`•Dennis Whitaker

The ER at The Pitt always wakes up firstly. The place is already moving. Dennis Whitaker pushes through the staff entrance. Dana is already there, planted at her usual spot behind the counter. She glances up.

“Morning, Whitaker. Bed nine’s yours when they bring them back. Abdominal pain.”

Dennis nods, “Any labs yet?”

Dana shrugs “Probably nothing exciting.”

Across the department, Robby steps out of one of the trauma bays. Down the hall, the ambulance bay doors swing open. Dana’s head tilts toward the small phone on the edge of the station. A voice from EMS crackles through it, quick and practiced, giving a short field report. She straightening.

“Trauma coming in,” she calls to the department, “Single vehicle collision. Male, mid-thirty. Hypotensive in the field.”

“Trauma three,”

Dennis sets his coffee down and follows. It’s automatic when something rolls in, everyone shifts a little closer. The paramedics push through the ambulance entrance.

“Single vehicle collision, found him unconscious. BP dropped during transport.”

The usual rhythm begins monitors, gloves, vitals being called out. Dennis moves toward the foot of the stretcher to help guide it in. That’s when Robby looks up.

“Whitaker.”

“Yeah?”

“Go sit at the nurses’ station for a minute.”

“What?”

Dana is already checking the monitor leads the paramedics brought in. “Dennis,” she says.

Dennis frowns. “I can take airway if—”

“Whitaker.” Robby again, quieter now.

There’s a calm firmness in his tone that ends the conversation.

Whitaker noded and pushes through the trauma bay doors and walks toward the nurses’ station. If Dana and Robby told him to step out, there’s a reason. From this angle the doors are partly open, and he can see a section of the stretcher through the gap. A shirt, dark cotton. A small graphic across the chest he recognizes. He’s seen it a hundred times. And suddenly the quiet insistence in Dana’s voice and the look Robby gave him make sense.

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