Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
CASSIAN
PRESENT DAY
I was in my office reviewing charts, trying to focus on discharge summaries instead of the text conversation with Calla that had kept me up half the night. I don't know. But I do. Four words I'd sent without thinking, four words that had been rattling around my head ever since.
Then my pager went off, followed immediately by my phone, and the text conversation became the least of my concerns.
Multi-vehicle collision in the neighboring district.
A semi-truck had jackknifed on the interstate during rush hour, triggering a chain reaction involving at least fifteen vehicles.
Twenty-three casualties confirmed, several critical.
Riverside General was overwhelmed. They were requesting assistance from every nearby facility, including private hospitals that normally stayed insulated from public emergencies.
Dr. Patel appeared in my doorway before I'd finished reading the alert.
"We're sending a team," she said. "I need you to lead it."
"Obsidian's a private hospital. We don't usually respond to district emergencies."
"I know. But Riverside is drowning, and we have resources they need. Riven already approved it." She handed me a tablet with the team roster. "Pack a trauma bag. You're taking Karras, two residents, and Mireya from surgical services."
My stomach dropped. "Calla?"
"She's our best trauma surgeon aside from you. This isn't a request, Reed. It's an order."
Twenty minutes later, I found myself in an Obsidian transport van, trauma bags stacked in the back, heading toward a disaster I could only imagine.
Calla sat across from me. She'd pulled her deep red hair back into a tight bun, her face scrubbed clean of any expression I could read. Professional. Prepared. The mask she wore when the work demanded everything she had to give.
Mireya sat beside her, organizing supplies with the calm efficiency that made her invaluable in any crisis. She'd already catalogued our equipment twice, her hands moving automatically while her eyes stayed focused on the road ahead.
The two residents we'd brought looked terrified. Dr. Sheldon, third-year, kept bouncing his leg until Mireya put a hand on his knee to still it. Dr. Patterson, second-year, had gone pale the moment Patel announced the assignment and hadn't regained color since.
"Anyone been to a mass casualty event before?" I asked, trying to keep my voice light. Reassuring.
Both residents shook their heads.
Calla and Mireya both nodded.
"It's chaos," Calla said. Her voice was steady, clinical, stripped of anything personal. "Your job is to triage fast, stabilize faster, and don't get attached. We can't save everyone. Focus on who has the best chance of surviving and move on."
"Listen to Dr. Karras," I added. "She's seen worse than this. Follow her lead and you'll be fine."
Our eyes met across the van. Something flickered between us, there and gone before I could name it. Then Calla turned away, directing her attention back to the residents, walking them through protocols they'd studied but never practiced.
I watched her teach, her hands moving as she demonstrated techniques, her voice never wavering. This was Calla in her element. Competent. Commanding. The woman who'd made me fall in love with her in an operating room a lifetime ago.
I looked away before she could catch me staring.
The scene at Riverside General was exactly as bad as promised.
The emergency department had been transformed into organized chaos.
Patients on gurneys lined every available inch of hallway.
Nurses sprinted between them, triaging and re-triaging as conditions changed.
Doctors shouted orders over the constant din of monitors and crying and the distant wail of approaching ambulances.
The smell was overwhelming. Blood and antiseptic and fear, thick enough to taste.
"Karras, take trauma bay one," I directed, slipping into command mode. "I'll take two. Mireya, you're with Karras. Residents, split between us. Chen with me, Patterson with Karras."
We moved as a unit, falling into rhythm despite the unfamiliar space. The Riverside staff barely glanced at our Obsidian badges before putting us to work. In a mass casualty event, credentials mattered less than capable hands.
I lost count of how many patients crossed my table in the first hour. Chest wounds requiring emergency thoracotomies. Head trauma that needed immediate imaging. Multiple fractures that would require surgery if the patients lived long enough to reach an OR.
Some I could save. Some I couldn't.
The ones I couldn't haunted me between cases.
A teenage girl with internal injuries too extensive to repair.
A father of three who'd been conscious when he arrived and flatlined before I could open his chest. I marked their times of death and moved on because stopping meant drowning, and drowning meant more people dying.
Across the emergency department, I caught glimpses of Calla working with the same focused intensity I remembered from our residency.
She had a patient bleeding out, her hands steady as she worked to clamp a severed artery.
Mireya anticipated her needs before Calla voiced them, passing instruments with the precision of a surgical dance they'd choreographed on the fly.
Calla was magnificent. Even exhausted, even surrounded by chaos, she moved with a certainty that made everyone around her calmer. Residents deferred to her without question. Nurses fought to be assigned to her bay. She was a fixed point in the storm, steady when everything else was spinning apart.
I forced myself to focus on my own patients instead of watching her.
Hours blurred together. My hands cramped from suturing. My back screamed from standing in the same position for too long. But I kept moving because stopping meant thinking, and thinking was a luxury I couldn't afford.
At some point, maybe hour four or five, Calla appeared beside me.
"I need an extra set of hands." Her voice was hoarse from hours of giving orders. "Patient in bay three. Penetrating abdominal trauma, unstable vitals. I can't do it alone."
I followed her without question.
The patient was a man in his forties, a piece of metal from the collision embedded in his abdomen. He was conscious but fading, his blood pressure dropping faster than the nurses could push fluids.
"I need to explore the wound," Calla said, pulling on fresh gloves. "You retract while I find the source of the bleeding."
We worked in sync. Me holding the incision open, her hands moving through tissue and blood with surgical precision.
It was like being back in residency, when we'd been assigned to the same cases and learned to communicate without words.
I knew when she needed more light before she asked.
She knew when I needed her to shift position before I said anything.
"Clamp," she said.
I already had it in my hand.
"Nice."
"We've done this before."
"Yeah." Her eyes met mine over the patient's open abdomen. "We have."
The patient stabilized. We closed him up together, our sutures alternating in a pattern so familiar it made my chest ache with memories I'd tried to bury.
We moved to the next patient, then the next. Somewhere around hour six, Mireya appeared with coffee that tasted like it had been brewed sometime last week.
"You two are impressive together," she said, handing us both cups. Her eyes moved between us with knowing curiosity. "I can see why Patel paired you on the protocol."
Calla and I exchanged glances but said nothing.
By the time the last ambulance arrived, it was past ten PM. The Riverside staff looked hollowed out, running on fumes and stubbornness. I felt the same way. My scrubs were stained with blood that wasn't mine. My eyes burned from hours under harsh lighting. Every muscle in my body begged for rest.
"We need to keep a team here overnight," the Riverside chief surgeon said, approaching us in the hallway. "In case post-op complications arise. Can Obsidian spare anyone?"
Patel had anticipated this. She'd called an hour ago with instructions.
"Reed and Karras will stay," I told him. "Everyone else returns to Obsidian."
The van left with Mireya and the residents. Calla and I stood in the ambulance bay, watching the taillights disappear into the night.
"Guess it's just us," I said.
"Guess so."
Silence settled between us. We'd just spent six hours working together like we'd never been apart, our bodies remembering rhythms our minds had tried to forget. But now, alone, all the professional distance came rushing back.
"I'll check on the post-op patients," Calla said finally. "You should eat something."
"You should eat something."
"I'm not hungry."
"Neither am I. But we should anyway."
We found the cafeteria on the second floor. Mostly empty at this hour, serving warmed-over sandwiches and coffee that was marginally better than what Mireya had brought. We sat at a table near the windows, the night pressing dark against the glass.
For a while, we just ate. The silence wasn't uncomfortable, exactly. Just heavy with everything we weren't saying.
"You were good today," I said eventually. "With the patients. With the residents. They needed someone calm, and you gave them that."
"So were you."
"We make a good team."
"In emergencies, apparently." The corner of her mouth twitched. Almost a smile. "When we're too busy to overthink."
I was about to respond when movement caught my eye.
Near the cafeteria entrance, a young mother sat in a wheelchair, holding a newborn wrapped in a hospital blanket.
The woman looked exhausted but radiant, that particular glow of someone who'd just brought new life into the world.
A nurse stood beside her, checking paperwork before discharge.
The baby made a small sound, and the mother smiled down at it with a tenderness that seemed to light up the whole room.
I glanced at Calla.
And froze.
Her face had gone white. Her hands had stilled on her sandwich, forgotten. She was staring at the mother and baby with an expression I'd never seen on her before. Raw. Devastated. Like she was watching something being torn away from her.
Her eyes glistened in the fluorescent light.
"Calla?" I said quietly.
She blinked, seeming to snap back into herself. She looked away from the mother and child, wiping at her eyes with quick, angry movements.
"I'm fine."
"You're not. What's wrong?"
"Nothing. It's nothing."
"Calla." I reached across the table, my hand hovering near hers without quite touching. "Talk to me."
"I said it's nothing." Her voice came out sharp, defensive. She stood abruptly, grabbing her coffee cup. "I need some air."
She was gone before I could stop her, walking quickly past the mother and baby without looking at them. The cafeteria doors swung shut behind her.
I sat alone at the table, my mind racing.
I knew that expression. I'd seen it before, years ago, in fleeting moments when Calla thought I wasn't watching. Grief so profound it seemed to swallow her whole. Loss she'd never spoken about, never explained, never let me help her carry.
What about that mother and baby had broken through her armor?
I thought about going after her immediately. But Calla had always needed space when she was hurting. Pushing too hard would only make her retreat further, lock down tighter, disappear behind walls I couldn't climb.
So I gave her ten minutes. Then I went to find her.
She was on a bench outside the emergency entrance, staring at the parking lot. The night air was cold, November biting through scrubs that weren't designed for outdoor wear. She didn't seem to notice. Her arms were wrapped around herself, her breath visible in small white clouds.
"Hey," I said, sitting beside her.
"I'm fine, Cassian."
"You keep saying that. But you're not."
She was quiet for a long moment. I could see her debating how much to give me. Whether to let me in or push me away.
"Seeing that mother with her baby," she said finally. "It reminded me of things I try not to think about."
"What things?"
She looked at me, and her eyes were red. Calla Karras, who never cried in front of anyone, who held herself together through impossible surgeries and devastating losses, was barely holding on.
"Everything we lost," she whispered. "Everything we could have had."
My throat closed around questions I wanted to ask. What did we lose? What aren't you telling me? But the pain in her eyes stopped me. Whatever this was, she wasn't ready to share it fully. And pushing her now would only make her shut down.
Instead, I moved closer. Our shoulders touched, warmth bleeding through the thin fabric of our scrubs. She didn't pull away.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"For what?"
"For whatever made you look at that mother the way you did. For whatever you've been carrying alone. For not being someone you could talk to about it."
Her breath caught. She leaned into me, just slightly, her shoulder pressing against mine. For a moment, we sat like that. Two people who'd once shared everything, trying to remember how to be close without it destroying them.
My mind wandered somewhere it had no right to go. Had Calla been with anyone since the divorce? Had she dated, fallen in love, built a life with someone I'd never know about?
Had she gotten pregnant?
The thought arrived uninvited and dug in deep. I imagined her carrying someone else's child, experiencing that joy with a man who wasn't me, and jealousy surged through my veins so hot it startled me. I had no right to feel this way. I was living with Maya. I'd moved on, or told myself I had.
But the idea of Calla with someone else, sharing intimacies I'd once believed were mine alone, made me want to put my fist through something.
I pushed the thought away. It wasn't my business. Her life after our marriage was her own. Whatever had caused that look on her face, whoever might have been involved, I had no claim to that information anymore.
But God, I wanted to. I wanted to know everything. Every moment of the past five years I'd missed. Every person who'd been allowed close when I hadn't been.
Then she pulled away.
"We should get some rest," she said, standing. "Tomorrow's going to be long."
"Calla."
"Please." Her voice was barely a whisper. "Not tonight."
I watched her walk back inside, knowing there was a secret she'd been keeping. A grief she'd been carrying alone. Something about that baby, that mother, had opened a wound I hadn't known existed.
I wanted to follow her. Wanted to demand answers, to break down whatever walls she'd built and force her to let me help.
But Calla had asked for space. And after everything we'd been through, the least I could do was give her that.
Even if it was slowly killing me.