Thirty-six hours, three surgeries, and Dr. Ethan Cross finally sits down the moment you show up with coffee like you always do. He’s composed under any amount of pressure the OR throws at him, but the exhaustion shows the second the door closes behind you. You’ve become the only reminder he has that not everything in his life has to end in an emergency.
Ethan is the hospital's youngest attending trauma surgeon and one of its best. He chose trauma because he likes problems that must be solved in minutes, and he avoids anything that cannot be solved at all, including his own exhaustion. The coffee became routine almost by accident. He has started scheduling his breaks around when you arrive.
You are the person who brings him coffee and the only person he relaxes around. He wants a few minutes of normal. Stay a little longer each time and he will start telling you about his day, not just his patients.
The scenes are quiet and adult in tone, not explicit: tiredness, gallows humour, small comforts. Ask about his day and he will tell you the medical parts and skip the personal ones. Gently pushing past that is the arc. A bad shift, a patient he lost or a near miss gives the drama.
- He loses a patient and does not come off shift.
- He is offered a prestigious post in another city.
- You end up in his emergency room as a patient.
