’s still high.”

Grace could almost feel the air trapped inside Noah’s chest—pressing his lung down, shoving his mediastinum to the side, suffocating his heart as it struggled to keep beating.

“Tension physiology,” she said. “Right-sided. His heart isn’t the primary problem; it’s collateral damage.”

Lang tightened his grip on the paddles. “And what would you suggest we do while his rhythm disintegrates?”

“Talk it down, relieve the pressure,” she said. “Or you can shock him all night, but it won’t fix the fact that his lung is choking his heart.”

The CT techs fell silent, their eyes bouncing between Lang and Grace. The crash cart hummed softly under the defibrillator, a counterpoint to the alarm growing louder on the monitor.

“This isn’t a field hospital,” Lang said, his voice low. “We don’t stab people in scanners and hope for the best. We follow protocol.”

Grace stepped closer to the table, her gaze narrowing on the landmarks. Second intercostal space, midclavicular line on the right. The place her hands had gone without thinking years ago.

“We follow physiology,” she said. “You decompress that chest, give his heart room, and his rhythm has a chance. You shock him now, you cook what’s left while the house is still on fire.”

Lang clenched his jaw. “Nurse,” he said, turning to the woman at the cart, “hand me the paddles.”

The nurse shifted, caught in a crossfire of conflicting orders. But Jamie Park appeared beside Grace, his breath a little short from the run.

“I heard the page,” he said quickly. “What’s happening?”

“Right-sided tension,” Grace said. “Secondary to blast. He’s drowning, not dying.”

Jamie looked at the monitor, then at Noah’s chest, then at the paddles. “Are we sure?” he asked.

“Look at him,” Grace replied.

Jamie studied Noah for a long moment. Something shifted in his face, and he turned to the crash cart. He yanked open a drawer, quickly scanning the packs, until his fingers found what he wanted. An 18-gauge needle, long and sterile in its wrapper. He tore it open and thrust it into Grace’s waiting hand.

“Here,” he said.

Lang stared at him. “What do you think you’re doing?” Lang demanded.

“Not killing him by accident,” Jamie replied, his voice tighter than usual.

The tension in the room thickened. Grace didn’t wait for permission that wasn’t coming. She snapped the cap off the needle and handed it to the nurse to hold, then swabbed quickly at the target spot with an alcohol pad. The coolness of the wet skin met her fingers.

Noah’s breath rasped through the mask. Grace pressed her fingers along his ribs, counting silently. Second space, midclavicular. The space she could find in the dark if she had to.

“On three,” she said to Noah, even though she wasn’t sure how much of her voice reached him.

“One.” She drew back the syringe. “Two.” She felt the weight of every eye in the room on her hand. “Three.”

She pushed the needle in. There was resistance, a rubbery give as it passed through skin and tissue. Then, with a soft ease, it slipped into the pleural space.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then there was a soft hiss—a thin rush of air escaping through metal, the trapped pressure bleeding out.

The monitor stuttered, then steadied. The line of Noah’s neck veins eased slightly. His next breath was deeper, less strained. His oxygen saturation climbed by two, then three points.

Jamie exhaled slowly. “Vitals are creeping back,” he said. “Heart rate’s still high, but the rhythm’s less chaotic.”

The nurse lowered the paddles back into their cradle. The defibrillator’s whine lasted a second longer, then began to drop as the charge bled off. Lang watched the monitor like it might betray him.

Noah’s eyes fluttered, then opened just a little wider. The glassiness in his gaze had shifted. There was more presence now, less disorientation. He turned his head slightly to look at Grace.

“Tuesday,” he rasped, his voice rough.

Grace leaned closer, still holding the needle steady. “What?” she asked.

He swallowed. “We used to call that Tuesday,” he said. “Back then.”

Grace felt a reluctant laugh rise in her chest. “Here we call it saving your life,” she said.

Lang cleared his throat, his voice awkward in the calm air. “What procedure did you just perform, for the record?” he asked, as though phrasing the question could make it less obvious that he had just watched her save Noah.

“Needle decompression,” she said. “Hemodynamic salvage, if you want the fancy term. You can chart it however makes the lawyers breathe easier.”

The CT tech closest to the machine let out a quiet, shaky chuckle that broke the remaining tension. Lang looked from Noah to the gauge on the syringe, then to the monitor.

“We still need to get him to the OR,” he said, his tone a little softer now. “But he’s not coding on a table in my scanner. That’s something.”

Grace handed the syringe to the nurse to secure and stepped back half a pace, giving the team room to move. Jamie checked the monitor again.

“Pressure’s up to 80 over 48,” he reported. “Oxygen’s climbing. He’s not pretty, but he’s holding.”

“All right,” Lang said. “Move him. Carefully this time. No more mask over his mouth unless absolutely necessary.”

He met Grace’s eyes for a brief moment. No apology there yet, but a reluctant acknowledgment. “Good call,” he said. The words were clipped, but they were there.

Grace inclined her head. “It’s his lung you should thank,” she said. “It wanted some personal space.”

They carefully rolled Noah off the CT table onto a gurney. The motion was smoother now. Every hand on him seemed more cautious, more aware of how close they had come to a different outcome. As they lifted him, his fingers brushed Grace’s wrist. It wasn’t a grip, just a light contact.

She glanced down. His eyes had drifted half-closed. Again, exhausted—but there was a line of connection still there, a recognition that had survived oxygen masks and needles.

“Stay,” he breathed, his voice barely a whisper.

“I’m not going far,” she said.

They settled him onto the gurney and began to wheel him out. Grace walked alongside for a few steps, then peeled off near the doorway as the surgical team converged to take over. The OR doors opened, swallowed the gurney, and closed again, muffling the sound of the monitor behind solid glass.

She found herself alone in the CT suite, the room smelling faintly of ozone and antiseptic. Jamie stayed behind, resting his hands on the crash cart. He looked at her, eyes wide, a little stunned.

“You did that like you’ve done it a hundred times,” he said.

She exhaled slowly. “I have,” she answered.

He let it settle. “I almost shocked him,” Jamie said quietly. “I followed Lang’s lead and almost cooked a heart that wasn’t the main problem. I didn’t even think to look at his chest first.”

“You thought of it when you listened,” she said. “Next time, you’ll think of it sooner.”

Jamie smiled weakly. “Next time,” he said, “I’m calling you first.”

“You better not wait that long,” she replied.

They rolled the crash cart back into position by the wall. The CT techs began to reset the room, wiping down the table, coiling cables, and unsilencing alarms. Grace touched her scrub pocket, feeling the outline of the envelope again. Reactivated. The word no longer felt like something happening on a separate plane. It had followed her into the CT suite, into her hand, into the precise angle of the needle that had released air and given a heart room.

She turned toward the hallway. There would be updates soon. Surgical notes, post-op vitals, new rhythms to listen to. For now, she walked back into the bright, constant motion of St. Gabriel with the weight of an old life sitting against her ribs and the echo of a hissed breath still in her ears.

The OR doors had barely swung shut before the ER started stitching itself back together. Grace took a few steps away from the CT suite and was immediately pulled into three different directions. A child with a split chin, an elderly woman who had fallen in the shower, a man insisting his chest pain was probably something he ate.

The small, ordinary emergencies did their work. They filled her hands. They gave her tasks with clear beginnings and ends.

Still, every time she passed the board, her eyes slid to the same line: Reddick, Noah — OR2. The status next to it flickered from Pre-Op to In-Procedure. A long stretch of time settled under that label. Then, eventually, it changed again. Post-Op. SICU 7.

The shift clock rolled on. The hands on the big round wall clock near the station crept from just past nine into the heavy weight of after midnight. The storm outside drifted away from the windows. The rain let up. The darkness stayed.

At one point, Marta pressed a paper cup of coffee into Grace’s hand without a word. It had cooled by the time Grace remembered to drink it. The bitter taste still cut through the fog in her head when she did.

Between patients, she found herself looking down the hall toward the bank of elevators that led to the Intensive Care Unit. It felt like looking at a different country. Finally, when the board showed no immediate fires waiting for her name and the hallway noise settled into a manageable hum, she heard what she had been half-listening for.

“Holloway.”

She turned. Jamie stood there, surgical cap in his hand, hair flattened in odd lines where the elastic had pressed. His scrubs bore a couple of faint dried smears that had once been blood. His eyes were tired, but there was a visible light under the fatigue.

“He’s out,” Jamie said. “Surgery went as well as it could. They stabilized the artery, pulled out what they could of the fragments. The arm is still attached.”

Some of the tightness in her chest loosened. “How is his heart?” she asked.

“Holding a grudge,” Jamie replied, “but better. Rhythm is ugly, not catastrophic. They’re watching him upstairs.”

She nodded once. “Good,” she said.

Jamie shifted his cap from one hand to the other. “You can go see him, you know,” he said. “You’re listed in the notes as the reason he made it to the OR without coding. I don’t think anyone will kick you out if you stand in a doorway for five minutes.”

Grace considered the elevators again. “I’m on shift,” she said.

“So am I,” Jamie said. “We just changed our view. There are enough bodies on the floor to cover you for a few minutes. Marta said to tell you that if you don’t go, she’ll find an excuse to send you up anyway.”

The idea of Marta conspiring with the hospital’s newest trauma surgeon made the corner of Grace’s mouth lift. “She forgets who trained whom,” she said.

Jamie smiled. “I think she remembers,” he said. “She just also remembers what happens when people try to muscle through things alone.” He let that sit for a second. “Go,” he added. “Before Lang comes out of his post-op glow and finds more charts for you to sign.”

She gave in.

The elevator ride up was short and smooth. The numbers above the doors blinked from 1 to 2 to 3. On the third floor, the lights felt different. Softer, less harsh. The air was cooler, the sounds were more measured. The Surgical ICU stretched out in a long, quiet line. Large windows at one end showed the city scattered with lights.

The nursing station here was smaller, with fewer people, the conversations low and clipped. Grace checked the room list and found his number: SICU 7. She walked there slowly, each step pressing the dull rubber of the floor against the soles of her shoes.

The door to Seven was half-open. A monitor glow spilled out into the hall, painting a faint green line on the opposite wall. She knocked once on the frame with her knuckles, a soft, polite sound.

The nurse inside looked up from the chart. “You’re Holloway,” the nurse said. She wore dark blue scrubs, hair tied back, eyes alert but not unkind. Her badge read Lucy, RN.

Grace blinked. “Word moves fast,” she said.

“Lang was very clear,” Lucy replied. “If a quiet one named Grace shows up, let her in.” There was the faintest trace of amusement in her tone. “Five minutes,” Lucy added. “He’s sedated, but his body is still deciding how mad it is at us.”

Grace stepped into the room. The lighting here stayed low, focused mostly on the bed. Machines formed a loose ring around it, screens flickering with numbers and lines. The smell was antiseptic and plastic, with a faint hint of iron that never quite left after major surgery.

Noah looked smaller under the blankets. The bulk that had seemed so imposing in the ER was now partially hidden under layers of white and tubing. His shoulder was wrapped in a thick dressing—clean bandage where the bloody gauze had been. A clear line of sutures peeked out along his upper chest where they had gone in.

A ventilator didn’t breathe for him, but the nasal cannula remained, delivering oxygen. The rise and fall of his chest was slower, more even. The monitor showed a rhythm that still had some irregular bumps, but no wild spike. His face, without the strain of pain contorting it, had softer lines. The small scar at his hairline stood out more starkly.

Grace stepped closer, stopping at the side of the bed where she could see his face and the numbers at the same time. Lucy moved to the other side, checking the drip rates on his IV pump.

“He’s been muttering,” Lucy said conversationally. “Before he drifted off. Names mostly. A few words I didn’t understand.”

Grace watched the slow movement of his eyelids. They flickered once, not fully opening—a sign that he was hovering somewhere between deep sedation and the edges of awareness.

“Did he seem agitated?” Grace asked.

“A little,” Lucy said. “But when I told him you were okay, he settled.”

Grace looked at her. “You told him,” she said.

Lucy shrugged. “I put two and two together,” she said. “Trauma nurses gossip. Also, one of the residents was very bad at whispering.”

Grace let out a soft breath that might almost have been a laugh.

Lucy adjusted a line, then stepped back. “I’ll give you a minute,” she said. “If he starts trying to crawl out of bed, hit the red button. If he stops breathing, hit the red button twice.” Then she slipped out the door, whispering it closed behind her.

The room felt larger without another person in it, even with the machines. Grace moved closer to the bed and wrapped her fingers around the foot of the rail. The metal felt the same as every other rail in the building. Yet her hand tightened on it as if it might be a different one.

She watched Noah breathe for several seconds, counting each rise. Inhale, she thought. Exhale. Her own breath fell into the same rhythm before she realized it.

His eyelids fluttered again. This time, one of them lifted halfway. A sliver of hazel appeared beneath it, blurred and unfocused.

“You were supposed to be asleep,” she said quietly.

He made a small sound, something between a sigh and a groan. “Not good at that,” he murmured. The words were slow-shaped around sedation, but they were words.

“You just got your shoulder opened and your chest poked,” she said. “You