Chapter 45
Forty-Five
Beckett
“Beckett. We’ve got a return.”
By the time I reach the trauma bay, the room is loud in the way it gets when the clock is running out. Monitors beep in uneven rhythms. A nurse is cutting away clothing with hurried movements. Someone calls out blood pressure numbers that make my stomach sink.
I step in, and the room shifts, instinctively making space for me at the head of the bed.
Dan Morales. Forty-six. Construction foreman. Married with two kids.
He had a workplace accident four months ago. Blunt trauma, multiple rib fractures, pulmonary contusion. He was cleared. He was stable. I sent him home.
“Walk me through it,” I say, snapping on gloves.
“Collapsed at home,” a resident answers. “Shortness of breath and chest pain. EMS reported rapid decompensation.”
I move to the bedside. Dan looks smaller than he did the last time I saw him.
His skin has that gray, waxy cast that tells me his body has been fighting a losing battle for longer than anyone realized.
His wife is directed to the waiting area, and for a split second, I’m grateful she isn’t here to see this.
His eyes flutter open when I speak his name.
“Dan. It’s Dr. Lawson. You’re back in the hospital.”
His lips barely move. I lean in, my ear inches from his mouth.
“Can’t… breathe,” he whispers.
We intubate fast, but there’s blood in the tube where there shouldn’t be. When the imaging flashes on the monitor, it confirms what my gut already knew. Delayed complication. Internal bleeding. Something weakened by the initial trauma finally gave out.
I’ve saved people like him before. I’ve lost them, too. The difference never gets easier to predict.
When his heart stutters, then stops, the room goes silent for one heartbeat. Then it explodes.
“CPR. Now.”
I’m counting compressions when the smell hits me. Iron and antiseptic. The way the room tilts just slightly, like it did that night on the asphalt.
No. Not now.
I push the memory down and keep going. “Again.”
Shock.
Nothing.
My mind betrays me anyway. My father’s face, pale against the wet road. His chest not rising, no matter how hard I pressed. My mother’s scream tearing through the air, through me, through everything.
“Focus,” I growl under my breath. “Again.”
We work on him for a long time. Longer than protocol suggests. I know it, and the nurses know it. No one says anything. Finally, a nurse meets my eyes and gives the smallest shake of his head.
I stop.
Time of death is called, recorded, and filed away like a data point and not a man with a life that ended under my hands.
I step back from the table. My chest feels tight, like there’s something lodged in my throat that won’t move.
The room begins to clear with soft voices and efficient cleanup. The quiet choreography of loss.
Someone touches my arm gently. “Beckett.”
I nod, not trusting myself to speak.
I breathe in.
Out.
Again.
It doesn’t help.
My father’s face is everywhere now. In the lines of Dan’s jaw. In the age listed on his chart. In the way I reassured his wife last month that he was strong and that he’d be fine.
I slide down the wall until I’m sitting on the floor, my scrubs damp with sweat. My hands curl into fists, pressing against my thighs.
I did everything right. I know that intellectually, but knowing doesn’t quiet the voice that whispers anyway.
If you were better, he’d still be alive. If you were faster. Smarter.
I close my eyes, and for a second I’m nineteen again, kneeling on the roadside, begging a body to come back. The past doesn’t care that I’m a doctor now. It doesn’t care that I’ve saved hundreds since. It only remembers the ones I couldn’t.
I don’t know how long I sit there, but it’s long enough for my legs to go numb and the adrenaline to drain, leaving only bone-deep exhaustion. Eventually, I push myself up.
There are forms to sign and a family to speak to. This is always the worst part.
I find Dan’s wife in the consultation room. She looks up when I enter, searching my face. She knows. They always know. I sit across from her and choose my words carefully.
“I’m so sorry.”
Her face collapses. I stay until she doesn’t want me there anymore, until my presence becomes part of the pain instead of the explanation. When I leave, her sobs follow me down the hall, lodged deep in my chest.