So why couldn't I walk away?
Was it the unusual circumstances? Gunshot victims didn't typically turn up in traffic accidents. The cops would want to talk to him when he woke up and try to piece together what had happened.
It wasn't that. It had something to do with how he'd held that photograph. Even unconscious and bleeding, he'd clutched it like it was the only thing keeping him in our world. It was like the soldiers I'd seen holding pictures of home when everything else was falling apart.
And those scars. So many.
Turning away from the observation window, I headed for the elevator. I walked as far as the hospital's main lobby before I stopped again.
It was past 1 AM, and the space was mostly empty. A few people scattered across the uncomfortable chairs, waiting for news about loved ones or riding out minor emergencies in the urgent care clinic. Vending machines hummed against the far wall.
I bought coffee from the machine near the information desk, black and bitter enough to strip paint. The paper cup burned myfingers through the thin cardboard sleeve. I settled into a chair and told myself I was taking a quick break before returning to finish the shift.
Across the lobby, a woman bounced a crying baby, murmuring soft reassurances that didn't seem to work. An older man dozed in his wheelchair, chin dropped to his chest, and a teenager with earbuds scrolled endlessly on his phone screen.
All of them had reasons to be where they were. They were waiting for news about someone important.
I had no reason to stay.
My fingers found that piece of worn leather on my keychain, rubbing it the way I had during the worst calls in Afghanistan. Some things you hold onto.
And some people you don't walk away from.
I tried to focus on practical concerns. Kayla was probably wondering where I'd gone. We had hours left on our shift, and Seattle's streets didn't pause for personal complications.
A memory surfaced in the back of my mind—dusty road outside Kandahar, convoy stopped by an IED, and my interpreter bleeding out under my hands while I tried to keep pressure on wounds that wouldn't stop seeping. Farid had been twenty-three, spoke three languages, and sent money home to his family every month. He'd been carrying a photo of them when the blast went off.
It took a few minutes to get to him, and then I worked to revive him.Stay with me. Stay with me.The shrapnel had done too much damage. He'd died looking at that photograph, trying to say something in Pashto that I couldn't understand.
As I sat there, staring at the hospital's institutional carpet between my boots, I kept thinking about the bloodstained photograph. In my mind, I saw the man's fingers curved around it.
I'd held onto a photo like that once. It was of my squad, taken the day before Farid died. I'd carried it through three more months of deployment and the long flight home to Seattle. Somewhere in my apartment, it was probably still tucked in the box with my other deployment gear—yellowed now, creased from too much handling.
Some things you hold onto because letting go feels like another kind of death.
Chapter two
Dorian
The antiseptic burned my nostrils before consciousness fully returned—sharp and chemical, like breathing through gauze soaked in disinfectant. Somewhere close, machinery hummed: monitors tracking vitals, ventilation systems cycling stale air, and the steady drip of an IV feeding something into my bloodstream.
Pharmaceutical fog wrapped around my thoughts, but I pushed through it. Training had taught me to surface fast and shed the comfortable numbness that made me vulnerable.
Wrapped in the aggressive cleanliness of hospital linens, my body felt like a foreign object. Starched sheets held me like a straitjacket, tucked tight enough to restrict movement. The mattress beneath me was institutional firm, designed for efficiency rather than comfort.
I surveyed the damage to my body with clinical detachment, the way I'd been taught. Bruised ribs—tender but not broken. A dull, hot ache throbbed in my midsection, low and deep, where the bullet had gone in.
The exit wound, if there was one, didn't feel catastrophic. They must've cleaned and packed it. Stiffness radiated down my leg, but nothing arterial. Nothing that would kill me if I needed to move.
It wasn't my worst situation. Istanbul, for instance, where the man with the bone-pale knuckles had waited outside my recovery room for three days before gutting the wrong patient.
This was different. Cleaner. More... legitimate.
That didn't make it safe.
I kept my eyes closed and let my other senses examine my surroundings. It was a single room, judging by how the sound bounced off the walls—no other beds to block the echo. Privacy meant either special care or special interest—neither was comforting.
The IV bag hanging beside me dripped steadily, feeding clear fluid into the line taped to my left hand. Standard saline, probably. Maybe antibiotics.
