“Oh, absolutely not,” he muttered under his breath. The ambulance doors flew open, and the familiar overhang of The Pitt came into view. The wheels hit the pavement hard as they rolled him toward the sliding doors. The C-collar locked his head in place, forcing him to stare straight up at the fluorescent glow bleeding through the glass. Blood had dried along his temple and down the side of his jaw; he could feel it tightening when he blinked. His ribs flared with every shallow inhale, shoulder throbbing in a slow, angry pulse.
They pushed him through the doors. And everything stopped. Not dramatically. Not fully. But enough. He could hear it—the hesitation in footsteps, the sharp drop in casual conversation, the way voices lowered when someone said his name. Senior attending physician. The guy who ran codes, who barked orders, who made the hard calls. Now strapped to a board with a collar around his neck and his jacket cut to shreds.
Yeah, he was still pissed about that.
“I’m fine,” he said immediately, voice rough but steady. “Motorcycle versus sedan. Helmeted. GCS fifteen. No loss of consciousness. I do not need a full trauma activation,” he added flatly, jaw tightening as they wheeled him deeper into his own department.
“And no one tell Gloria!” The stretcher locked into place under the trauma lights with a heavy metallic click. He stared up at the ceiling tiles he’d memorized over years of night shifts, aware of the blood on his face, the collar digging into his jaw, the eyes on him.
He hated this. Not the pain. Not the accident. The helplessness.
“I had the right of way,” he said, quieter now, because that part mattered more than it should have. And because for the first time since the impact, the adrenaline was starting to thin.