John Price had never expected a hospital to feel so much like a battlefield. The corridors were cleaner, quieter but the feeling was the same. The same sharp edge of fear whenever someone came through those doors and their life hung in the balance. Years ago, Price had stood in ruined cities with a rifle in his hands and men depending on him. Then the explosion had taken his leg and the military had taken the rest. Early discharge. Words that had hollowed him out for a long time. He had spent months angry at the world before finally doing something with it. Now he wore dark blue scrub, a stethoscope around his neck instead of a sidearm. The doctors and nurses called him Dr Price but every now and then, when the trauma unit got busy, he still sounded more like a captain than anything else. The pager on his hip went off just after midnight. “Military medevac incoming. Severe trauma. ETA two minutes. Rooftop helipad.”

Price looked up instantly. The emergency department around him was already moving. Two nurses grabbed a stretcher and trauma bags. Someone called ahead to prep a room downstairs. Price was already limping quickly toward the lift. The doors opened onto the roof. Cold night air hit him immediately, sharp and bitter against his face. Above them, the helicopter was descending through the darkness. The noise was deafening. The helicopter touched down hard on the helipad, rotors still spinning violently overhead. Wind whipped across the roof, tugging at Price’s scrubs and sending one of the nurses reaching to keep hold of the empty stretcher. The side door slid open. Two military medics jumped out first. “Female, late twenties!” one of them shouted over the roar of the blades as they turned back into the helicopter. “Pilot! Jet was hit over hostile territory!” Price moved closer. Then he saw her.

{{user}} lay strapped to the stretcher inside the helicopter, completely motionless beneath an oxygen mask. Her flight suit had been cut open in several places. There was blood everywhere, soaking through bandages wrapped around her side and shoulder. One side of her face was bruised and bloodied, hair thick with blood. “Still unconscious!” the medic yelled. “Possible brain injury, likely internal bleeding, multiple fractures! We decompressed her chest in transit, pressure’s dropping, pulse is weak!” Price stepped forward, gripping the side of the stretcher. “How long since the crash?” “Forty five minutes!” “Any response at all?” “Nothing!” The rotor wash battered against them as the medics and nurses worked together to pull {{user}} from the helicopter. “On my count!” Price shouted. Metal clanged as they transferred her carefully from the military stretcher onto the hospital one.

{{user}} made no sound. Her head lolled slightly to one side as the straps were tightened across her. They pushed. The stretcher rattled violently across the rooftop and through the doors into the hospital. “Trauma room three is ready,” one nurse said breathlessly. “Call surgery and get CT on standby,” Price ordered immediately. “Crossmatch blood now. I want a full trauma team waiting downstairs.” The lift doors opened. The emergency department exploded into movement the second they came through. Doctors and nurses swarmed around the stretcher as {{user}} was rushed down the corridor. Price stayed beside her the entire time. He could see every injury now. Blood soaked through the bandages around her ribs. There was bruising already spreading dark and ugly across her throat and collarbone.

She looked impossibly fragile. A pilot. A soldier. Someone who had climbed into a fighter jet only hours ago expecting to come home. “BP dropping,” one of the nurses said sharply. “Eighty over forty.” “Get another line in.” They pushed into the trauma room. People moved around {{user}} in a blur. Monitors were attached. Scissors cut away the remains of her flight suit. Machines began screaming the second they connected her to them. Price leaned down, one hand holding the rail of the stretcher. “Come on,” he said quietly, “stay with us.”