By the time I opened Monica’s letter, I had already saved her life.

That part came first.

The OR was cold enough to bite through my scrubs.

The overhead lights flattened everything into white and silver and blood.

Monica had a ruptured spleen, internal bleeding, and a liver laceration that looked ugly on the scan and worse in real life.

Her pressure kept dropping. One of the residents called for more blood.

Somebody adjusted the suction. I stood over the sister who had detonated my life five years earlier and did what my hands had been trained to do.

Clamp. Assess. Cut. Repair.

There is a mercy in medicine that has nothing to do with emotion.