Risk Assessment

"Something went wrong," Mark said, leaning into the office.

Not sharply. Not urgently. Just a tremor of unease that pulled her out of shape. That's how these things were always phrased at first: clipped and understated.

"Call seventeen."

He didn't need to say her name. The space where it should have been already vibrated with its weight.

"She's been transported. Critical."

The words settled without echo, leaving a stillness in their wake. Her hand moved, instinctively reaching for a pen. It hovered over a report, a half-formed sentence blurring beneath it. The hand paused, then dropped, as if the act of writing held no meaning. Stretching the silence. Not waiting for instructions, but for anything to fill the void. An acknowledgment. Even a simple nod would have sufficed.

"Which hospital?"

Mark's voice seemed distant, as if separated by a pane of glass. She wrote it down in the margin of a report. A detail she knew she wouldn't forget, even though she couldn't recall what the report was about. The pen hesitated. Losing the familiar curve of her writing momentarily. Her left hand tightened, and its missing finger pulled faintly against the fabric of her trousers.

"I'm heading over," she said.

"So am I."

***

The corridor lights hummed overhead as she passed the records room. She slowed without meaning to. Everyone knew the policy. The department restricted body cam footage. As it should. Reviewed only when required. Access logged; paperwork filed. Evelyn had enforced these rules herself many times. She had explained them in excruciating detail to recruits and peers alike.

"Any footage yet on seventeen?"

A voice from behind the desks responded, "Partially. Not everyone's synced yet."

"Riley's?"

"Only preliminary. They grabbed her gear before transport."

Her name appeared on screen. Followed by a file number and a time-stamp that felt suddenly intimate.

"You shouldn't. You know that."

The transfer completed quicker than expected. She hesitated, pocketing her phone. Something brittle settled behind her ribs. This small, impulsive breach ran against everything she stood for. Worse still, it would not remain contained; it couldn't. She knew how these things worked. She had signed off on reviews herself. Told others to wait. To follow procedure.

Outside, the night air felt thin and sharp. Mark caught up with her halfway across the lot.

"You okay?"

She nodded and kept walking to his car.

***

The hospital just smelled wrong. Always wrong. Antiseptic burned at the back of her throat. A brief, unwelcome distraction from the ghost of smoke that clung to her clothes. The fluorescent lights flattened everything in sight, leaching the color from the surrounding faces. Voices moved through the space without a clear direction. Detached, chaotic murmurs and disorganized chatter rose and fell like the tide.

They checked in and waited. The molded plastic chairs felt cold and impersonal beneath her. A nearby monitor beeped steadily, marking time with indifference. Evelyn sat with her hands folded in her lap, pressing her thumb into the space where her pinky used to be. Her grounding ritual against any unsettling atmosphere.

"This place," Mark muttered, "always feels like it's holding its breath. Doesn't it?"

She nodded. To her, it felt more like suspension. A state of being stretched too thin, about to snap. Stretched far enough to actually hurt.

Time passed. Or didn't. During a call, time moved forward whether you were ready or not. In here, she could never tell. This place had its way of stripping her of purpose the moment she handed a patient over. There was nowhere to stand that meant anything. People came and went through doors she wasn't allowed to enter, tending to equipment she wasn't allowed to touch. The staff had their own order of operations she couldn't anticipate. Offering no cues she understood. A nurse called a name that wasn't Riley's. Someone laughed too loudly down the hall; then stopped.

"You know," he said carefully, eyes on the far wall, "you always played it safe."

She turned to him, surprised at the softness in his voice.

"You're dependable, Ev. That's your strength."

Mark hesitated, allowing the implication to settle. The blandness of the hospital seemed to amplify the weight of his words. Somehow dredging up a well of unspoken regrets.

"I'm just saying," he added, "this job... we know what we're in for. She did. So do you. I think that's why you kept it simple. Clean." A pause. "Losing her... it would be harder if things were... different."

Harder if things were different. The thought slipped in before she could stop it. She looked down at the floor between her boots. Scuffed linoleum worn thin by countless hours of anxious waiting. It eased the pressure in her chest by the smallest degree. The monitors kept their rhythm, and the lights were still too bright. She swallowed and tried to hold on to the relief. Then, the idea that she could find solace in that thought turned on her with an unjustified vengeance.

Re-framing loss as convenience felt despicable. Even if Mark was right. It was something she would have fired others over on the spot. His efforts to comfort her devolved into a side note in the margin of her own conduct: unacceptable.

"I didn't mean -- "

"It's fine," she said.

It wasn't. Mark mentioned coffee and then moved away, disappearing into the flow of people.

***

Outside Riley's room, the hallway narrowed. The light was harsher here. The air was thick with the steady pulse of machines. Evelyn leaned back against the wall. Listening to the sound of monitors from inside her room. Measured, precise evidence of life, reduced to rhythm. She closed her eyes.

The footage replayed itself in her mind without permission, yet still offered up nothing. A sterile record of routine. Riley's voice through the com. Calm under pressure. Doing everything right. Then blackness. It looked like a freak accident. A partial collapse no one could have anticipated. She was too competent to have messed up. It really came down to just bad freaking luck. A quick glance at her lying in the hospital bed stung her eyes, and she closed them just as fast. Monitors kept their rhythm, and the memories surfaced.

She remembered the harsh fluorescent lights of the station reflecting off the polished helmets of the recruits. Back in training, Riley had always been the first to volunteer for the most demanding drills. Always eager, ever ready. Evelyn remembered it clearly, as it had needed correction early on. Then again, it turned out to be the only correction she ever needed.

Riley didn't rush to prove herself. She never asked for reassurance or approval, and ego was never a thing with her. Yes, she had made mistakes; everyone did, but she never repeated them. Sometimes, when Evelyn pointed something out, Riley would already adjust halfway through her sentence. It created a strange rhythm between them. The sense of working with someone who understood the same rules. Followed them for the same reasons. Evelyn began tailoring her instructions. Refining them. Aware that Riley would catch the nuance.

Someone entered Riley's room, briefly catching Evelyn's attention, before rushing back out without a word. They nearly brushed up against her in the hallway as they made haste to the next patient. She recalled the first moment during a confined-space exercise when Riley stepped in too close. The trainees weren't careless, just unaware of the narrowness they had to navigate. She felt again that immediate sense of awareness. Another body moving with the same purpose. The heat. Even her breath. Riley didn't notice. She was focused on the task at hand. Waiting for instructions.

The image shifted, carrying her back to the end of that exercise. Someone said something stupid. A careless remark. One of those things one might say at the end of an exhausting shift. Most of them groaned. Riley laughed. Short and surprised, like it had escaped her. Evelyn felt that sound before she understood why it mattered. It cut through the fatigue, making Riley briefly human in a way training rarely allowed. That was when Evelyn started correcting herself.

From that evening on, she shifted her attention deliberately. Broke eye contact first. That she remembered. She kept feedback brief and neutral. Even praise for Riley was handed out in the same tone she used for everyone else. When asked about her, Evelyn would only say, "She's solid." And it was truly the highest praise she allowed herself to give, anyway.

Those minor corrections quickly became habits. Arriving faster each time. Evelyn would tell herself that it wasn't relevant. Deliberately disregarding everything human about Riley. Her laughter; along with that captivating smile. But most of all, the way she carried herself. By the time the training was complete, Evelyn had already closed the door firmly shut.

Riley moved into her new role as a peer with the confidence Evelyn had expected, and they no longer had to work in the same tight orbit. The proximity that had once required her to be vigilant quickly dissolved into something easy to manage: distance. That's when the fantasies started. Evelyn allowed them because they were harmless. They existed entirely in a controlled space, stripped of all consequences. In them, Riley was always responsive, always present.

Evelyn had never hidden who she was. Everyone knew. Being out, especially at the station, had taught her many things. She knew the difference between noticing and inviting. Between awareness and permission. Riley had never offered anything that could be mistaken for invitation; ever. No signals. No disclosures or silly testing disguised as humor. For all anyone knew, Riley was straight. Or not. It didn't really matter. What did matter was asking. And asking would change the shape of things for everyone. So Evelyn didn't.

Instead, she insisted that her professionalism wasn't just a performance. Riley deserved to advance without being placed in a position she hadn't chosen. Their work demanded focus. Just wanting something did not entitle anyone to act on it, and this restraint came easy to her. It was Evelyn's entire identity. She was trusted; dependable. Relied upon as someone who didn't complicate things.

There had been other lines in her life Evelyn hadn't crossed. Moments where restraint mattered more than desire. And at work she learned early that leadership meant absorbing weight. That professionalism, when practiced correctly, protected not only everyone involved but especially oneself.

A doctor passed down the hall without stopping. Someone else went in through the door and came back out again. Evelyn did not move. She placed her left hand against the glass, fingers spread. Suppressing the tingling absence.

Standing outside Riley's room, Evelyn understood the cost of her ethics more clearly than she ever had before. She had never risked misreading Riley. Never risked making something Riley hadn't offered into a problem she'd have to solve. She had kept the lines clean. Efficient. Effectively putting Riley forever beyond reach. Even if she were to survive.