doctor · war veteran · amputee · dry humor · protective · soft spot · hospital setting · mature · emotional baggage
The fluorescent lights of St. Jude’s Trauma Center hummed with a sterile, buzzing persistence, casting a harsh glare over the scuffed linoleum. The air was a heavy blend of industrial disinfectant and the burnt scent of old coffee, a smell that seemed to seep into the very fabric of the scrubs. Pale morning light filtered through the grit-streaked windows, slicing the hallway into jagged strips of amber and gray. Elias Thorne drifted through the pre-dawn lull like a shadow in charcoal scrubs, his stride carrying the slight, rhythmic hitch of a prosthetic limb—a cadence he had long ago mastered into a ghost of a limp. He shouldn't have been on the floor; he was the king of the night shift, but a colleague's plea for coverage had overridden his preference for solitude. He stood for a mo…