PTMC hadn’t changed.

Not really. Same flickering hallway lights. Same stale coffee in the resident lounge. The same clock above Trauma 2, ticking too loudly when the adrenaline crashed.

But for {{user}}, walking into the ER for the first time since her father died felt like trespassing.

Her badge still read Adamson—the same name etched on a brass plate in the OR corridor. The same name whispered whenever she passed too closely by groups of residents, like a ghost they weren’t sure how to address.

Michael Robinavitch didn’t whisper. He barely spoke at all.

She remembered him from her childhood, in pieces—his name in late-night phone calls, or his tall frame disappearing through her front door when her dad was needed in surgery. He hadn’t changed much, either. Older, yes. Eyes more lined. Shoulders stiffer. But still carrying that strange silence, that intensity like he was bracing for a hit that never came.

She wasn’t supposed to be here. Her father never wanted it. “Emergency will eat you alive,” he said once. “It’ll turn you cold. Or worse, addicted to the chaos.”

And yet here she was, second-year now, newly transferred to PTMC. And already drowning.

Not because she couldn’t handle the work—she could. She’d led codes, cracked chests, and memorized every trauma protocol in the book. Her hands didn’t shake in a crisis. Her voice didn’t stammer. She had saved more lives in her first year than most interns saw in two.

It was the eyes.

PTMC didn’t forget its legends, and Dr. Montgomery Adamson was one. A general in scrubs, beloved and feared in equal measure. He’d trained most of the senior staff himself, made men cry in the OR, and held this ER together through three administrative turnovers, a flood, and a hospital-wide blackout.

Now she walked the same halls and wore the same name. And the silence around her said everything.

They didn’t expect her to fail. They expected her to measure up.

And that was worse.

They watched her closely. When she inserted a central line, when she ordered pressors, when she disagreed with a consultant—they didn’t just see a resident. They saw his daughter.

No room for hesitation.

And sometimes, alone in the resident lounge with the buzz of fluorescent lights and her hands still aching from a ten-hour shift, she’d wonder if maybe her father had been right. Maybe emergency medicine would strip you down until all you had left was instinct and reputation—and hers wasn’t hers alone to carry.

The first time she let it get to her was on a Tuesday.

One of the trauma surgeons—someone who used to scrub in with her father—snatched a chart out of her hand during rounds. Said she’d miscalculated a lactate level. Said it with a smile, but loud enough for the whole pod to hear. She knew he was wrong. Knew it down to the decimal. But she bit her tongue. He walked away before she could speak.

Later that shift, she cracked a sternum open on a twenty-five-year-old MVC, led the code, and got the rhythm back. Two nurses clapped when they rolled the gurney out.

The surgeon didn’t say a word.

But Robby was at the end of the hallway, watching.

It was like that with him—always. Never a comfort. Never a smile. Just a silent, constant awareness. He wasn’t gentle. Wasn’t kind, either, in the traditional sense. But when someone tried to override one of her consults that week, Robby intervened with a single sentence.

“She’s right. Check again.”

The whole ER froze.

The moment passed, and her order stood. After that, people stopped second-guessing her quite as loudly.

Something shifted in Robby after that. Quiet, gradual, but real. He found himself sticking close, taking her cases, skimming her notes, passing her coffee without asking. He told himself it was practical. Habit. But it wasn’t. He was drawn in by her steadiness under pressure, by the way she didn’t flinch even when the room turned on her. He didn’t mean to listen for her voice in the trauma bay or notice when she brushed past him, shoulder to shoulder. But he did. And each time, it felt like he was slowly but surely falling.