Chapter 1- A Night like Any Other
They say the ER breathes differently on Saturday nights.
It’s not just the sound of sirens or the buzz of fluorescent lights—it’s the rhythm. Fast, unforgiving, unrelenting. Like the city dumps all its chaos at our doorstep once the sun goes down.
By the time I step onto the floor, the air’s already thick with tension—burnt coffee, disinfectant, coppery blood. Someone yells for a crash cart before I’ve even clocked in. Welcome back, Helena.
I throw my hair into a ponytail as I move, catching my reflection in the side of the medication cabinet. Pale skin, under-eye shadows that no concealer can fix, and that same loose scrub top that swallows my shape.
I duck into Trauma Room 3, where an elderly man’s sitting on the edge of the gurney, shirt cut open, dried blood crusting around a wound on his side. Another patient from a bar fight, probably. He winces as I clean around the laceration, muttering something about the “good old days” when fights ended in handshakes and drinks.
I nod politely, keeping my hands steady as I work. I’m used to the small talk, the jokes. They don’t usually land.
His eyes flick to my face. “You know, a young woman like you ought to make more of an effort. Bit of lipstick wouldn’t kill you.”
I don’t respond right away.
I’ve heard it before—too many times, in too many flavours.Smile more. Try some make-up. Don’t look so tired.All while I mop up blood and push stretchers and hold the hands of people screaming for their mothers.
I tape the gauze in silence and give him a practiced half-smile. “You’re all set for now. The nurse will be back in a moment.”
I slip out before he can say anything else, my pulse hot beneath my skin.
It’s not that I don’t care how I look. I just don’t have the time to. There’s no room for vanity when you’re elbow-deep in someone else’s pain.
Besides, what would be the point?
No one really sees me anyway. Just the badge. The gloves. The girl who moves fast and doesn’t complain. Who always stays late and never calls out.
In this place, invisibility is a skill.
And tonight? I intend to disappear into the rhythm.
By around 3:30 a.m. things finally begin to die down. The waiting room thins out. No new traumas in the last hour. The silence feels almost suspicious.
I’m on shift until 6 a.m., which gives me just enough time to catch up on my other duties—mostly paperwork, and if I’m lucky, a quiet hour hidden in the office. A space where I can slip in my earbuds and catch up on my current audiobook without interruption.
I duck into the small office next to the nurses’ station, grab the sad little sandwich I left in the mini-fridge earlier, and sink into the rolling chair. I take a bite.
It tastes like egg. I scrunch my face at the taste, caught somewhere between confusion and mild betrayal.
There is no egg.
I leave the rest in the packet, already regretting everything, and pull my earbuds from my pocket. Soft narration filters in as I queue up the audiobook I’ve been trying to finish all week. Something fantasy, something far away.
I should get at least forty-five minutes to draw up some notes.
I sigh—deeply, fully—for what feels like the first time tonight.
My fingers glide over the paperwork, half on autopilot, half lost in the words spinning through my earbuds. The story carries me away—sweeping forests, ancient curses, a heroine whose fire keeps dimming with every betrayal. Her voice cracks as she uncovers the truth, and somehow, it feels like it cracks something in me, too.
The love interest—the one she trusted, the one who swore he’d never leave—had walked away. Just like that. No fanfare. No reason that made sense.
The way it’s written, described so raw and precise, it settles into my chest like it belongs there. Like it’s mine.
And just as the ache starts to blur the lines between fiction and reality—
The office door swings open.
“Helena,” a nurse calls from the hallway, already halfway turned back toward the ward. “Need you in Bay 6. Now.”
I blink, tearing one earbud out, the other trailing behind as I grab my clipboard.
Fantasy fades. Reality returns.
Time to move.
5:45 a.m.
Fifteen minutes to clock out.
I rub the sleep from my eyes as I finish up my notes for the evening. My head feels heavy, like it’s drifting somewhere just a little outside my body.
Tomorrow is a rare day off. I couldn’t wait.
I start mentally walking through the list of things I’ve been putting off—small things, personal things. My hobbies, the quiet parts of me that get buried under the night shifts and blood-soaked gloves.
I’m finally going to battle the laundry pile that’s been steadily growing into a soft, sentient creature in the corner of my apartment. I’ll finish that audiobook—the one I keep rewinding because I drift off halfway through the chapters. And best of all, I have tickets to the city music festival.
I’ve been holding onto them for weeks. Tomorrow night is the Classical Quarter performance—my favourite. A few hours wrapped in the sound of strings and wind and harmony, listening to the city’s most talented musicians give life to compositions that have outlived their creators.
The idea alone soothes something raw in me.
Beauty, structure, and meaning. All in one place.
Something I don’t often get here.
When I finally get home, I peel the hospital attire from my body and head straight for the shower. The clothes lay in a trail on the floor, leading from the front door to the bathroom like breadcrumbs from a night I’d rather forget.
I stand under the stream of hot water, letting it rinse away the hours—the blood, the stress, the noise. I close my eyes and breathe, just breathe.
Afterward, I slip into my comfiest pajamas—well-worn, oversized, and familiar. My body aches, but for the first time all night, I feel a little more like myself again.
I make a final loop around the apartment—it’s small enough that it doesn’t take many steps. I water my many plants, brushing my fingers gently over the leaves. I like to grow my own herbs and medicinal plants. They’re about the only things I trust myself to keep alive.
My foster mother owned a gardening business. I guess I got my green thumb from her. She was always surrounded by greenery—fresh scents and self-sufficiency. She cooked everything from scratch, made her own home remedies from the garden. Eventually, I started tending to the plants too. I got curious. Obsessed, even.
Now, the books lining my living room shelves—floor to ceiling—are mostly fantasy fiction; sprawling worlds, magic, and heroines who fight their way through the dark. But the only non-fiction titles? Every single one is about growing medicine, herbal treatments, and home remedies. Ancient plant lore. All the ways people have healed themselves long before hospitals and crash carts.
It’s a quiet kind of passion. But it’s mine.
I close the curtains and make my way to bed, the familiar creak of the floorboards underfoot. Time for a good sleep.
I awake only a few hours later to the sound of my neighbors shouting at each other through the paper-thin wall. Muffled at first, then louder—sharp enough to drag me straight out of whatever dream I wasn’t remembering.
I groan, pulling a pillow over my face and letting out a sigh. Soft sunrays sneak past the edges of the curtains, glowing faintly against the wall.
I fumble for my phone on the nightstand.
2:30 p.m.
Ugh. I’m not getting back to sleep.
I lie there for another moment, clinging to the quiet parts of my mind, but it’s no use. Guess it’s time to get up and tackle that list I’ve been making all week.
I lost track of time a few hours in—sweeping, folding, sorting through the chores I’d been putting off for weeks. It felt good, in a strange, mindless way. Almost like clearing space inside myself, not just the apartment.
But when I finally checked the clock again, my stomach dropped.
I had to get ready.
I was meeting my friend Alex in the city for dinner before the music festival. We’d planned it weeks ago, something simple to look forward to. Good food, familiar conversation, and then the Classical Quarter performance—the one night I’d been holding onto like a promise.
“Sorry, sorry—I know I’m a little late,” I said as I reached the table where Alex was already seated inside the restaurant.
“Don’t worry,” she replied with a laugh, standing up to hug me. “I just had enough time to finish off my pre-meal drink.”
We settled in and chatted over dinner. Alex was a friend from work, one of the nurses on station. She was older than me, but we shared enough interests to become friends quickly. We’d both been excited to make a girls’ night out of the festival.
Her phone buzzed midway through our meal. I watched her face shift as she answered.
“Oh, sweetie... okay. Okay, no problem. I’ll make my way to you,” she said softly, before hanging up with a small sigh.
She turned to me with an apologetic smile. “That was Lucy—my daughter. She’s at a sleepover and having a bad time. Wants me to come get her.”
“Oh... no problem,” I said politely, setting down my fork. “I hope she’s okay.”
Alex reached into her purse and pulled out her ticket. “Here—use mine if you know anyone who’d want to go last minute. Sorry.”
She grimaced, leaving some cash on the table. “For the bill. I’ll make it up to you.”
With one last quick hug, she slipped out of the restaurant and into the night.
Guess I’d be going alone. Which was fine. I usually did anyway.
I finished my drink slowly, picking up the folded cash she’d left. It was nearly the full cost of the meal. I’d have to return some of it next time I saw her.
After settling the bill, I grabbed my bag and headed out, walking toward the venue, ticket in hand.
I made it through the queue without much trouble and found my seat just in time. The soft hum of conversation around me faded as the lights dimmed. Even before the official start, I could almost feel the vibrations of the warm-ups—the pluck of strings, the whisper of bows testing tone and tension. The ambience, the anticipation, the energy of a hundred strangers waiting for the first note—it all set my heart fluttering.
Then it began. The gentle lift of bows. The first hum of strings. The rhythm of the bow strokes building, weaving. Notes becoming phrases. Phrases becoming movement.
When put together, it was a full orchestral form—rich, alive.
There’s nothing like it.
All my favourite music was there, played in breathtaking live instrumental form. From sweeping movie soundtracks that tugged at memory to clever orchestral takes on modern tracks that made the crowd buzz with recognition. It was magic, hearing it all unfold in the air around me. Familiar melodies, reinvented. Stories told without words. Just vibration, harmony, and the kind of beauty that sinks into your bones.
I’d briefly taken up violin as a child—played for a few years. I was never good enough to dream of a career in it, not seriously. Too many missed notes, too many other instabilities happening around me back then.
Still, hearing the music now stirred something. A version of myself that almost could have been. I sighed, almost mournfully, letting the music carry me through the rest of the performance—through that other life, just for a moment, before returning to this one.
I left the concert with a buzz, my skin still rippling with the echo of all that feeling, all that sound. The music had done something to me—woken something soft and full inside. But it was laced with the heaviness of my recent night shift, fatigue tugging at the edges of that afterglow.
I focused on the road ahead, eyes trained forward as the streetlights strained to illuminate the path home. The city blurred by in streaks of gold and shadow.
Then—
Impact.
My car jerked sideways, metal grinding against the barrier as the steering wheel slammed into my chest. My head hit it hard, and the next thing I knew, the airbag had deployed, the cabin thick with powder and shock. Fuzzy, blinking, I lifted my head.
A car had hit me.
I looked into the rearview mirror and saw the other vehicle smashed into the barrier, horn blaring endlessly through the quiet night. No movement.
Groaning, every part of me aching from the jolt, I unfastened my seatbelt and pushed the door open. The cool air hit me like a slap.
I had to help.
Even if I was barely steady on my feet, I started toward the other car.
“Hello? Are you okay?” I called out into the darkness, my voice carried by the quiet night and illuminated only by the beams of our ruined headlights. “Hello? Is anyone there?”
No answer.
My heartbeat pounded louder than the blaring horn. I moved closer, one cautious step at a time.
I took out my phone and began to call 999. As the line connected, I reached the driver’s side of the other car.
There was no one there.
“Hello, emergency services—what service do you need?” a faint voice came through my phone, just as I stumbled back from the scene in front of me, my brain trying to make sense of it. No impact through the windshield. The door was locked tight.
“Hello... what service do you need?” the voice repeated.
I lifted the phone back to my ear, disoriented. ” ..car accident... I need help...” I murmured, blinking hard to focus. “Northbound road from Montgomery Avenue, on the bridge.”
As I strained to describe my location, I heard the sound of an engine behind me.
I turned, just in time to be blinded by a set of fast-approaching headlights.
Another car.
It was coming toward me.
There was nowhere to go. The barrier was at my back. Nowhere to run.
It all happened so fast.
I threw my arms up in front of my face and braced for impact.
Then—
Darkness.
