BLOOD & WHITE COATS

2:07 a.m. — Emergency Department

“Move, please! Coming through!”

The ambulance doors flew open. Two paramedics pushed a stretcher into the emergency department, one of them pressing a blood-soaked dressing against the patient’s abdomen.

“Male, around thirty. Gunshot wound to the abdomen. His pressure’s dropping. We lost his pulse for about twenty seconds in the ambulance, but got it back.”

Dr. Ishqii Malhotra was already pulling on gloves.

“Any other injuries?”

“We couldn’t check properly. He was losing too much blood.”

“Right. On three. One, two, three.”

They transferred him to the bed. His head rolled sideways, rainwater caught in his hair, and the monitor beside him started its frantic, uneven beeping.

“Sir, can you hear me?”

Nothing.

“Blood pressure?” Ishqii asked.

“Eighty over fifty. Falling.”

“Two large-bore IVs. Send blood for crossmatch and get the massive transfusion protocol ready.” She turned to the nurse beside her. “Call surgery. Penetrating abdominal injury, haemodynamically unstable. Tell them we’re coming up as soon as we can move him.”

The nurse was already on the phone.

Ishqii pressed around the wound, careful not to waste time searching for an answer the emergency department couldn’t give her. The man’s skin was cold and clammy. His pulse fluttered beneath her fingers.

“Where did this happen?”

“Outside a hotel, I think. Police were there when we left.”

“Identification?”

“Nothing on him.”

“Then we’ll deal with that later.”

A nurse passed her the ultrasound probe. Ishqii moved it across the patient’s abdomen, eyes fixed on the screen. She wasn’t looking for a perfect picture. She was looking for blood where it shouldn’t be.

There.

“Call the theatre again,” she said. “Tell them we’re moving now.”

Around her, the team worked in quick, practised motions. Someone secured a line; the anaesthetist checked the patient’s airway. Instructions overlapped, but everyone understood what mattered. They had done this before. That didn’t make it routine.

The blood pressure dropped again.

“Come on,” Ishqii murmured.

“Doctor, sixty-eight systolic.”

“I can see that.”

The sharpness in her voice landed harder than she’d intended. The nurse wasn’t the problem. Nobody in the room was.

“Sorry,” Ishqii said, keeping her eyes on the monitor. “Keep the blood running.”

The man’s fingers suddenly caught the edge of her sleeve.

His eyes opened, barely.

“Don’t…” His voice was little more than air.

Ishqii leaned closer. “Don’t what? Can you tell me your name?”

His grip tightened once, then slipped.

“Don’t let him—”

His eyes closed.

“Sir? Can you hear me?”

Nothing.

“Doctor?” the anaesthetist called.

“Let’s move. Now.”

They pushed the bed towards the lift. Ishqii walked beside it, one hand on the rail, listening to the team call out his observations. The surgeons would take over upstairs. Until then, she had to keep him alive.

She had another patient waiting downstairs, three reports unfinished, and a coffee on the nurses’ station that had gone cold hours ago.

He should have been one more patient in a long night.

Then the paramedic fell into step beside her.

“Doctor, one thing.”

“Make it quick.”

“The police asked us not to put his name on the system until they get here.”

Ishqii looked at him. “Why?”

“They didn’t say.”

The lift doors opened. She turned back to the patient.

Too many things about this case didn’t make sense.

For now, only one thing mattered.

He had to survive long enough to tell her what he meant.