“EIGHT YEARS to get through med school,” Bailey Dodge muttered through a bite of donut, “three years of residency, two as an attending, and this is my life.” The potential human traffic jam that was Outskirts General Hospi-tal seethed around him as he struggled into his lab coat and tried to re-member if he’d brushed his teeth that morning. The myth of the well-off doctor growing fat and avuncular in family practice was drifting further and further away with every minute spent in this hellhole. But Bailey couldn’t seem to quit the ER. He’d tried. When the hospital had made cutbacks, he’d tried. When threatened—both in job and in freedom—for administering lifesaving care to pregnant women, he’d tried. When three of his interns had been forced to quit because they felt the same way but they hadn’t had tenure, he’d tried. But there were people here—good people. Nurses, janitors, order-lies, who seemed to depend on him to run in, lab coat flapping, to try to make sense of the terrible chaos of human tragedy that was life in a busy ER. But God, he was tired. His head ached from lack of sleep, his feet ached from being on them for so long, his body ached because, well, he hadn’t been touched in forever. But there’d been a pileup out by Manor, and Outskirts General got all that action rather than nearby—but still twenty minutes or so away—Austin. “What do we got, Sarree,” he asked Sarah Wilson, his charge nurse. She’d been the one to catch the call from dispatch, alerting them to in-coming ambulances and pulling him out of his nap in the intern’s cot room because he was shorthanded and working a double. “Sorry to get you for this, Bail,” she said crisply, but yes, genuinely apologetic. “It sounded like a complete goat rodeo, but there’s apparently only a few injuries, two of them minor. They’re in the open cubicles, each with their own G-man attached. “G-man?” Bailey asked, eyebrows up. “Part of some weird smuggling thing?” She sounded genuinely baf-fled. “All I know is that there was a showdown between semitrucks, and the only reason it wasn’t an absolute bloodbath is that your guy in Room 3A can—and I’m quoting two state troopers and the G-men here—‘really fuckin’ drive.’” Bailey stared at Sarree in surprise. A sturdy Black woman with the mind of a military general, Sarree Wilson could be warm with her fami-ly, and he’d seen her crack a rare smile when he’d worked really hard for one, but she was raised church right, and almost never, ever swore. “Really?” he asked. “Do I look like I’m kidding?” she demanded. “Here I was, rousing you from a much-needed sleep and calling for a stock up on bandages and blood, when half the state troopers in Austin stalk in, G-men on their tails, and they are absolutely gobsmacked. And the guy in 3A doesn’t have a spot of blood on him.” “What’s he got?” She grimaced. “We took him for X-rays and a CT, but it’s looking like a whole lot of soft-tissue damage and bruising. Apparently his semi should have jackknifed and gone over, but this guy pulled every muscle in his body keeping it upright.” “Damn,” Bailey said. “Sounds impressive.” “It was,” said a crisp voice with the faintest—oh so faint—of Cali-fornia accents. “I would appreciate it if….” The voice faltered for a mo-ment as Bailey made contact with a startling pair of brownish-hazel eyes. There was a deep breath as Bailey tried to restart his heart, and the G-man—he had to be, although he was wearing khakis and a collared shirt—in front of him resumed talking. “I would appreciate it if you took special care of him,” said the sur-prisingly young agent. “On top of being brave and, yes, sparing your ER a lot of bloody casualties, he is also my brother, and while he’s a pain in my ass, my parents would be most upset if his head popped off because he stalwartly refused to tell us it hurt.”