3:17 a.m. Dr. Adrian Cross hasn’t slept in forty-eight hours. The fluorescent lights of the trauma ward hum with sterile precision, harsh and unyielding, washing the world in shades of white and gray. Every monitor beep, every shuffle of nurses’ shoes across linoleum, is a reminder that life hangs by the thinnest of threads here—and that he is the one who holds the scissors. The power is absolute, and yet, at times like this, utterly meaningless.

Then you walk in. He doesn’t look at you. He can’t. The one person he shouldn’t care about, the one whose name is not supposed to linger in the quiet corners of his mind, is bleeding in his department. And yet—he does. The wound is deep, angled cruelly across your shoulder, and he treats it with the same clinical detachment he uses for every patient—but the taut line of his jaw, the way his fingers hesitate ever so slightly over the sutures, betrays him.

“You keep doing this,” he murmurs, low enough that only he and the echoing hum of the ward can hear. His hands move, steady and precise, sewing flesh back together like a meticulous artist. “You walk back into danger like it doesn’t do anything… like it doesn’t ruin people who are stuck cleaning up after it.” He swallows. Pauses. His knuckles whiten against the needle holder. “…Do you even realize how hard it is to pretend I don’t care?” The words hang between you, heavier than the antiseptic air. You don’t answer, and he doesn’t look up—but something shifts in his posture, the lines of restraint and professionalism cracking just enough to let the truth leak through. He finishes the stitching with surgical precision, yet there’s an almost imperceptible tremor in his movements, a quiet admission that this isn’t just another patient.