Chapter 35 - Rafael
Five days. That’s how long Rafael’s been trying, and failing, not to think about Kane.
Today is no different.
On this Wednesday evening, he sits hunched at his desk terminal, reviewing patient charts between rounds. Out in the hall, food and medication drones whir past while doctors slip between them on route to the next exam room.
The only real change is Lian, stationed at a diagnostic scanner near the opposite wall. She’s usually on a different shift or another floor entirely. Except last week, the higher-ups decided the third shift needed extra nurses.
She’s recounting an argument she had with Divya last week, or at least Rafael thinks that’s what she’s talking about. His attention keeps slipping, same as the HOV train ride over and last night’s V-link session with Maria.
No matter what he does, his mind circles back to Kane.
What is he doing right now? Is he safe? Are they still fighting Natural Order? Does Kane think of him anymore? What would he say if Rafael ventured out to the Outer Districts and showed up?
“Divya swears her cousin’s friend knows someone who can get us—” Lian’s voice drifts in again. She cuts herself off when an alert pings on Rafael’s terminal.
Half a second later, an alarm blares through the speakers in the ceiling.
“Code Blue. Room 450. I repeat—Code Blue. Room 450.”
Rafael’s heart skips a beat. A Code Blue is almost unheard of beyond high-risk wards and end-of-life clinics.
His fingers glide over the interface, pulling up the patient’s chart.
“Mrs. Gambo?” The name slips out, barely audible over the medical staff and drones rushing past outside the door.
“Did you say something, Raffy?” Lian asks.
He swallows and turns to face her. “The Code Blue. It’s Mrs. Gambo. She was just in for a cyberoptic replacement, remember?” The same procedure his father underwent. “What do you think could’ve gone wrong?”
She shrugs. “Who knows? Happened last week with 2310 and two days ago with 1900. Some bad luck, huh?”
The casual tone, how she says no names and only numbers, makes his gut twist.
Usually, he’d tell himself not to overthink it. Nurses are trained not to get attached. Lian isn’t heartless. She couldn’t be.
But her smile reappears too quickly.
“So anyway, Divya said we should go tomorrow—”
Rafael isn’t listening.
His attention locks on a doctor hurrying down the corridor, medkit in her hand.
Suddenly, that familiar sight snaps Rafael back to Shreveport on that first night.
Echo lies motionless on the holo billiard table. Kane looms over, demanding Rafeal save his lieutenant. The others watch in silence.
They never treated injury as routine. They never spoke of the dead in numbers.
Here, Mrs. Gambo is another statistic, a problem. Even to his own coworkers.
Bitterness rises in his throat, hand tightening around the chair arm.
Have they always been this numb? Or was Rafael too comfortable to notice?
He glances at Lian, still not facing him. “Well,” she says lightly, “guess we don’t have to worry about 2166 today either. Mr. Brown was dismissed.”
The name brings the patient’s face to mind. A gray-haired man in his late fifties with an infected leg. He was a Boatwright local who worked at Lux Systems, if he remembers right.
“Really?” He scrolls through the patient records. “What happened? I don’t see an update on my end yet.”
“Apparently, he couldn’t afford the alpha-gen limb yet, and the beta model in his size is out of stock.
” Lian shrugs and looks back. “Why so shocked?” Her brow lifts.
“He was a slum dweller. You know how they are—always looking for a handout and a free night in Midtown. I’m surprised he lasted this long. ”
Slum dweller.
Did Lian always call them that? What about the others? He’s not sure. Or did he just decide not to hear it?
His hand curls into a fist. This isn’t like the mindless night at the club with his friends, or when a doctor scolds him for a “mistake” they ordered. He could chalk those up to people coping or being stressed.
This—this is different.
Lian, his best friend of six years, is reducing human beings to an address.
The very ones she knows nothing about, the ones defending their neighborhood like Echo, Wren, Viper, Coda, Pixie—and Kane, the man he loves.
She’s insulting them all.
The Code Blue alert stops pulsing, drawing Rafael’s focus.
Dread coils through him. He opens Mrs. Gambo’s chart. A new entry has appeared beside her name: death recorded. Cerebral hemorrhage secondary to cyberoptic implant overload.
Rafael inhales sharply.
Another life lost. All because she was promised a better life by VitaCorp’s marketing, exactly like his dad.
“Raffy, you okay? What’s going on?” Lian asks. When he looks over, she stands behind him, arms crossed and forehead creased.
“I—I don’t know,” he says, which seems a lot safer than voicing the gravity of this loss.
She leans in to examine his screens. “Ah, I see.” Lian pats his shoulder. “Sorry, she seemed nice.”
That’s all she offers before walking back to her station, where she surprisingly remains silent.
As he tries to refocus on his work, Rafael’s last visit with Mrs. Gambo flickers through his mind, and a horrifying possibility follows.
His fingers tremble as he pulls up her pre-op, praying he’s wrong.
But there it is—his name next to the approval section.
Rafael authorized the very procedure that killed her.
An ache settles beneath his ribs.
He followed protocols. The system approved every step. VitaCorp and her family wouldn’t blame him.
But in the assessment, she mentioned persistent headaches and pain around her eyes. The complaint was flagged, yet the system cleared her, noting she could be stressed or simply tired. Mrs. Gambo even confirmed she was losing sleep over her new promotion. He trusted the system and her judgment.
But something doesn’t sit right.
Did he really miss the warning signs? Or is this more than a singular mistake? He runs a search for her symptoms, the surgery, and reported deaths.
Over fifty cases matching all three criteria appear across Nova City.
He sucks in a breath, and for a moment, the interface blurs out of focus.
Rafael can’t stay silent. Not this time. Not when the same system everyone trusts might be killing patients.
“Lian,” Rafael calls out. When she doesn’t respond, he raises his voice. “Lian! You need to see this.”
She rushes over and peers at his display. “What am I looking at?”
“All these patients—they all had the same symptoms as Mrs. Gambo in the pre-assessment, then died from the same surgery. All approved by the system.” He meets her eyes, speaking low. “We’re killing people, Lian.”
Lian exhales, crossing her arms. “We’re not killing anyone, Raffy.
” Her expression tightens into something cold.
“They signed consent forms. They knew the risks. They knew we used automated systems. And honestly? The beta-gen upgrade probably would’ve failed too.
At least this way their families get a payout, and VitaCorp frees up a bed. ”
While Lian returns to her chair, Rafael remains frozen.
It’s as if he’s finally seeing her for the first time.
This isn’t the professional detachment they were taught in nursing school. This is complete disregard dressed up as protocol. He stiffens in his seat.
Any other day, he would have stayed quiet.
“How can you say that?” He’s almost shouting. “These are people—patients who trusted us to heal them, not let them die.”
She swivels in her chair, mouth agape. Shock disappears with an eye roll. “Come on, Raffy. Don’t start acting like your sister. You’ve been here six years. You know how this works. Downtown patients get priority, we get the leftovers, and slum dwellers—well, you know…”
Bile burns in Rafael’s throat. He’s seen this side of Lian before: dropping friends once they’re no longer useful, siding with supervisors when they’re wrong, canceling plans to spend time with a new temporary boyfriend.
And she’s not the only one. Divya dumped her ex after his demotion. Gavin dated former patients to get promoted.
For years, he told himself none of it meant anything, that his friends were just stressed or he was overreacting. Now he stands here listening to Lian shrug off people’s deaths, and the excuses sound hollow even in his own head.
Is this how Midtown has always been?
Shreveport wasn’t like that.
Pixie checked on him without being asked while Kane talked about protecting the neighborhood. Echo pulled him through the marketplace as if she was introducing him to family.
Rafael didn’t know what to call it then. He simply knew it was different.
And yet, Rafael walked away from all that. And a man he loved. All for safety, and people who look at him like this.
But what is he supposed to do? Leave his job like Maria and move into the Outer Districts? And what if Kane doesn’t want him back? What if the man’s already moved on? He could risk everything, only to find the door shut in his face.
And then there are his parents. They might be blind to the corps and biased against the Smiles, but they’re still family. Could he really walk away from them, too?
Except staying means facing what he can no longer ignore.
His wristlink buzzes, cutting through his spiraling thoughts. Maria’s name flashes on the display.
[MOM AND DAD SAID THEY’RE OPEN TO MEETING IDRIS. COULD BE A SETUP, BUT IT FELT GENUINE. ANYWAY, I HOPE YOU FOLLOW YOUR HEART TOO, RAFA.]
Something in him finally shifts.
If their family is willing to meet Idris for Maria, why is he still standing here?
He exhales slowly, then rises from his chair. “I can’t do this anymore,” Rafael declares.
Lian stares at him. “Do what? Rafael, what’s going—”
“I can’t keep pretending everything’s okay.” He interrupts and crosses over to the staff closet. While his hands tremble as he swipes the access panel, his mind is steady for the first time in years.
“Rafey, seriously. Come on. Is this about that patient? Forget it. Think about tonight—the club we’re—”
“No.” Belongings in hand, Rafael turns to meet her wide eyes. “I’m not going to any more clubs, Lian. And I’m not coming back here.” He unclips his VitaCorp badge. The plastic tag hits the tiled floor with a click.
“You can’t be serious,” she scoffs. “What are you talking about? Where would you go?”
Rafael heads for the exit and pauses, glancing at her. “To someone who reminded me what matters. To me.” His tone loses any edge. “I hope you figure that out someday, Lian.”
The door hisses shut behind him before she can respond.
He lingers outside a moment, watching the medical drones hover past, and coworkers flash their polished smiles. Somewhere down the hall, a faint beeping echoes from a patient’s room.
The descent seems endless.
When he finally reaches the ground floor, the lobby looks the same as always. Tired patients queue at AI-powered vidscreens while armed VitaCorp enforcers stand guard at the exit. At the doors, the sensors perform a full-body sweep—his final ever—before he’s released into the open air.
For six years, this place and Midtown have held him in the same safe, predictable life. It’s the only world he’s ever known.
Maybe he should be more afraid of leaving here. Some part of him is.
Then the neon outside flickers across his wristlink, and he glances down. His hands have stopped shaking.
A smile tugs at his lips.
Rafael doesn’t know what he’ll find in Shreveport, or how Kane will react. But the thought of standing still feels heavier than the risk of moving.
Whatever comes next, he’ll meet it head-on.
Just like Kane taught him.