Chapter 1 – July 1st, 00:03
Bellevue Hospital Center, Trauma Bay 1
The overhead lights snap from dim to blinding white the second the doors burst open.
"Twenty-eight-year-old male, multiple GSWs! Two to the right chest, one to the left upper quadrant! BP sixty over palp, tachycardic at one-fifty, sats dropping to eighty-six!"
Leo's legs move before his brain catches up. He's sprinting beside the stretcher, Jamal Carter's huge hand clamped on his shoulder like a seatbelt.
"Name?" Jamal barks.
"DeShawn! DeShawn Williams!" the paramedic shouts over the wheels. "He was talking two minutes ago, then he crashed in the rig!"
The patient is grey. Lips blue, eyes half-open, blood pumping out of a hole just under the right nipple with every weak heartbeat.
Jamal doesn't break stride. "Trauma panel, two units O-neg uncrossed, level-one infuser, chest tube tray, thoracotomy kit—move!"
Nurses scatter like startled birds.
Leo's mouth is sand. He has never seen this much blood outside a textbook.
Jamal shoves him forward. "Gloves, Kang! Now!"
Leo rips open a pair of size-eight sterile gloves with his teeth, hands shaking so hard the powder puffs into the air like smoke.
DeShawn coughs (wet, red) and tries to speak.
"Hey, man, stay with me," Leo hears himself say, voice cracking. "We've got you."
Jamal is already at the head of the bed, ultrasound probe in his gloved hand, sliding it over the left chest. The screen fills with black.
"Pericardial effusion. Big one. He's tamponading." Jamal's voice is calm, almost bored, like he's ordering coffee. "We're cracking him. Right now."
A nurse slaps a #10 blade into Jamal's palm.
Leo freezes.
Crack him. Open chest. Here. In the trauma bay.
Jamal's eyes flick to him. "Kang. You ever seen a clamshell?"
"N-no, sir."
"Congratulations. First row seat. Hold this." He shoves the ultrasound probe into Leo's hand. "Don't move."
Then Jamal leans over the patient like an eclipse.
"Ten-blade."
The scalpel flashes. One smooth motion from sternal notch to costal margin on the left, then across to the right (skin, fat, muscle parting like theater curtains).
Blood wells, dark and thick.
Leo's stomach flips, but he doesn't look away.
Jamal grabs the rib spreader himself (no time for delicacy). Metal teeth bite into bone. He cranks once, twice. The chest opens with a wet, obscene crack that echoes off the ceiling.
Ribs spread. Heart exposed, squeezed inside a shiny, bulging pericardium.
"Pericardiotomy scissors!"
A nurse slaps them into his hand.
Jamal slices the pericardium lengthwise. Blood explodes out like a broken dam, splattering his mask, his goggles, Leo's brand-new white coat.
The heart flops, suddenly free, beating too fast and too shallow.
"There's your culprit," Jamal mutters. "Bullet nicked the right ventricle. Kang, suction!"
Leo grabs the Yankauer, shoves it into the chest, blood roaring up the tube.
DeShawn gasps (one huge, desperate breath) and his pressure jumps on the monitor.
Jamal's fingers slide into the chest like he was born there. "Got it. Through-and-through. Prolene, 3-0, pledgeted."
A nurse tears open the suture.
Leo watches Jamal's hands (big, scarred, impossibly steady) sew the heart with tiny, perfect stitches while DeShawn's blood pressure climbs to 90 systolic.
Ten minutes later the chest is packed, tubes in, patient alive and rolling to the OR for washout.
Only then does Jamal look at Leo again.
Leo is shaking, soaked in blood up to his elbows, pupils blown wide.
Jamal peels off his gloves, drops them in the bin. "You still with me, intern?"
Leo nods, mute.
Jamal's grin is slow, wolfish. "Good. Because that was the easy one."
From the doorway, a new voice (low, amused, Italian-accented) cuts through the adrenaline haze.
"Carter, did you just let an intern hold suction on his first clamshell? Standards are slipping."
Leo turns.
Dr. Matteo Rossi leans against the frame, arms crossed, scrubs hugging every line of him like they were tailored in Milan. His eyes are dark, unreadable, fixed on Leo.
Jamal laughs. "Rossi, meet Kang. He didn't puke. I'm impressed."
Matteo's gaze drags down Leo's blood-soaked coat, lingers on the tremor in his hands.
"Welcome to surgical residency, Dr. Kang," he says softly. "Try not to bleed on my shoes when you inevitably cry later."
Leo lifts his chin, voice steadier than he feels. "I don't cry, Dr. Rossi."
Matteo's smile is sharp enough to suture with.
"We'll see."
The trauma pager screams again.
ETA 3 minutes. Stabbing. Unstable.
Matteo pushes off the doorframe. "That one's cardio. You're with me, intern."
Leo looks down at his red hands, then back up.
July 1st is twenty-nine minutes old, and he's already in love with the chaos.
He follows Matteo into the storm.