The Emergency Department at Oakhaven Memorial usually had a pulse. It was predictable. Controlled. It was the kind of place where chaos was invited in, sat down, and forced to behave. Machines beeped in steady, hypnotic patterns; nurses moved with the practiced purpose of a choreographed dance.
Amie Robin lived in that rhythm. It was the only thing that kept her world from fraying at the edges.
Tonight, the rhythm was dead.
The double doors didn't just open—they burst. The sound of hinges straining against wood was the new metronome.
Five stretchers. Eight. More.
"Multiple incoming trauma!" someone screamed over the sudden, violent din. "Prep all bays—now! Where's Dr. Kline?"
The calm didn't shatter all at once. It snapped like a dry bone.
The Blur
Amie was already in motion. Gloves on. Mask up. Focus locked.
"Vitals?" she called, stepping toward the first stretcher.
"Male, late teens, blunt force trauma, internal bleeding—"
"Bay 3. Next!"
"Female, severe lacerations—"
"Bay 5. Apply pressure—don't wait for me!"
Everything blurred. Training took over because it had to; training was a shield. In this room, emotion was a liability. Emotion got people killed.
Then, another stretcher hit the floor. Fast. Too fast.
"Unconscious male!" a paramedic shouted, lungs straining. "Severe impact trauma—he was at ground zero of one of the strikes!"
Amie turned. She froze for a fraction of a second—too short for the room to notice, but an eternity for her.
"...Put him in Bay 2," she said. Her voice sounded like it belonged to a stranger.
Bay 2
They rolled him past her—a ghost of a boy covered in gray dust and dark bruises. He was too still. Amie's eyes tracked the stretcher automatically, her chest tightening with a feeling she refused to name. Not yet.
"Amie!" a nurse snapped, breaking the trance. "We need you in Bay 4!"
She blinked, her gaze lingering on the closed curtain of Bay 2.
"Yeah," she breathed. "I'm coming."
Minutes passed—or maybe hours. Time was no longer linear; it was a tally of injuries, blood, and the roar of sirens. She worked until a nurse appeared at her elbow, hesitating. In a trauma center, hesitation was a flare of a warning sign.
"Doctor Robin?" the nurse whispered. "You should come see this one. In Bay 2."
The cold hit Amie's stomach before she even moved. She didn't run; she walked. She remained the professional. The doctor. The machine. But every step felt like walking through deep water.
The Fight
She stepped into Bay 2, and the world stopped.
Jessie lay on the bed, a web of wires and flickering monitors trying to claim him. His face was a map of the disaster—bruised, cut, and terrifyingly quiet. For the first time that night, Amie Robin forgot how to breathe.
"...No," she whispered. It wasn't the doctor speaking. It was the mother.
She moved to his side, her hands hovering for a heartbeat before grounding themselves on his cold skin.
"Vitals," she commanded, her voice vibrating with a hairline fracture of control. "Talk to me."
"Pulse is weak. Breathing shallow. Head injury likely—"
"I can see that!" she snapped, then sucked in a breath to steady her hands. Focus. Focus. Focus.
Her hands moved with surgical precision, but her eyes kept drifting back to his face. Her son. Her Jessie.
"Stay with me," she said, her voice rising over the mechanical hum. "You don't get to do this. Not today. Not like this."
The monitor stuttered. A sharp, flat tone cut through the room, slicing the air into ribbons.
"No!" Amie cried. "Get me a crash cart—NOW!"
"CLEAR!"
The jolt. The silence. The agonizing wait for the machines to catch up to her heart. Then—a signal. Weak. Flickering. But there.
Amie let out a breath that shook her entire frame. She looked at her hands; they were trembling. She clamped them shut.
"We're not losing him," she said, more to herself than the staff.
Pressure
The Emergency Department didn't recover. It adapted. The controlled rhythm was gone, replaced by something sharper and faster. It wasn't panic—it was pressure. The kind that sat on your chest and didn't let up. Amie Robin moved through it as she always had: precise, efficient, and focused. Even now. Even here.
"BP is stabilizing in Bay 2," a nurse called out.
Amie didn't look up from Jessie. "Define stabilizing."
"Barely holding, but it's not dropping anymore."
That wasn't good, but it wasn't the worst. She'd take it. Her hands adjusted a line, every movement deliberate. She had to stay controlled. If she stopped—if she thought too hard—she would see him as her son, not her patient. She couldn't afford that yet.
Bay 7
"Doctor Robin."
Amie didn't turn. "What."
"There's another one you need to see. He came in with him."
That made her pause. She glanced at Jessie one more time—machines steady, breathing assisted. Alive. That was enough to step away for a moment.
"I'll be back," she whispered to him.
She stepped into the hallway, where the noise hit her like a physical wave. Bay 7 was only a few steps away, but it felt miles further. Inside, Leo sat upright on the bed. He wasn't unconscious, but he wasn't okay.
"...You're the doctor," Leo said. It wasn't a question.
"Yes. What's your name?"
"Leo. Willson."
Amie examined the blood seeping through the gauze on his arm. "Pain?"
"It works." Leo looked at his own injury like it was a data point on a chart. "Six out of ten. You were with the boy in Bay 2?"
Leo's jaw tightened. "Yeah. He took the hit. It wasn't random. That thing—it adjusted mid-air. It tracked movement. It picked a target."
A beat of silence followed.
"...It picked him," Leo finished.
Amie didn't respond. She didn't want to process that—not while her son's heart was barely beating down the hall. "Let's focus on your injuries," she said, retreating into her professional shell.
The Arrival
Outside, voices rose. Not medical voices. Commands.
"Where is he?!"
"Sir, you can't just—!"
"Move!"
An older man burst into the doorway. Gray hair, sharp eyes, moving like he owned every floorboard he stepped on. Behind him was an older woman, composed but with fear leaking from her eyes.
"Leo!" The woman rushed forward into a careful hug.
"I'm fine," Leo said, his composure cracking just slightly. "...Grandma."
The man stepped closer, his eyes scanning the room like a commander inspecting a front line. He looked at Amie. "You're the attending? How bad is he?"
"I said I'm fine," Leo interjected.
The man didn't look at him. "Did I ask you?"
The tension in the room wasn't hostile, but it was firm. Amie stepped in. "He's stable. Arm injury, some impact trauma, but nothing life-threatening. He needs monitoring."
The man nodded. His eyes shifted toward the curtain of Bay 2. "...And the other boy?"
Amie's chest tightened. "He's critical."
Leo looked away. A heavy silence filled the room until the man spoke again, quieter this time. "...We'll need updates."
Amie met his gaze. "You'll get them when I have them."
She turned back toward the door. Across the hall, the monitor in Bay 2 spiked again. The sound cut through her, and suddenly, nothing else in the world mattered. The rhythm was gone, but the fight had just begun.