The operating theater, its air filtered to a sterile chill that clung to the skin like a second membrane. Arin Vale stood at the center of it, masked and gowned, the overhead lamps carving harsh shadows across the patient's open chest. Arin's breathing was timed to the rhythm of the scalpel in his right hand.
Heart rate: 66 beats per minute. Blood pressure: 118 over 74. Oxygen saturation: 98 percent. All within the narrow band he allowed. The assisting nurse, Martinez, her badge read, held the suction tip steady, anticipating the next pool of blood before it formed. Arin had trained her, He lifted two fingers: hold for three seconds. She obeyed. Clamp. The vessel sealed with a soft click of metal on metal.
Delay of suction by one second: blood volume increase of 12 milliliters, obscuring the field by 18 percent. Risk of nicking the left anterior descending artery: 0.8 percent. Too high. He retracted the pericardium with the blunt end of the forceps, tied off the bleeder with a double surgeon's knot, The knot sat flush, perfect.
Four hours in. Shoulders burning at a steady six out of ten. Neck stiffness creeping toward seven. He could push another hour if needed. The patient's chest rose and fell under the ventilator, Arin closed the sternum with stainless steel wires, each twist precise, the ratchet sound crisp in the quiet. When the last wire was cinched, he stepped back. The monitors beeped.
"Good job, Doctor Vale," someone said. A resident, probably. Young voice, eager.
Arin peeled off his gloves, the latex snapping free from his wrists. The skin beneath was pale, marked with faint red crescents where the cuffs had pressed. He didn't answer.
In the scrub room, he washed. Hot water, betadine, nail brush: thirty seconds per hand, no more. The mirror showed him what he expected: black eyes sunken into olive skin, cheekbones sharp. His hair, long, black, perpetually overdue for a cut, hung in damp ropes over the collar of his scrubs. He pushed it back with a wet hand, leaving streaks of soap. The tremor in his right fingers was visible now, a fine oscillation at four hertz. Low blood sugar. He'd eat.
Martinez appeared in the doorway, holding a paper cup and a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. "You need this more than I do."
He took both. The coffee was scalding, bitter, perfect. The sandwich, turkey, swiss, rye, was cold and slightly stale, leaning against the counter, eyes on the clock. 2:41 in the morning.
"You'll be gone before sunrise again, huh?" Martinez said.
He nodded. "Shift ends at three. Get some rest."
She hesitated. "People say you never sleep."
"They're wrong." He crumpled the sandwich wrapper, tossed it into the bin without looking.
She didn't reply. He left her there, walking the fluorescent corridor toward the exit. His shoes, black leather, scuffed at the toes. The hospital at this hour was a hive in hibernation, only the night shift buzzing in the margins. He passed a janitor pushing a mop. He nodded once. The janitor nodded back.
Outside, the air was wet and heavy, fog rolling in from the bay. The parking lot was a grid of sodium lamps, each one haloed in orange. His car sat alone in the far row: a 2012 Volvo S60, gunmetal gray, dent in the rear bumper from a parking lot incident he'd never bothered to fix. The paint was dull, the tires worn to four thirty-seconds of an inch tread.
He unlocked it with the key fob, old school, no keyless entry, and slid inside. The seats were cold vinyl, cracked along the seams. The interior smelled of leather, motor oil, and the faint ghost of alcohol wipes he kept in the glove box. He started the engine. The dashboard flickered to life: 02:45. Temperature: 13 degrees Celsius. Dew point: 12.5 degrees Celsius. Visibility: 180 meters and dropping.
He adjusted the rearview mirror, catching a glimpse of himself. Hair falling into his eyes again. He didn't bother pushing it back. The fog pressed against the windshield. He pulled out of the lot, tires scrubbing on wet pavement.
The route home was fourteen kilometers of suburban artery, mostly empty at this hour. He drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting on the gear shift: manual transmission, because automatics wasted eight percent efficiency in stop-and-go. He kept the radio off. Silence was cleaner.
Hospital gate to first signal: 1.2 kilometers, 53 seconds at 80 kilometers per hour.
Signal to bakery: 1.7 kilometers, additional 76 seconds.
Bakery to overpass: 2.4 kilometers, 108 seconds.
Total so far: 5.3 kilometers, 237 seconds.
He passed the bakery, its dark. The overpass loomed ahead, concrete arches stained with rust. The fog thickened here, swallowing the road in gray. Visibility: 120 meters. He eased off the accelerator. 74 kilometers per hour.
His eyes burned. He blinked twice, hard. Home by 02:56. Sleep by 03:05. Back at the hospital by 09:00. Five hours, twenty minutes. Enough.
The warehouses began, blocky silhouettes, windows shattered, graffiti bleeding down the walls. The road curved left, a gentle 300-meter radius. At 74 kilometers per hour, centripetal acceleration: velocity squared over radius equals (20.55 meters per second) squared divided by 300 equals 1.41 meters per second squared. He relaxed his grip slightly.
Then the vibration. A low thrum under the engine notel. Air pressure shift. His ears popped.
He looked up.
Two lights.
High, bright, cutting through the fog like searchlights. Not a car. A truck. Semi, by the heig
His foot slammed the brake. ABS stuttered, tires screaming. Deceleration: 7.5 meters per second squared on wet road. Distance to stop: velocity squared over two times acceleration equals (20.55) squared divided by (two times 7.5) equals 28.2 meters. Not enough.
Left shoulder: guardrail, 30-meter drop to rail yard. Right: warehouse wall, brick, no give.
He shifted down to third, pulled the wheel right. The Volvo fishtailed, rear end sliding. Traction control kicked in, cutting power. Too late.
Probability of survival: 4.7 percent.
He thought, absurdly, of the sandwich. Causing him to have an distraction
The truck's grille filled the windshield: chrome teeth, fog lights blazing.
The collision was a loud sound. The Volvo crumpled inward like paper, the dashboard folding into Arin's chest. His seatbelt snapped taut, then tore. The airbag deployed a fraction too late, smothering him in white. Glass exploded outward. The steering wheel punched through his sternum with the force of a sledgehammer. Ribs cracked. His head snapped forward, then back, the cervical vertebrae shearing with a soft pop.
For one suspended instant, his mind kept working. He felt the warmth spreading across his lap, knew it was blood. The pain was distant, muffled, as if happening to someone else.
His last coherent thought was simple, almost gentle: "Life and death are the same cycle. Only fools pretend one matters more"
The fog rolled on, indifferent. The truck's horn blared once, a long, dying note, then fell silent. Diesel pooled beneath the wreckage, mixing with blood and rainwater. The Volvo's hazard lights blinked on, red pulses in the mist, counting down to nothing.
By the time the first siren reached the curve, Arin Vale was already gone. His body hung upside down in the crushed cabin, seatbelt cutting into his shoulder, long black hair matted with blood and glass. His eyes, still open, stared at the ruined ceiling. The tremor in his right hand had finally stopped.
The paramedics found him twenty minutes later. One of them, a rookie, reached in to check for a pulse and jerked back at the coldness of the skin. The veteran shook his head. No need to rush. They cut the belt, eased the body onto a stretcher. The hair fell across the face like a curtain. Someone brushed it back, gently, as if it mattered.
In the hospital morgue, under fluorescent lights, they logged the time of death: 02:53 AM. Cause: massive blunt force trauma, exsanguination, catastrophic internal injuries. The chart was neat, clinical, final.
No one noticed the faint smile on Arin's lips, the way his fingers had curled as if still holding a scalpel. No one heard the last thought running through a brain that no longer needed oxygen: "Sleep at last"