Something changed in his face.
“Okay,” he said quickly. “Okay. We’re getting you to the hospital. Just stay with me.”
They cut me out of the car. Moved me to a stretcher. Loaded me into the ambulance.
As the doors shut, I reached for my phone.
One call.
Mom.
She answered on the fourth ring.
Music. Laughter. Champagne glasses.
“Mom,” I whispered. “I was in an accident. I need surgery. They need blood donors. AB negative.”
Five seconds of silence.
Then her voice came back—impatient, inconvenienced.
“Evelyn, can this wait? It’s Victoria’s birthday. We’re about to cut the cake.”
The words did not make sense.
Victoria’s birthday.
Cut the cake.
I was bleeding in an ambulance with glass in my chest and my leg destroyed, and my mother was worried about cake.
“Mom,” I said, and my voice cracked. “I’m dying. I need blood. AB negative. Please.”
A sigh came through the line. The sigh she always used when I needed something at the wrong time.
“Evelyn, you’re a doctor. You know how hospitals work. We can’t just drop everything. Victoria has planned this party for months.”
“Please,” I whispered. “I’m scared.”
Another pause.
Then my father’s voice.
He had taken the phone.
“Evelyn, stop being dramatic. The hospital will handle it. That’s what hospitals are for. Don’t ruin your sister’s special day.”
Then I heard Victoria in the background.
“Is that Eevee? Tell her I said hi.”
Laughter.
The call ended.
I stared at the cracked screen, blood smeared across the glass, until the paramedic gently took the phone from my hand.
“It’s okay,” he said. “We’ll find donors. Just stay with me.”
But nothing was okay.
I closed my eyes and let the dark take me.
I woke up at Seattle Grace.
My hospital.
The irony was not lost on me.
Fluorescent lights. Monitor beeps. The sharp smell of antiseptic and fear.
A nurse I recognized stood beside the bed—Maria from nights, the one who always brought cookies for the residents. Her eyes were red-rimmed.
“Dr. Harrison,” she said, voice trembling. “You’re awake. Thank God.”
“What happened?”
“You’re out of surgery. They repaired your spleen, stabilized your leg, and stopped the internal bleeding.”
She swallowed.
“You’re going to be okay.”
I should have felt relief.
I felt numb.
“Did my parents come?”
Maria looked away.
That was answer enough.
Then a doctor came in.
Dr. Michael Chen. Head of trauma surgery. My boss. My mentor.
He was fifty-two, silver at the temples, the kind of surgeon whose hands never shook.
Except now they were shaking.
He held my chart in one hand and a clipboard in the other.
“Evelyn,” he said.
His voice sounded wrong—tight, strained.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like I got hit by a truck.”
He did not smile.
Instead, he sat beside my bed and looked at the clipboard for so long it made my skin prickle.
“I need to ask you something.”
“Okay.”
“Your emergency contact form.” He looked up. “The name you listed. Dr. William Harrison.”
My heart gave a strange, hard stutter.
“What about it?”
“Why did you list him?”
I tried to remember filling out the form years before. A blank spot where family should have gone. A last name from the scholarship. An empty space I had not known how to fill.
