Chapter 5 - Operating on the Past"Prep for immediate surgical intervention! Get him to OR-3 right now!" I screamed, the adrenaline overriding every shred of personal history, every drop of resentment, and every ounce of pain.

In that moment, Elias wasn't my ex-fiancé who had abandoned me. He wasn't the man who had chosen a high-society life over our future.

He was a trauma patient with a survival rate of less than twenty percent.

"Adelaide! You can't scrub in!" Dr. Harrison, the senior attending, intercepted me at the double doors of the operating room, his eyes wide with alarm. "You're seven months pregnant! This is a massive vascular repair—it's going to be a four-hour bloodbath. You can't take this physical toll!"

"Move, Harrison," I snarled, ripping open a sterile gown package with teeth-gritting ferocity. "He has a lacerated femoral artery and a collapsed lung. If I don't clamp that vessel in the next three minutes, he bleeds out on my table. Scrub me in!"

There was no room for argument.

Five minutes later, I stood over the operating table, the bright surgical lamps glaring down on Elias’s pale, lifeless face. Monitors beeped a frantic, erratic rhythm. The smell of copper, antiseptic, and ozone filled the air.

"Suction," I ordered, my hands moving with mechanical, lethal precision. "Give me the vascular clamps. Now."

"Blood pressure is dropping! 80 over 40!" the anesthesiologist shouted. "We're losing him!"

"Not on my watch," I muttered under my breath.

I dove my hands into the surgical field, my fingers navigating the warm, chaotic mess of internal trauma. My heart hammered against my ribs—not out of fear, but out of sheer, unadulterated focus. Every instinct I possessed as a surgeon was locked in a brutal battle against death.

"Vessel clamped!" I announced, breathing a harsh sigh of relief as the monitor stabilized slightly. "Suture kit, quick. Let's close this tear before DIC sets in."

For the next three hours, time lost all meaning. My lower back screamed in agony, sweat stung my eyes beneath my surgical cap, and my legs trembled from fatigue. But my hands—my hands remained steady as stone.

When the final stitch was tied and the monitors hummed a steady, stable rhythm, I leaned back against the surgical wall, completely drained.

"He's stable," I whispered, pulling off my bloody gloves. "Get him to the ICU. Monitor vitals every fifteen minutes."

As the surgical team wheeled him out, I stumbled toward the scrub sink, turning on the cold water to wash the blood from my hands.

My reflection in the mirror was terrifying—dark circles under my eyes, pale skin, hair plastered to my forehead.

And then, the hospital doors behind me pushed open.

A nurse rushed in, holding a screaming, terrified little girl in her arms.

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