EIGHT
JORDIE
The Emergency Department has its own rhythm. A chaotic, thundering heartbeat I used to lose myself in. The adrenaline. The snap decisions. The dopamine hit of being the calmest person in a room that’s actively imploding.
Nowadays, it just feels heavy . . . and wrong.
I’ve logged too many hours in this department. Not as a nurse, but as a patient. Curled on a stretcher, vinyl sticking to my thighs, fluorescent lights burning overhead. Bleeding. Breathless. Bent in half.
When Alec was around, things were different. He’d sit beside me, squeeze my hand, whisper shit like “You’re strong,” and “We’ll get through this.” His presence—a man, a surgeon—somehow validated my pain.
But after he left, everything changed.
The pain didn’t. Just how people looked at me. I became that patient who showed up too often. That frequent flyer. A club I never asked to join and can’t seem to leave.
Maybe Alec left because he was tired of it.
I get it.
Because I’m tired too. Tired of this body. Of the Stage IV endometriosis and diffuse adenomyosis diagnoses stamped like a warning label across my life. Of chronic pain. Of bleeding and anemia. Of bleak, uterus-centric conversations about “fertility future.” Of never-ending ED visits.
Same as last week.
I’d only made it through two hours of my ICU shift before the pain buckled me. Ibuprofen, paracetamol, tequila-flavored gumption . . . none of it touched it.
I sat on a hard plastic chair, pelvis spasming, nausea cresting. When I shifted, I felt it. Warmth blooming between my legs. I didn’t need to check. I already knew.
Fingers shaking, I pulled out my phone and called Leith.
“Can you bring me a change of clothes?” I whispered. “I’m in ED.”
He was there in fifteen minutes.
And he was livid.
The second he saw me, his jaw locked. He stormed toward the triage desk, righteous fury already radiating off him.
“Don’t,” I murmured, grabbing his wrist. “Please.”
His eyes snapped to mine. “You’re bleeding through your clothes and they’re making you wait.”
“Leith,” I said, shaking my head. “The nurses are just doing their jobs. There are sicker people than me. It’s okay.”
His nostrils flared, but he backed off. Barely.
We waited. Forty-five minutes. Then two hours. Then longer. People came and went. Nurses called other names. Leith paced like a caged animal while I curled deeper into myself, trying not to cry.
When I was finally called in behind the curtain, the brush-offs came fast.
“It’s just your period. Heavy bleeding happens.”
“Your hemoglobin’s low, but that’s normal for women your age.”
And then there was Dr. Allan Hart.
His beady eyes barely skimmed my chart before his wiry frame folded into that familiar posture, dripping with disinterest. “Hmm. Let’s see . . . you were just here six weeks ago.”
Like that was the real problem. Not the bleeding. Not the pain.
Just that I had the audacity to return.
“Perhaps a psych referral will help,” he said, tone flat. Which just means: Have you considered this is all in your head, sweetheart?
As if my body tearing itself apart was a figment of my imagination.
I take a deep breath. Shake it off.
Not today.
Today, I’m not the girl curled up in the hospital bed. I’m the nurse beside it. And I have work to do.
The mayhem started early: a birth, a stroke, three patients rushed to surgery before noon.
Somewhere in the blur, I passed Callum in the hallway.
The first time I’d seen him since last week.
Since he watched me get herded into Leith’s car with all the helpless flair of a damsel in distress—something I usually avoid being.
His gaze flicked to me, concerned and assessing. “Food poisoning’s passed?”
I shot him finger guns with a smile so forced it nearly cracked my face. “Yep. No more taco-sushi.”
His brows twitched, with an expression that said he wasn’t buying it. But he simply sighed, tilted his head in an unimpressed nod, and kept walking.
A voice cuts through, jolting me back to the present.
“Jordie, incoming in Resus,” the triage nurse calls. “Thirty-five-year-old female with dental abscess from CT. She’s crashing.”
I know this patient. Swollen tongue, drool pooling at the corners of her mouth, chest straining with every shallow breath. Even high-flow oxygen barely kept her saturations in the safe zone.
I snap on a plastic apron. Grab a mask. Crack my neck.
Resus is where I belong. In the chaos. In the thick of it, where there’s no space for my own pain.
Saving someone else means I don’t have to feel anything at all.
The crash cart clatters in, wheels squeaking as the team moves fast to set up.
And then—because the universe is a petty bitch in Crocs—he walks in.
Dr. Hart.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
His hawk-like eyes land on me, narrowing with that familiar, judgmental glint.
“Not a patient today, Mitchell?” he sneers, professionalism stretched thin enough.
Not today, Satan.
“No, Doctor,” I say, forcing a neutral tone.
The doors swing open, and the patient is wheeled in.
She’s barely recognizable. Her jaw and neck are buried beneath swollen, inflamed tissue. The stridor—a harsh, grating sound of air squeezing through a failing airway—fills the room. A sickening shade of blue creeps over her lips and fingertips.
Someone pulls up the CT scan.
“Just as I thought,” Dr. Hart says, reviewing the images. “It’s Ludwig’s angina.”
Submandibular space infection. A severe bacterial infection in the mouth’s floor. It spreads fast, swelling the tissues and cutting off the airway.
The stories rush back. Medical school horror tales. Instructors saying, “You’ll probably never see it, but if you do, it’s bad.”
The team springs into action. IV lines, monitors, intubation set-up. I reach for the fiber-optic scope.
Hart’s orders slice through the room. “Propofol 150mg. Suxamethonium 200mg.”
Suxamethonium? Is he serious?
“Wait,” I call out. “You’re doing a rapid sequence induction?”
Hart barely masks his disdain. “Yes, nurse! I’m doing an RSI. Now, draw up the Sux.”
“Doctor, if you paralyze her, she’ll lose muscle tone in her throat and tongue. It’ll worsen the obstruction.. I really think awake fiber-optic is the safer option here.”
The room freezes.
I glance at the others, silently pleading for backup.
No one speaks.
Hart sneers, turning to another nurse. “You. Draw up the Sux.” He barely spares me a glance. “And Mitchell? Get the fuck out of my Resus.”
The shift coordinator, eyes wide with warning, gives me a perceptible shake of her head. My pulse hammers as I catch the glint of the syringe being drawn. I open my mouth to protest, but she herds me out of the room.
Hell no.
I move. Push through the doors. My hands shake as I dial into the wall-mounted phone.
“Anesthetics, this is Han.”
“Callum,” I say, my breath ragged. “He’s going to kill a patient.”