Fear.
"She's busy right now," Millie says, calm as anything.
"My boy’s been shot." Four words. That's all I hear.
I have my office door open before I've decided to open it.
"Down here," I call, and I'm already moving toward the treatment room, because there’s a child hurt and everything else is completely irrelevant.
Austin comes down the corridor with a boy in his arms, the boy's side dark with blood through a torn shirt. Austin sees me at the same moment I see him and his face does something I wasn't ready for. Not just recognition. There’s something cracked open and raw underneath it.
"Shit, Sav." His voice breaks slightly on my name. "Please. Save EJ. Please save my boy."
"In here." I hold the treatment room door, and he brings EJ in and lay him on the table and step back. I go straight to the boy. "Did you call the paramedics?"
"Of course I called the fucking paramedics, what do you take me for?"
"Austin." I don't look up from EJ. "If you want to stay in this room while I work, you stop shouting and you stop swearing. Those are the rules. You break them and you wait outside. Understood?"
A beat. "Understood."
I turn to the boy. He's maybe eight, nine, dark hair that's gone damp at his temples and eyes that are wide and frightened but steady. Trying to be brave. I know that look from a decade in the ER, kids deciding how scared they're allowed to be based on the adults around them.
"Hey," I say. "I'm Dr. Savannah. I'm just going to have a look at where you're hurt. Is that okay?"
He nods.
"Good man." I reach for the scissors. "I'm going to cut your top off so I can see properly. Your dad can buy you a new one."
The ghost of something moves across his face. Not quite a smile but the precursor to one. "He's going to be annoyed," he says.
"Tell him it was my fault." I cut the shirt away efficiently and get my first proper look at the wound. Graze, left side, ribs. Bleeding steadily but not arterial, not deep. He was lucky and I mean genuinely lucky, a few centimeters in any direction and this conversation goes differently. I take an antiseptic wipe and start cleaning. "This is going to sting. I'm not going to lie to you about that."
"Okay," he says tightly.
"On a scale of one to ten, what's your pain right now?"
He thinks about this with the seriousness of someone who wants to give an accurate answer. "Six. Maybe seven when you touch it."
"That's a good assessment. You're doing well."
"What's that stuff you're putting on?"
"Antiseptic. It kills the bacteria in the wound, so you don't get an infection."
"What's bacteria?"
"Tiny organisms. Too small to see. They live everywhere, including on skin, and they can get into a wound and cause problems if you don't clean it properly."
He absorbs this. "So, like invisible enemies."
"Exactly like that."
"And the antiseptic kills them."
"Every single one."
He nods, satisfied. He watches everything I do with the focused attention of a child who wants to understand the process, not just survive it. When I reach for the local anesthetic he eyes the needle with the respect due to it, but he doesn't look away from it.