Chapter Text
The call came in at 3:17 p.m. Dana barely looked up from the chart in her hand when the charge phone rang.
“Pittsburgh Trauma.” Whatever dispatch said made her straighten immediately. “How many?”
The emergency department kept moving around her. Monitors beeped. Someone in triage was yelling about wait times. Santos argued with a resident over an IV pump.
Dana held up one finger. Silence rippled outward.
“Bus rollover?” she repeated, louder. “School bus?” Now everyone was listening.
“ETA?” A pause. “Jesus Christ.”
Dana hung up, already moving.
“Mass casualty incoming,” she barked across the department. “School bus collision. Multiple paediatric traumas, unknown severity. We’re activating overflow.”
The ER shifted gears instantly. That was the thing outsiders never understood: there was no dramatic pause before disaster. No cinematic stillness.
Just motion.
And in an ER, it was endless. Robby appeared from Trauma Two, pulling gloves off.
“How many kids?”
“Minimum twelve. Possibly more.”
“Criticals?”
“Two trapped at the scene. Rest en route.”
“Okay,” Robby nodded once. “Clear trauma bays. Santos, stop hovering and go help.”
“I’m literally helping—”
“You’re literally standing. Now move.” Santos rolled her eyes and moved.
Dana pointed toward triage. “Peds supplies out now. Get Child Life down here if they’re still upstairs.”
A nurse hurried past with crash carts. Someone turned on the extra monitors.
Whitaker nearly collided with a portable ultrasound machine. “Sorry—sorry—okay, this feels bad already.”
“Confidence inspiring,” McKay muttered.
Jack Abbot emerged from behind a curtain, expression already irritated. Even though he’d chosen to come in three hours before night shift officially started. McKay noticed immediately.
“You’re early.”
“Astute observation.”
“Night shift doesn’t start until six.”
Jack ignored him, already pulling on gloves. From the desk, Dana smirked into her coffee. “Teacher off on a field trip today?”
Jack stopped just long enough to glare at her. Which, frankly, answered the question. Then Dana tossed him a pair of gloves.
“School bus.”
That changed him immediately. Not emotionally. Not visibly, really. But Jack went still in that dangerous way experienced ER doctors did when they started calculating outcomes before patients even arrived.
“How many?”
“Enough.”
Outside, sirens screamed somewhere in the distance. Then another. And another. Robby clapped his hands once.
“Listen up! We are not getting overwhelmed today. We move fast, we stay organised, and nobody freelances. Understood?”
A chorus of agreement answered him. The ambulance doors burst open less than four minutes later. Chaos arrived all at once.
A crying little boy with blood running down the side of his face.
A girl clutching her arm at an angle it absolutely should not bend.
A paramedic carrying a child no older than six.
Teachers. Parents who had followed the ambulances. Noise. Too much noise.
“Seven-year-old female, possible ulna fracture—”
“Male, eight, brief LOC at scene—”
“BP dropping en route—”
“Where’s peds respiratory?”
Dana pivoted from stretcher to stretcher, assigning rooms before reports even finished. Then another gurney rolled through the doors. At first glance, the woman on it didn’t look critical. Young. Mid-to-late twenties, maybe. Blood soaking one shoulder of a mustard-yellow cardigan. Bruising already spreading across one side of her face.
Conscious. Talking.
Commanding, actually.
“No penicillin for Olivia Mercer,” she said urgently, trying to sit up. “Red backpack, front pouch, EpiPens inside. Ethan Walsh has sensory issues, don’t separate him from his headphones—”
“Ma’am, lie back.”
“The green wristbands are allergy alerts,” she continued over the paramedic, ignoring all instructions and pointing towards the kids. “Please check the green bands first.”
A nurse blinked. “The kids are wearing medical alerts?”
“I colour-coded the class trip groups,” she said, like this was obvious. “Please just—”
Pain hit her mid-sentence. Jack glanced over while helping transfer a child to another bed. For exactly half a second, his attention snagged. Dana noticed. The woman pushed herself upright again despite the medic trying to keep her down.
“Has anyone seen Ava?” she demanded. “She was in the third row on the left side—”
“We’re finding everyone,” Dana assured her.
“No, you don’t understand, she has asthma and her inhaler—”
“She’s here,” another nurse shouted from across the department. “Little brunette kid?”
The woman sagged in visible relief. “Okay,” she breathed. Then immediately pointed toward another stretcher. “That one’s diabetic. Type one. Check his monitor kit.”
The paramedic beside her looked exhausted.
“She did triage before we even got there,” he muttered. “Had the walking wounded lined up by injury severity.”
That got Robby’s attention. “Huh.” He was almost impressed. Princess moved toward one of the nearby crying children and knelt immediately.
“Hey, sweetheart,” she said gently. “Can you tell me your teacher’s name?”
The little girl pointed shakily toward Ellie. “Miss Hart.” Princess looked over at the blood-covered teacher still trying to coordinate care from a gurney. Something softened in her expression.
“Oh,” she murmured quietly. Good people. The woman tried to climb off the gurney. Three people stopped her simultaneously.
“Nope,” Dana said.
“I need to help my kids.”
“You are helping by not collapsing.”
“I’m fine.”
Jack finally stepped closer. “You’re bleeding through your shirt.”
Only then did she look down at herself like she’d forgotten.
“Oh,” she said vaguely, like it was just a spot of dirt she had forgotten. When, really, there was blood everywhere. Not panic-inducing amounts. But enough.
“Name?” Dana asked.
The woman blinked once, slower this time.
“Ellie,” she answered automatically. “Elaine Hart.”
Her pupils looked uneven. Jack noticed that too.
“Get her into Trauma Three,” he said sharply.
Ellie shook her head immediately. “No, no, put the kids first.”
“We are.”
“I can wait.”
Jack’s voice hardened. “You’re not waiting.”
For the first time, she actually looked at him. Really looked. Something unreadable flickered across her expression. Recognition. Not surprise. Recognition.
Then the colour drained from her face. Dana saw it happen in real time. Ellie swayed. Jack moved forward just as her knees buckled. The room exploded into motion again.