Page 7 of Vital Signs
As the room shifted into coordinated urgency, I felt it again — that faint, irritating pull at the edge of my awareness. I pushed it down, focused harder. This patient needed mefully. Not distracted. Not thinking about shaking hands at a sink or the way Anya's breathing had steadied when I spoke.
I was very good at this — separation.
“Pressure's dropping,” someone called, the chaotic shuffle of bodies like a breathing beast around the bed.
“I see it,” I replied. “Two large-bore IVs, now. Get blood on the way.”
I leaned in, voice steady, grounding the room the way I always did. The patient moaned weakly, eyes fluttering. “You're in the hospital,” I told her softly. “You're not alone. Stay with me.”
The words came easily.
And yet?—
While they prepped the gurney for transport, I glanced, just once, at the doorway. An unconscious tick. A mistake. I caught myself immediately and turned back to the patient.
Icouldn’tthink about her in the room. That’s what I told myself.
In the room, she was just another doctor. Another set of hands. Another mind moving through protocol and pressure. I don’t get distracted in a trauma bay. I don’t have that luxury.
But the second I stepped out, and the doors swung shut behind me, she was the only thing my brain wanted to replay.
She was younger. That was obvious. Not in a way that made her look inexperienced — just… less worn. Thirty, maybe. But the kind of thirty that still believes exhaustion is temporary. She stood a few inches shorter than me, which I’d registered without meaning to, mostly because I’d had to angle my body slightly to hear her over the monitor alarms.
Curly red hair pulled back in a messy tie that had surrendered halfway through the case. Strands escaping everywhere, catching the light like copper wire. Freckles across her cheeks and nose, even a few along her collarbone where her scrub top dipped when she leaned forward.
She always looked faintly worried. Not incompetent. Not overwhelmed. She looked like she carried the weight of outcomes personally.
Her hazel eyes were sharp, though. Tracking everything. When she concentrated, her brow pulled tight, and she pressed her lips together as though she were physically holding the room steady.
There was a softness to her shape — curves beneath the boxy cut of her scrubs, hips she tried to hide with oversized layers, a body that looked built for warmth rather than intimidation.
And then she looked up at me, and she let my voice anchor her without bristling at it. The way she absorbed instruction without ego. The way her hands steadied when I told her to breathe.
I’ve worked with dozens of physicians. Brilliant ones. Cocky ones. Detached ones.
She wasn’t detached.
She felt everything.
And that’s dangerous in this job.
But it’s also… very rare.
I told myself the pull I felt was professional. Respect recognizing competence. Relief at finding someone who didn’t freeze under pressure.
But when I closed my locker and her face flashed behind my eyes — freckled, flushed, adrenaline-bright — I knew that wasn’t the whole truth.
Forty-nine is old enough to recognize trouble when it walks into the room. And she’d stumbled into mine with curly red hair and worried eyes.
Chapter 4
Anya
Our next interaction happened several hours later.
“Doctor Volkov,” Vaughn called from the workstation behind me. “Can I borrow your brain for a second?”
I turned, already halfway there. “What’s up?”
