Rowan
The curtain snapped shut behind him, sealing out the noise of the ER like a held breath.
Inside, the world narrowed.
Room four smelled sharp, alcohol swabs, sweat, the metallic tang of fear that never fully dissipated in places like this. The smell was familiar, almost comforting in its consistency. A man lay on the gurney. Tall, but thinner than he should have been. Skin sallow. Lips tinged faintly blue. His chest rose unevenly, shallow pulls that barely counted as respirations.
Rowan took it in automatically.
Color. Posture. Rhythm.
Training stripped the scene down to what mattered. Anything extraneous, emotion, speculation, judgment it all fell away. There would be time for that later, if he allowed it at all.
"Respirations dropping," a nurse said.
Rowan moved without hesitation.
The chart hit the counter as he stepped forward, his hands steady now that they had something to do. Purpose always settled him. The monitor screamed again, jagged, unforgiving, the kind of sound that demanded immediate obedience.
"How long has he been like this?" Rowan asked, already positioning himself at the bedside.
"Eight minutes," someone answered. "Naloxone ordered."
Another nurse was already there with the syringe. Rowan accepted it, checked the dose, traced the IV line with his eyes. He leaned in just enough to examine the patient's pupils.
Pinpoint.
That confirmed it.
He adjusted his stance, anchoring himself where he could see everything at once the chest movement, monitor, hands. His voice stayed even as he gave instructions. He didn't count aloud. He never did. Counting was for classrooms, for demonstrations and evaluations. In moments like this, counting distracted people from watching.
He pushed the medication.
Time stretched, thin and unkind.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Rowan didn't fill the silence with reassurance. He didn't rush to the next step. Hope made people sloppy. Hope made them act before the body was ready. He watched instead, the subtle flex of the throat, the delayed rise of the chest, the minute signs that meant the medication was moving through a system that had been pushed too far.
Then the man gasped.
It was violent. A harsh, tearing sound as his body jerked, air dragging itself back into lungs that hadn't wanted it seconds earlier. The man coughed, chest shuddering, face contorting as the world rushed back in all at once.
"Good," Rowan said calmly. "Stay with him."
The monitor stuttered, then shifted. Still unstable. Still wrong. But no longer screaming.
Alive.
Rowan released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, the tension easing just enough to let him think again.
As the nurses moved into their practiced post-crisis rhythm, Rowan stepped back half a pace and looked again, not at the emergency itself, but at the evidence left behind. Bruises along the ribs in different stages of healing. Split skin across the knuckles. Old scars layered beneath newer ones, healing interrupted again and again.
This wasn't a one-time event.
This was a cycle.
The anger that surfaced was familiar and controlled, settling low in his chest where he kept things he couldn't afford to feel fully in moments like this. Not anger at the man on the bed , never that , but at the predictability of it. At how often the system caught people only after they'd already fallen. At how routine it had all become.
He issued further instructions without raising his voice. Labs. Tox screen. Liver panel. Continuous monitoring. The words left him clean and practiced, part of a script he knew by heart.
When there was nothing more to do immediately, Rowan turned toward the sink.
The water ran too hot, scalding his skin as he scrubbed his hands. He welcomed the sting. It grounded him. He stared at his reflection in the stainless steel, jaw tight, eyes sharp, expression set into something deliberately neutral.
He had seen overdoses before. More than he cared to count.
This one felt different.
Not because of the patient.
Because of the woman waiting outside.
He hadn't seen her clearly, not yet, but he was aware of her in the way you were aware of pressure before a storm. A presence contained only by fabric and protocol. Someone who wasn't pacing, wasn't demanding updates, wasn't making noise.
Someone who was waiting.
And when he had spoken his name earlier, he had seen something flicker across her face through the narrow gap in the curtain.Not surprise, recognition.
That alone had been enough to pull memory to the surface.
Lecture halls with harsh lighting. Hospital corridors that smelled perpetually of coffee and antiseptic. Long days that bled into nights. A woman who noticed things quietly and acted without asking for credit. Someone who slid notes across a desk without fanfare. Someone who stayed after others left.
Someone who didn't need to be loud to be competent.
Rowan shut the memory down before it could settle.
This wasn't the time.
He dried his hands and turned back toward the bed. The patient was breathing, poorly, but independently. The nurses were alert, efficient, moving with the ease that came from repetition.
Good.
Rowan took in the room one last time, mentally checking off variables. No immediate threats. No sudden drops. Nothing he couldn't step away from for a moment.
He reached for the curtain.
His hand paused.
Just long enough to register the weight of what waited on the other side, not emotionally, not sentimentally, but as a fact. A complication. A variable he hadn't anticipated when the shift started.
Then he pulled the curtain back.