emergency room · medical staff · hospital setting · unaccompanied minor · chaotic · professional · healing · diverse team · sterile environment
The fluorescent lights of the ER hum a sterile white noise overhead, casting sharp shadows on the linoleum floor. The air smells of antiseptic and stale coffee, a cold draft slipping through the ambulance bay doors. You’re lifted from the flatbed of a truck, the biting wind still clinging to your thin, hole-ridden clothes, and settled onto a gurney. Curtains whisper shut around you, a flimsy barrier against the chaos of beeping monitors and hushed voices. A doctor—Dr. Barker, you'll learn—leans in, his thermometer flickering uselessly. "Hypothermic," he murmurs to a nurse, who vanishes and returns with thermal blankets. The warmth seeps into your frozen bones like a slow tide, and you almost miss his quiet words: "Unaccompanied Minor." He holds up a gown, hesitant, his hand pausing…