Diane gasped awake, the image of the girl's lifeless eyes still haunting her.
Completely drenched in her own sweat, she could feel her skin cling to her silk flowered nightgown.
She propped herself up, immediately knocking down the novel she had been reading the previous night.
"The Dark Heir".
She picked it up, sighing wearily. Out of habit, she walked towards her work table where she dropped the book and swiped her laptop open, then stared blankly at the screen. Her mind still replaying that same nightmare that has made sleep an illusion.
The memory of that fateful morning, the blood splatters on her face and body, the muddled voices in the background shouting her name, the beep of the machines all around, and finally that one sentence pronouncing her patient dead on the table would forever haunt her.
The ten-year-old Ciara wasn't even her patient, yet she had taken responsibility, as she always did. Even though she sometimes wondered why she always felt the need to do more, to offer her patients more, even to her own detriment.
Maybe it was all just a mental illness, or her own unresolved trauma.
She had prepared as she would normally do, and though it wasn't her first time performing a transplant surgery, there was something about it that kept her on edge all week. Was it the age of the patient, or her imposter syndrome rearing its head as usual?
She asked for more tests to be done, just to ensure she was not overlooking a thing. Still, the events that unfolded two hours into the surgery were the most horrific one ever. Pulmonary hypertension, a sudden tear, and without warning, blood was everywhere. The pacing began, epinephrine, manual massage, nothing worked, all while Diane stood frozen at a spot.
The alarm blared suddenly, bringing Diane back to the present.
6 A.M
"Great" she muttered under breath. She must have drifted into space for too long because now she has less than fifteen minutes to prepare for work. As a second-year resident doctor at Yale University teaching hospital, there is never a quiet day for Diane. She folded the laptop shut and rubbed her tired eyes.
She rushed in and out of the bathroom with her hair unwashed and slid into the closest suit pants she saw and a sea green shirt she had come to love so much; a gift from her boyfriend, well now ex-boyfriend.
She casts a quick glance at herself on the wall mirror and the next minute she was catching the almost closing elevator.
"You are strong and capable, let's save another life today!". She chanted silently as the elevator made a noiseless descent.
It was her daily mantra from her days as a Med student . Yet, today, Diane wondered if she still believed she was capable, if she was even capable to begin with.
The good side of living close to the hospital was for days like this, as it was just a five-minute walk. Yet, immediately she made it out of the apartment building, she ran more than walked; dealing with Professor Gat wasn't her most favorite thing.
Diane was steps away from the flower shop she'd stop at every day for seconds to catch her breath while looking at the beautiful displays of white and yellow daffodils that reminded her of her mother. But today there was a commotion instead and something hazy coming from the upper floor of the building, maybe smoke? A fire?
She stopped mid-step.
Her lungs froze before her brain processed what she was seeing. The shop was burning.
Her bag was on the floor before she realized it.
A woman standing outside the shop hugged her child close, trembling, and another covered her see-through nightgown with a huge towel.
"Is there anyone still inside?" Diane shouted, moving toward the crowd. A woman holding her phone to her chest shook her head rapidly.
"There was an explosion, maybe gas, I don't know! The old man lives upstairs!
Diane didn't wait for the rest. Her body moved before she could even think about what she was doing. Though the building was already about to crumble, the fire service should be close by already, so what could go wrong? She thought to herself.
She forgot what fear was, reason even as she pushed past the few people standing in shock, as someone called after her:
"You can't go in there"!
"The fire department is coming!"
"Hey, stop"!
Yet Diane didn't stop. All she could think of was the face of the old flower man, the glances they'd share every morning on her way to work and evenings on her way back. They had understood each other without ever saying a word. She can't let him die, and she knew it wasn't about her selfless mantra of saving humanity as a doctor, but because, to Diane, he was family in this vast and unfamiliar city.
Her heart pounded as she crossed the threshold into the shop; smoke layered the air, thick enough to sting her throat immediately. Flowers wilted from the heat, and pots littered the floor. She covered her mouth with the sleeve of her shirt as she climbed the stairs connecting to a living space while trying to see through the fog.
"Hello, hello, can you hear me?!"
She screamed with her roughening voice. For a moment, she heard nothing, and then a faint cough. She scanned quickly, her hands shaking so much she feared she would pass out from anxiety and fear rather than fire. The smoke rose faster now, and it burned her eyes.
Diane wanted to think, but thinking is what gets people killed sometimes. She could not afford to think. She rushed in the direction of the faint voice.
"Hello, are you there!" she called out again, only realizing now that she never knew his name. And there it was, the faint voice coughing with less strength than it did the first time. He must be trying to say something Diane couldn't place as she got closer to the figure crumpled under the weight of a shelf.
She hurried to him, crouched while checking his pulse automatically. Strong enough, she sighed with relief.
"I've got you, please stay with me"
"Child...no... go..."
"I'm not leaving here without you," Diane said, with a voice she doesn't recognize as hers, a voice so firm the old man trembled and made no more sign to argue.
She used her full body weight to shift the fallen shelf just enough to drag him free and held him to his feet. Even as her vision blurred, and her lungs burned alongside the skin on her hands, Diane couldn't care.
She half-dragged the frail old man as they slowly moved toward the stairs.
The flames were racing faster now, and if they didn't make it downstairs soon, Diane knew it would be all over. She tried to increase their pace, but the old man winced, and so they began to descend step by step as the structure shook under their feeble weights.
Behind them, it all became rumbles. Suddenly, a loud thud of fire flew past Diane, knocking them forward and in the next tiny second she was flying across the dilapidated shop, headfirst into the wall before she could even react.
She immediately felt blood rushing into her lungs, and a writhing pain firing her ribs. She struggled to peel her eyes open, and there Diane saw it, the old man rumpled beside her.
There were voices, which then faded into silence . Total silence.